YODER – Living in Goshen County, one thing we are not strangers to is, agriculture.
Within our small towns, we are blessed to have feed mills, processing plants, feed lots and so many more businesses deeply connected to the heart of agriculture.
We slow down for tractors and implements on our roadways, and we still love our county fair. Agriculture is everywhere but some of us don’t have the resources available to be as deeply involved as we’d like.
With funds received from the Wyoming Pork Council and Farm Credit Services, the Southeast FFA Chapter and Southeast Agriculture Education classes constructed their very first two Adopt-a-Sow trailers with the goal of bringing the manure to you.
Additional funding from Westco, Land-O-Lakes and the Wyoming Department of Education allowed for more trailers to be constructed, all designed to bring the agriculture experience to students, regardless of their resources.
“My passion started when I heard of an old program where they had a chapter sow that went around to kids,” Southeast Agriculture Education teacher, Jay Clapper said. “I had a lot of kids interested but they didn’t have facilities. My statement was always, ‘I can’t get the kid to the farm so I will bring the farm to the kid.’”
The process has been one of trial and error, like many concepts in agriculture can be.
“Challenges I faced were many,” Clapper explained. “There were no models to follow. First to foresee every potential problem, super warm days to super cold weather. I grew up raising hogs and I got my reminder that pigs can break an anvil. I also had to provide the resources for those not too experienced with animals. Reliable water was my biggest concern,” he continued.
Currently, the program offers a handful of ways to become involved in agriculture.
“The idea is we can provide students and parents with resources so they can participate in raising animals,” reads a newsletter explaining the program.
The trailers arrive at the agriculture shop in Yoder in a variety of conditions, some in great usable shape and others needing a long list of repairs. Once the trailers are stripped down to the bare bones, the crew fabricate them by hand to fit each program.
“Building the trailers became shop projects and I would say, using class time, it took about three months per trailer. Some more, some less,” Clapper explained.
With the Adopt-a-Sow program, the trailer will become partially enclosed to provide shelter from the elements for a bred sow.
The front half of the trailer is transformed into a farrowing area for the expected piglets while the back half of the trailer will serve as an outdoor enclosure for the family. Within the structure of the new enclosure, student crews have installed feeders, water systems, and electrical components for heaters and heat lamps. The farrowing space becomes completely sealed off and insulated. A partition is constructed to separate the indoor enclosure from the outdoor space.
“For many years now, I have offered the program of providing students a portable facility and a bred sow they can farrow out,” Clapper said in the FFA chapter newsletter.
The sow will arrive in her little farrowing hut with only a few days left until she is due to give birth.
Once the piglets are born, students are taught how the necessary skills to care for their pigs and after they are weaned, the sow is then returned to the school program.
Students are taught how to clip piglet eye teeth, dock tails, give iron and other vaccines to the piglets. They are also taught how to ear notch, a form of identification and record for each piglet. Students are taught how to castrate their piglets too.
The students are allowed to keep the piglets to use in their own programs or to resell.
Pigs aren’t the only opportunity available through the portable farms program.
Other trailers house agriculture learning experiences such as poultry processing, beekeeping, and worm farming. The program also offers students an opportunity to raise bottle calves, chickens, sweet corn and even grow a vegetable garden.
Each trailer is constructed to house bees which will produce marketable honey products for the students.
The program currently has one bee trailer which contains five hives.
The portable poultry processing trailer will allow students to raise meat poultry. The program provides ten meat chickens to raise for about eight weeks. The students are then taught how to process the chickens for meat. According to Clapper, the processing trailer is often rented by local community members too.
Each of the project requires the student to venture outside their comfort zones and learn something new.
“I guess my goal was kids would get a chance to experience real ag,” Clapper expressed. “Get some manure on them. Lastly, hopefully make some money in the process.”
Currently the program has three multi-use barns which can be used for any species of animal, expect horses, two adopt-a-sow facilities, one poultry barn, one chicken processing trailer, one four row planter for sweet corn, one bee trailer, and one worm farm.
