Lucky! Lucky! Lucky me, I got to spend time with cows! (SAE Visit 2)

If you know me or gathered anything about me through my more personal blog posts (not so much the ones on teaching), you will have noticed I love cows! Especially my cows. But, when you live 4 1/2 hours away from home for 15 weeks, it's not very often you get to go home and see your cows. Maybe it is for some, but it really wasn't for me. If I could, I would go home every weekend.

So what do I do other than looking at pictures of my cows, I go on an SAE visit that involves cows!

Student

• Paige, junior
• 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 Vice President
• thinking about running for state office! (side note: when I was visiting for the very first time in February of last year, I got to hear her prepared speech in class and I said she should run for state office)

Location

• her family farm, again not too far from the school
• about 80 cows total in tie stall barn

What is her project?

• Dairy cows and heifers
• 2 cows are her main projects, Twister and Princess
• The mother to one of the cows was a calf that Paige got from a $750 scholarship.
• This "calf" has grown into one of the best producing cows in the herd. And is a really nice show cow too!

Other Comments/Notes

• Paige got started with showing and taking care of dairy cows because she thought it was neat and loves how it brings the family together.
• We also talked about what the cows get fed. With the help of a nutritionist, the cows get what they need at different stages of production.

Overall/General SAE Comments

• If I go into the classroom, I will make sure to sit down with students and have a specific plan. Be their accountability buddy but don't spoon feed them anything. They make decisions for themselves but they need to be held accountable sometimes other than with grading the books.
• Grading record books: timely and accurate/reasonable records. I would strongly encourage my students to put records in AT LEAST once a week; get them done soon after you do the activity and you don't have to do it all at once.
• Also had a little bit of fun! Just talking to Paige and her mom and one of their cats jumps up on Mr. Haussener's scooter for a ride!