During the start of the new year most of the members in FFA receive their Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE). These members either raise swine, beef, dairy, lambs, poultry, or goats or create a project in their Ag class for months leading up to the May Day Fair.
The most common SAE project is students raising and showing animals. Returning senior Grant Yates said, “Getting my animal early helps me find out their strengths and weaknesses. What things I need to work on while showing, and for my hog to recognize I’m not a stranger or a threat.”
Raising an animal for five months creates challenges to overcome, but they’re just opportunities to learn new things and gain lots of information and experience.
The biggest challenge is not getting attached to the animal. Yates said, “The hardest part is caring for my hog at a distance. I know from the day I get my hog that she isn’t my pet, her purpose is to show and for market.”
Even with challenges constantly being thrown at these students they learn from them and learn lessons that they can continue to use outside of FFA.
Yates said, “I learned that in real life, people (or animals) rely on you to stay healthy and alive. My hog doesn’t care if I don’t feel good or am too busy, she expects me to feed her and that’s what I have to do.
First year showers do have different struggles but gain the same experience as the returners.
Junior Emma Lopez said, “My biggest challenge is going to be getting my lamb adjusted to me working with it all the time.
Just like returning members, they need to learn the proper techniques and work with their animals daily but within the five months they have time to practice.
Lopez said, “I think getting my lamb as early as I did really helps me prepare for May Day Fair by how much time I have. I have enough time to where I can do everything at a steady pace without having to rush, I can focus on building trust with my lamb, focus on his weight, and working him, this way I can make sure my lamb and I are both completely comfortable in both of our abilities that we need to have by fair.”
Spending weekdays and weekends raising animals is a commitment that most of the FFA members do decide to commit to but it comes with lots of lessons to learn and utilize.
Lopez said, “I will learn a lot of new things raising my animal for fair but two that I will mention is responsibility, and dependency. It is my responsibility to take care and work with my lamb, nobody else’s, my lamb depends on me and I have to care and tend for all of his needs.”
The time and effort spent raising these animals comes with the ending reward of learning real life lessons while getting to experience raising an animal at the same time.
