Goats, Pigs, and a Western Town? (SAE #2)

Before I left Boonsboro, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit another rock star student.

This student continuously went above and beyond not only in my classroom, but also behind the scenes. Between her lacrosse games, she made the time to participate in any FFA event that she could get her hands on. Her mom also recently joined the FFA Alumni and is taking on an officer position! Brownie Points earned if you ask me!

The student lives on her families farm, where they have plenty of land, a horse, 8 goats, 4 chickens, and pigs. So essentially, this student has two SAE's going on with both her goats and her pigs. However, I only had the opportunity to view her goats. She has 2 whethers, 3 doe, and 3 kids.

All of the goats are kept together all of the time. One, named "Moose" was a bottle baby and even stayed with the family for a short amount of time in the house! When discussing the SAE with the student, we discovered the unlike most female animals, the doe were not protective of their young. When the student goes in to feed the goats, the mothers are not charging the student or becoming aggressive. The student is solely responsible for the care of the animals and feeds them medicated feed along with hay each day. She also allows the kids to naturally wean off of the mothers milk. In addition to showing one goat, the student also sells the kids for $25 per kid.

While visiting the student, we discussed the opportunity to apply for two different proficiencies due to having two species of animal. We also discussed what the daily tasks are associated with all of the animals. A majority of the visit was spent in the barn with the goats observing and discussing the fair procedures with the student. The student was reminded of using the AET online record keeping system to update records and was informed that the record book does not need to be updated each day but preferably each week or every other week.

In preparation for this visit, we discussed with the student and the mother when would be a good time for us to visit. We made sure that we were visiting on a day when the student did not have a game and that we were visiting late enough in the evening that the student was not still at practice but also early enough so that she had time to complete any schoolwork that she may have needed to complete.

At the end of the visit, the student gave us a grand tour of the old western town replica that her grandfather and his brothers designed and built throughout the past several years. The town is complete with a barber shop, bank, millery, parlor, chapel, saloon and much more! The history behind the buildings and how each was carefully designed and created was so neat to hear from the perspective of the student!

This was one of my favorite parts about my student teaching experience because I was able to interact with the family, visit some animals, and learn more of the history behind the family and why they created this western town. It was such a neat experience to see how much thought went into this tiny little town!