Julie Traxson
4-H Youth Development
Leadership
his was a month with an agriculture focus.
Goats seem to be very popular with our youth today so I joined Jeri Geren and Chuckie Hessong to visit and tour small dairy herd. This helped educate me about the possibilities of goats as 4-H project, which is important as we have a growing group of young people who are interested in the dairy goat project. This herd has around 25 adult goats and eight of them are currently being milked twice daily.
I was able to try my hand at milking! One goat was very easy to milk and another made you really work for the milk. It was interesting to note the differences in the udders and how each one milked out differently. They are very docile animals (at least these ones were) and you could tell they loved being around their handler. The babies were bottle fed and used a 5-gallon pail with nipples spaced around it so they could all eat at once. They do not get any of the goat milk, but a powdered milk that is reconstituted.
We were able to try the goat milk, which tasted really good as the feed the goats were receiving is very controlled. Cheese and soap are some of the other products she makes with the goat milk and we hope to have another day of learning with her when she makes the next batch of soap.
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Cheri, Will and I made it to the Be Ag Wise training at Bonner Springs, KS. This took place at the National Agriculture Hall of Fame. We were able to extract DNA from corn and hear how some of the teachers are incorporating Ag in the classroom using hands-on and inquiry based learning (which is what 4-H already uses). We received some great information that we hope to incorporate into our after school as well as school enrichment sessions.
I completed the YQCA (Youth Quality Care for the Animals) training this month as well. I leave this to Keith, but feel like I should have some knowledge of what is required of the youth when they are raising an animal for 4-H.