Flat Aggie Goes to College

The CCC Horse Program is designed to prepare students for careers in the equine industry.  Students supplement their classroom learning with extensive hands-on experience as they are involved with the daily management of the college’s 60-acre facility. The CCC Horse Unit  is a breeding, training and teaching facility.  Students learn the basics of equine health, genetics, nutrition, reproduction, training, equine event planning, conformation and judging, and equine business. We have 37 horses at the farm.  We primarily raise American Quarter Horses, but also have a couple of Appaloosas, Paints, Thoroughbreds, a Welsh pony, and an Arab/Quarter Horse cross pony.  Our students actively care for every detail in the management of our horse herd.  

We'll take a moment to share with you using these photos:

Students do the daily chores.  Our horses are fed morning and night.  Depending on their age and nutritional needs, they are fed a variety of feeds.  Most of a horse's diet is made from forages.  We feed brome grass as our primary forage source. 

 

Some of our horses are also fed alfalfa.  Our horses are also fed grain.  Grain comes in a variety of commercial mixes based on the nutritional needs of the class of horses.  Some of our horses are given additional supplements to aid with joint health and as weight builders.  In these photos, Kassie and Flat Aggie are feeding at morning chores.

 

Sophomore student, Megan is teaching Flat Aggie about the different types of grains our horses are fed.

 

Flat Aggie is checking out our medication cabinet.  Just like us, sometimes horses get sick or sustain injuries.  We are prepared to provide treatment under direction of our college veterinarian. 

 

Part of our daily duties are cleaning stalls, runs, and the paddocks where the horses live.  Flat Aggie helped Jordan and Kassie clean manure from the stalls and refill the bedding.  We bed our horses in wheat straw or pine shavings.

 

Several of the students stopped for a photo to send a farewell to Flat Aggie as he headed out on his next adventure on the CCC Farm. 

 

Also attached is an aerial view of the College Farm.  The two large buildings on the right side of the photo are the horse barns and pens.  

 

 

Howdy from the Colby Community College Equestrian Team!  We are a competitive collegiate riding team of the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association.  The IHSA allows students riders of all skill levels and economic backgrounds to compete and succeed at their own level of skill and experience.  Colby Community College is located in Colby, KS.  This is the far Northwest corner of the state.  We currently have 25 members on our team.  

 

We compete in both hunt seat (English) and western disciplines.  Flat Aggie recently traveled with our team to a western horse show in Wyoming.  The first photo is Aggie with three of our beginner riders- Stephanie, Kelsey, and Jessica.  

 

The second photo is Aggie with Jade after completing a reining pattern on horse, Sam.  Jade is one of our team captains and also serves as our chapter president for our collegiate Farm Bureau chapter. 

 

In addition to competitions, our team spends many hours riding and practicing on our school horses.  We have 21 horses that we use for practices and when we host competitions.  Having this many horses also requires us to provide many hours of care- feeding, grooming, cleaning stalls, and more.  Our horses are a part of our team and we treat them as athletes too.  Being a member of a collegiate riding team is hard work, but it's also lots of fun!  And the best part is, we get to be a part of a team doing something we love, all while working on our college degrees.  We'd love for you to visit these links to learn more about our team. 

Colby Community College Equestrian Team on Facebook-

CCC Equestrian Team online- 

 

Flat Aggie had a great time visiting the Colby Community College Farm and getting to go to animal science lab and practice with the livestock judging team. He started his day with other Colby Community College Students learning about how to test the nutrition in feed. Knowing the nutrition levels is very important because then farmers and ranchers know how much of each type of feed they can feed their livestock. 

Flat Aggie first helped test the bales. Using an electric drill with a great big tube on the end Flat Aggie bored about ¼ of a pound of hay from several bales. Next he helped scoop about 2 pounds of wet distiller’s grain into a sample bag for testing. Flat Aggie learned that wet distiller’s grain is the corn kernel after part of it has been made into ethanol. Showing one more step in how we can recycle our agricultural products to help benefit everyone with cleaner fuel and inexpensive feed. 

The next feed was kane silage. Flat Aggie learned that silage is when a plant like corn or kane is chopped down and the stalk and grain is chopped up. Next it is tightly packed into a great big pit. The Colby Community College farm’s pit holds 1,001 tons that 2,002,000 pounds of silage! The reason it is tightly packed is because it keeps air away from most of the silage and lets it ferment which helps bring out more of nutrients found in the plant. Flat aggie scooped nearly 10 pounds of silage into a bucket so that it could be sent off for testing.

