These University students are not your run-of-the-mill judges.

Unlike their “Law and Order” counterparts, Justin Brown, Sydney Hayter, Ali Terrell, Deana Veal, Kate Wooten and Josh Whitworth don’t sit behind a bench and evaluate criminals — they evaluate cattle, pigs and sheep as part of the Livestock Judging Team.

Members of the University’s Livestock Judging Team practice their skills as they evaluate animals based on criteria such as structural integrity and fat and muscle.

“It’s a co-curricular activity for agricultural students,” said Jary Douglas, an instructor in the animal and dairy sciences department. “It allows you to expand upon skills in evaluation and selection of livestock.”

He said team members take a livestock selection course and then have the opportunity to join the team, for which they also get up to six hours of course credit.

Veal, a junior from Wrightsville, said she joined the team because of networking opportunities — she already has a summer internship with an embryologist she met through the team — and to experience different parts of the United States. Douglas also had something to do with her desire to participate.

“Jary is well-known throughout the country,” she said.

Jacob Segers, a second-year master’s student from Talking Rock, was on Douglas’ first University team in 2007.

“I’d wanted to do it since I was a kid,” he said. “If you grow up in livestock, it’s kind of like going out for the football team.”

Douglas said though the main objective of the team is to learn to evaluate livestock for breeding and market traits, students end up with many more valuable skills, including decision-making, communication, time management and how to deal with unexpected situations.

Segers said the skills he learned while on the judging team — especially the ability to talk comfortably in front of people — have helped as he applies for doctoral programs.

“The grad schools that I’ve interviewed with for my Ph.D. position have interviewed me more about judging than they have my GPA or anything else,” he said.

Douglas has coached livestock judging teams for more than 30 years and was brought to the University to help build its team.

“In the past they’ve had a livestock team, but there was a five-year lapse before I came,” Douglas said. He said he has worked the past four years to revamp the team.

The University pays for the team to travel to various judging competitions around the country, visiting cities such as Jackson, Miss.; Louisville, Ky; Denver and San Antonio, Douglas said.

“There’s about 10 contests you can participate in each spring, but you can’t miss that much school,” he said.

Douglas said the team spends at least six hours a week working out- — or practicing — for judging contests. During these practices, students learn to work on what characteristics they should judge.

Douglas said each contest has two primary components — placement classes and oral reasoning classes. He said students judge 12 classes, or groups, of four animals.

They rank the animals in each class from best to worst, and for the oral reasoning classes, they must create a one- to two-minute speech justifying their placements.

“Your evaluations would be compared to that of an official committee,” Douglas said. Students are placed on how close their rankings are to those of the committee.

For breeding classes, he said the team judges animals on the amount of fat and muscle, their structural integrity, whether the animal is a good size for its age and animal quality.

“They look at the animal’s balance, how proportional they are and how clean their design is,” he said.

Judging teams also evaluate market animals intended for the food chain. He said more emphasis is put on carcass merit for these animals.

“We look at whether it’s a lean, healthy product or a fat one the consumer won’t like,” Douglas said.

Veal said each contest is split into junior and senior colleges. The junior colleges are usually two-year schools, and senior colleges are four-year schools.

She said awards go to the top 10 students for each species, the overall top 10 individuals, overall top five teams and top 10 individuals for oral reasoning.

“You can win individual awards, but to me it’s more important to get a team one,” Veal said.

Douglas said this year’s team had not won a contest yet, but that does not mean the team is not improving.

“Our best ranking with the 2010 team was Sydney Hayter, who ranked Second High Individual at the Denver contest,” he said, adding the team ranked seventh out of 27 at the same competition.

Veal said though the contest in Denver was her favorite, she has enjoyed being able to travel to the different cities and see their agriculture and management practices.

“Each one is so different,” she said. “In Texas, you’ll see Brahman cattle and you’d never see them in Georgia.”

Segers said though each contest judged classes of cattle, pigs and lambs, some threw in horses, goats and wool sheep.

“Each contest has something they like to call their own,” he said.

Douglas said there were plenty of places he would not have seen otherwise if he had not gotten involved in livestock judging, and he wants his team to have that same experience.

“If we don’t get out of our little area, we don’t really see how different things are in the world,” he said.