Hi all - any Hippology alumn out there? My team is hoping to make it to Nationals this year, and I was wondering if anyone had any good practice material, old tests, or tips in general for competing (especially for the judging portion!). Thank you! 
my kids were “recruited” by the local 4H teams
Primarily our kids did the Morgan Youth Horse Bowl contests…they were good, two were on national winning teams. Oldest son was on at least three Hippology national qualifying teams …he went to Western National Regional in Denver
The Morgan Youth badge study books are loaded with information
https://www.morganhorse.com/upload/p…gGuide2010.pdf
https://www.morganhorse.com/upload/p…h_Workbook.pdf
https://www.morganhorse.com/upload/p…ed_1.25.17.pdf
I guess somewhere we still have the few thousand flash cards that we made up for the kids to study
Also there was a game back in the old days called GeoSafari which had a provison where you could make up your on test cards… we made up a bunch of cards… this thing would time the person, scoring correct and incorrect answers… it was very helpful in developing the instant recall needed to respond the questions in a Hippology contest.
https://www.ebay.com/i/142770017094?chn=ps
Six year old daughter was on a Morgan national champion team because a team member had to leave to catch a flight home, daughter filled in and actually was able to answer several questions because she had played with the GeoSafri she was quick.
Hippology alum here, my team went to Eastern Nationals back in '13 (and got 5th overall)! I also went in '12 as part of the state judging team. Here’s what I remember about the different aspects of the competition.
Hippology Stage 1: Judging
In the morning, we combined forces with the judging kids. As hippology competitors, we judged two conformation classes and two performance classes (the judging kids had to do four of each). Also unlike the judging competitors, we didn’t have to present oral reasons for the classes. Apart from those two differences, everything ran the same as it would in a judging competition.
Advice here: KNOW THE SPECIFICS OF WHAT YOU’RE JUDGING ON! There are usually some specifics for each discipline (in the case of performance classes) or breed/sex (conformation classes) that will really hurt your scores if you don’t know to look for them. Also, there are a ton of judging videos available online that you can watch in order to practice this. They give the placings, cuts, and reasons at the end too which is really helpful. When I was practicing on the judging team, we would spend three hours at a time watching these kinds of videos.
Hippology Stage 2: Examination
This section is broken into a written exam and a slide exam. The written exam for us was a bunch of questions (50 maybe?) on all sorts of general knowledge stuff. Proper names for muscles, breed facts, tack identification etc. The slide exam was also multiple choice, but rather than written questions you’d be shown pictures. I believe there are some practice exams of both types available online that you guys can use to practice.
Advice here: Read as many horse care books as you can. Dig up pictures of the weirdest, rarest tack and equipment you can find. Learn the basic rules of different kinds of horse competitions. This section and the next will test the limits of your knowledge, so try to stuff as many different facts into your head as possible.
Hippology Stage 3: Stations
This was my personal favorite section, and the one I was best at (tied for 3rd individually!). Every station follows the same format: about 10 pictures or items along with a multiple choice list of terms. Note, there are usually more terms than there are items, so you can’t always do process of elimination! The stations I remember doing are: feed identification, injury/malady identification, bone identification, anatomy, breed identification, rare coat identification, and equine sport identification.
Advice here: google image it! This stage is by far the most visually intense, more so even than the slides. Luckily, you’ve got the answers laid out in front of you, you just have to pick out the right terms. If you can make associations between pictures and identifying terms, you’ll excel here.
Hippology Stage 4: Team Problems
In this section, your team will be given some sort of question to answer. Sometimes it’ll be an on-paper question and you’ll have to plan out a multi-part answer. One question that we got a lot in practice competitions was “how would you plan out an equine property using x acres of land and y amount of money?” Other times, the questions will be more hands-on. For one of the team problems at Nationals, we got handed two completely disassembled Saddlebred show bridles and were given 10 minutes to put them together. 10 minutes is the usually solving time frame; after that you have 6-7 minutes to present your solution and a few more minutes for questions.
Advice here: talk through it! Part of how you’re judged is on how well you work together as a team. Is one of your members being left out or not saying much? Points will be taken off. Are you guys arguing or productively discussing? Hopefully the latter! When practicing, give yourselves at least two of these problems per session. Talk through them as a team, “present” a solution to yourselves or your coach, and then discuss what each of you felt was good and what could go better.
Overall, the key things you need to do are a) read EVERYTHING! and b) get in as MUCH practice as possible. In my area, a lot of 4-H clubs hold practice events even after Regionals and States are over; these events are specifically designed to help the National teams practice. If there aren’t events like that near you, you can still get in some great practice. For judging, talk to barns near you about holding a mock class. Maybe ask if you could sit in on a group lesson and judge it like it’s a performance class. If you’re lucky, you may even be able to wrangle enough volunteers and horses to put together a conformation “class”. If that falls through, online videos are another great tool. Here’s a great (free!!!) resource for judging videos: https://animalscience.tamu.edu/livestock-species/equine/online-judging/
As for reading materials, check out the competition website to see if they’ve posted their official resources. With Eastern Nationals, for example, all the resources used to make questions are kept here:
I recommend printing out the handbooks mentioned here (one copy for each team member) and going through them with a highlighter and some sticky notes! In addition, see what general horse books you can find, especially those with pictures and diagrams. Reading is gonna be your best tool for doing well. When I joined the team, our coach gave us two “presents”, our competition shirts and a suitcase full of books apiece! We didn’t read everything, but we got through a fair amount of it and it really helped us out.
Hopefully this wall of text isn’t too scary! Good luck!
-Em
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Mnemonics are your friend. I still remember the one I made up (~20 years ago) for the essential amino acids (Three Very Pretty Apps Let Lights Melt In The House: Threonine Valine Phenyalanine Arginine Lysine Leucine Methionine Isoleucine Tryptophan Histidine). That may have been for horse bowl, actually, but the point stands.
Look up structured repetition. Lots of online flashcard programs have this built in already (for learning foreign languages, anyway), but if you do flashcards the old fashioned way, structured repetition is the way to practice with them effectively. It’s a good thing to know about (for your schoolwork too!) Practice in varied locations, at different times, with distractions, etc. once you think you know the material. It will help you develop recall for higher pressure situations like competition.
The competitions should have lists of resources they’re allowed to use to develop the test materials. That’s a good place to start (but again, may be more relevant to horse bowl). Sit down with Dover catalogs and figure out how the names/descriptions for different items map to different products. Then, for example, if a bit shows up on the test that you haven’t seen, you at least describe it using correct terminology (snaffle/curb/pelham/kimberwick with a single-jointed/mullen mouth/low port, etc.). As you’re learning things, pay attention to what material is generalizeable in this way. If you can find tack places online that sell parts (of bridles, martingales, etc), or tack places that sell old tack and/or tack from disciplines uncommon to the average 4h-er (I’m thinking racing and driving tack, mainly), they would be really good resources for the ID phase. Oh also, extension offices have a lot of great info sheets (with pictures) about things like poisonous plants, grass and soil id, and so on. Check out your local extension office’s website - and heck, even go talk to someone in person.
Re: the judging, the main thing I remember is that type-y-ness is a higher priority than I personally tended to judge to. So make sure you understand how to prioritize type vs. balance vs. structural correctness vs. other factors. My coaches back in the day were really concerned about getting a lot of pintos and appaloosas in front of us, on the theory that the color could cause optical illusions that we had to desensitize ourselves to. I don’t know if that’s a real issue to worry about or not, but am throwing it out there just in case.
Good luck!
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Thank you guys for the tips!!