Later that day Flat Aggie got to practice with the Colby Community College Livestock Judging Team. Livestock judging is where 4 of the same type of animal are placed into a show ring and judgers try to determine which one is the best or class winner, 2^nd, 3^rd and finally 4^th.  After they have judged 6 classes of cattle, 3 classes of pigs, and 3 classes of sheep judgers have to say why they placed the classes the way they did. These are called reasons. Judgers give reasons one at a time to a reasons judge who looked at the class and placed it as well. The reasons judge is looking for how accurate a judger describes the animal and a logic behind why they placed the class the way they did. Flat Aggie did very good for his first time judging! He placed the whole class of heifers correctly and gave an accurate set of reasons. Coach Bowey says that there’s still room for improvement, but with practice and dedication Flat Aggie could become a great judger!  

Flat Aggie visited the Veterinary Technology students at Colby Community College. The Vet Techs take care of ten dogs and six cats per semester along with learning the techniques to care for animals in the future. These students learn skills like venipuncture, dentistry, radiology, as well as clinical skills. 

Flat Aggie helped the sophomore section one students x-ray a dog-named Raja. When taking x-rays, it is important to be protected from scatter radiation, so the tech students are wearing the lead shields on their bodies and necks. The students also had the opportunity to x-ray a pigeon. 

Next Flat Aggie joined the vet tech clinical pathology class to learn about ectoparasites, or parasites that live on the outside of the body. Flat Aggie even got the opportunity to look through the microscopes.

He even made a new friend named Whinny! 

Last Flat Aggie joined the vet tech class and the equine tech class to learn about stem cells. 

The students watched and helped collect fat cells to; learned the procedure to change the cells; and then watched the cells being re-injected into the joints. 

Flat Aggie Visits Northwestern Kentucky

This is the final Flat Aggie report for this school year.  I am kind of sad, but excited that at least a few of the teacher's are ready to do it again and one class wants me to talk to their teacher for next year to see if they can keep following Flat Aggie.  That makes me happy that they actually like learning about farms and where their food comes from.  If you are a farmer and would like to host Flat Aggie next year, send me a message.  If you are a teacher who would like to use Flat Aggie in your class, send me a message, too.  I would love to work with you. -KFM

Hello again Mrs. Leiker’s class! I’ve been spending lots of time in northwestern Kentucky with Daniel and Danielle Hayden! Kentucky is very different than Kansas, everything is very green and there are lots of hills.

As soon as I arrived, the Haydens’ started showing me around. Daniel manages his family’s beef and poultry farm (that means cows and chickens). Since it is spring, baby cows — which are called calves — were being born. I got to help Daniel put tags in the newborn calves ears. Farmers put tags in ears so that they can identify which baby belongs to which momma and other important information.

 

Since I had already visited a cattle ranch, Daniel and Danielle taught me a lot about chickens. Hayden Farms has four poultry houses, each house holds 25,000 chickens apiece, so that’s a 100,000 chickens! One thing that surprised me was how big each house one, even though there were a lot of chickens, they still had lots of room to run around and chase each other.

 

The chickens arrive at the farm right after they hatch, when they are only about 40 minutes old, they stay at the farm for six weeks until they are grown. When the chickens are babies the houses are temperature regulated to stay 94°F, but when they are full grown the houses are regulated to stay at 66°F. This is done to make sure they are always at a temperature where they are most comfortable.

 

After the chickens leave, Daniel and the other guys that work on the farm scrape out the floor, remove all the fans and wash them, sanitize the entire inside of each house and make any necessary repairs.

 

While I was in Kentucky I also learned that there are jobs in agriculture besides being a farmer. For example, Danielle is an agriculture writer and photographer. One morning during my time with the Haydens’ we took a three-hour drive to the opposite side of the state so Danielle could interview a family that runs a thoroughbred and Hereford cattle farm.

California Chorme's Granddam (grandma) with this year's foal.

 

Thoroughbred horses are used mostly for racing. In Kentucky, horse racing is very popular. The week we visited the racehorse farm was a special week for the state, because it just so happened to be the week of the Kentucky Derby, one of the most famous horse races. The grandmother of the horse that won this year — California Chrome— lives at the farm we visited! I found out racehorses are very pampered, which is understandable since the owners of the farm said the horses ranged in price from $2,500 to $975,000. Yikes!!

While I was in Kentucky, Daniel and Daniel were in the process of buying their first farm. Eventually someday their farm will be joined together with Daniel’s family’s farm, but for now they’re just starting out. I went with them for closing day and hung out while they signed a bunch of paperwork.

They were really excited about finally owning their own farm, but I was really excited about the humongous bowl of Tootsie Rolls!

 

I was sad to leave, but excited to come back to you all and share my exciting adventure in the Bluegrass State. Someday I hope to get a chance to visit Kentucky again and learn new things about agriculture in that state.