For the past decade, agriculture and livestock have remained a major part of junior Nissa Olsen’s life. At the age of seven, Olsen began competing in cattle-related competitions and she has continued to pursue her passion into her high school years.

“I started showing [cattle] when I was seven and my grandpa really got me into it. We just started at the county fair level,” Olsen said. “It’s something fun, so I could get to meet more people who are interested in the same thing and it’s grown a lot from there.”

Olsen’s first steps into county fair contests started through her 4-H club, Randolph Ramblers, and she has stuck with it ever since.

“[I do] cattle at the county fair, cattle at the state fair. It’s mostly livestock,” Olsen said. “Occasionally I’ll do other projects, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve focused on the cattle and I have a few lambs I [take] to the county fair too.”

Her interest in livestock topics later led to her FFA participation at Manhattan High.

“Being around agriculture and those [kinds of] people and just the environment … pushed me to get into FFA,” Olsen said. “My family kind of has a history with it [too].”

At the moment, Olsen is preparing for a cattle competition in Kearny, Nebraska. The five-day event will run from Feb. 14-19, and this year marks her third time participating in the contest. She plans to show two yearling bulls.

“The biggest part of it is going to be the show and [in the] show you compete for the sale order,” Olsen said. “The other big part of it is the sale where we’ll sell the bulls and they’ll go out to most likely commercial producers.”

In the fall, Olsen kicks off her preparations and starts preparing calves for contest time. Preparations include, among other things, encouraging the cattle to eat, brushing them and dressing the calves in halters early on to get the calves used to the equipment. 

“We actually live here in town and we have somebody that feeds cattle out there for us every morning,” Olsen said. “But on weekends, I’m out there most of the time or a lot of times when it gets nicer, the weather is not so cold, I’ll go out in the afternoons … when there’s more light to work with, so I’m out there quite a bit.”

The process of raising cattle, according to Olsen, has taught her to value perseverance. One of the obstacles she encounters is the cold weather in the winter months, which can make bathing the cattle difficult. 

“[I’ve learned] through the process that hard work counts and just you have to be vigilant even though things do get tough sometimes and … the weather doesn’t always cooperate,” Olsen said.

Olsen’s decade of participation in various livestock events – county, state, 4-H and FFA – has allowed her to meet many individuals along the way, and according to Olsen, has been her favorite part of her experience.