News

By Emma Geldart

Dalhousie Agricultural Campus was buzzing on Friday afternoon where 70 4-H youth gathered to participate in the Farmers Olympics as part of the East Gen Atlantic Showcase. Members of the beef and dairy projects from 4-H clubs across the Atlantic Provinces spent two-and-a-half days in Truro participating in the educational session with hands-on learning components.

“This is a great opportunity for members to get some additional hands-on learning experience paired with some classroom experience,” Dale MacPhee (Class of ’90), Regional Sales Representative for East Gen says. “Some of these kids have previous experience coming from farms and some have no experience and joined 4-H and borrowed a cow because they were interested in learning about beef or dairy cows.”

Hosting the event every year, East Gen is an artificial insemination company specializing in beef and dairy cow breeding. They service over 8,000 customers in Ontario, New Brunswick, PEI and Newfoundland & Labrador and are committed to producing long-lasting and profitable herds along with lifelong partnerships.

Participants of East Gen’s Atlantic Showcase bring their own beef or dairy calf and spend two-and-a-half days learning about health, genetics, judging, showing and much more. The education sessions are taught by qualified mentors in the beef and dairy industry, many of whom are Dal AC alumni. The youth also receive hands-on training on preparing their calf for showing. At the end of the weekend, members compete in a show where overall winners are announced. Overall points are accumulated over the course of the two days and awarded for showmanship, calf, stall, clipping effort, clipping results on show day, a 4-H general quiz, presentation quizzes, judging skills placings, and judging skills reasons.

“They can earn bragging rights,” MacPhee laughs.

This year, Dalhousie University Faculty of Agriculture played a role in helping make the East Gen Atlantic Showcase a success. Participants stayed on residence at the Agricultural Campus and enjoyed meals provided by the Chartwells staff in Jenkins Hall. Participant’s calves were kept at the Agri-dome on the grounds of the Nova Scotia Provincial Exhibition where the show took place at the end of the weekend. Staff from Recruitment and Community Education at Dal AC helped organize the Farmers Olympics activity. The Farmers Olympics was a relay-style event where participants moved to each station and completed the tasks in order to earn points. Stations consisted of beef and dairy cow related activities such as nutrition, a milking competition, California mastitis test, water bucket relay, soil sampling, and more. Each team had three minutes to complete the task at each station before moving on to the next. Correct answers and a fast time resulted in points for their teams.

The East Gen Atlantic Showcase was a success overall with champions and reserve champions being named in six categories. Results from the final show are as follows:

Grand Champion Beef Show Person: Ben Bacon

Reserve Champion Beef Show Person: Melanie DeLong

Grand Champion Dairy Show Person: Lane Yuill

Reserve Champion Dairy Show Person: Miranda Murphy

Grand Champion Beef Calf: Nicole Booth

Reserve Champion Beef Calf: Ben Bacon

Grand Champ Dairy Calf: Lane Yuill

Reserve Champion Dairy Calf: Riley Van Den Heuval

Beef Overall High Point Grand Champion: Melanie DeLong

Beef Overall High Point Reserve Champion: Nicole Booth

Dairy Overall High Point Grand Champion: Kathryn McCully

Reserve Overall High Point Champion: Ryan Porter

As for Dalhousie Agricultural Campus, the campus looks forward to welcoming the 4-H youth back again next year for a bigger and better event and some of the youth may even return to campus someday as students.