Progress report for YENC24-217
Project Information
Through this grant, students will manage a small group of cattle on a rotational grazing system. The students will participate in moving the cattle to different paddocks within our current 2 acre pasture throughout the year to maximize the growth of beneficial forages and reduce the impact of overgrazing. Students from the high school agriculture program will evaluate and manage the cattle and pasture as well as lead lessons involving elementary students in grades 1-4 at Zane Trace School. Climate resilience, regenerative grazing and nutrient management are all topics that will be taught through this grant project.
- Increase rotational grazing and animal husbandry skills among 40 high school agriculture students by involving them in management tasks related to raising a small herd of Jersey females in a dairy/beef crossbred operation at Zane Trace High School.
- Provide educational outreach to increase awareness of sustainable agriculture for at least 350 students in grades 1-4 at Zane Trace Elementary through pasture tours and classroom visits.
- Introduce high school agriculture students to livestock career opportunities through a visit to the Ohio State Dairy Farm, a local pasture based livestock operation and three guest speakers in class.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Will report cumulative numbers at the end of the project.
Learning Outcomes
In elementary school, we’ve been focusing on third graders to start with, and plan to expand based on how that goes. Third graders are learning about ecosystems and a little bit of anatomy, and so we’re tying the lessons about the functions of different parts of the pasture, as well as ruminant digestion so they can see why cattle are such a good fit for pasture (as opposed to, say pigs). The first lesson was spring ‘24. By the last week of May, we bought a dairy heifer and dairy cow in to talk terminology, the kids had a chance to milk the cow, brainstorm together about what they thought they would eat vs. what we would eat.
High schoolers have been involved in a couple of different branches of the project:
Fall ‘24 was when we started our first calves. We spent time creating the paddocks inside the enclosed 2 acre area. The high school animal science class learned how to portion off the areas, create the gates, hook up the solar powered portable fence generator, etc.
The first round of calves were not dairy calves, but some cross-bred calves that we were able to purchase from 300-450lbs. That small size was very approachable: less intimidating for the students and they didn’t go through pasture so quickly. The students raised them from Sept - second week of January. We sold them at auction, and the pasture was allowed to rest.
Now we’re in the process of buying the dairy calves (from someone in Holmes Co. OH…we were going to buy them from OSU, but OSU moved all of their animals to Wooster. We’re about 45 minutes south of OSU’s campus, but they are rebuilding their barn and creating a new livestock facility and sold half of their animals and moved the rest to Wooster. We changed that plan and we will purchase instead from a closer farm. We’ll take a field trip for the students to visit the farm to pick out the two heifer calves (maybe a summer and a fall heifer) so that their sizes will be a little staggered, and their calving might be staggered. The students who are participating in the field trip to select the cattle participated in the FFA dairy judging contest. They got to learn about selecting, and at the Expo also learned about forages (including what we could sow into the ground to improve the pasture in addition to good grazing practices).
This spring (2025), the pasture is looking great. It’s vibrant green and nice regrowth of good pasture forages. Observationally, there’s much less multiflora rose. Later this spring, we will do the quantification of forage. The students pointed out which paddocks had been grazed more frequently or not, and how beneficial rotational grazing has been in just one year. We did our soil sampling in mid- to late-May last year, so we’ll do that again this year at a similar time.