When all of the Hard Work Pays Off

 The huge week finally arrived, and with that came many countless hours of hard work, great times, and beneficial opportunities! The Provincial Beef Heifer Show and Summer Synergy 2011 were definitely memories made to last. Although the week was very tiring, and testing of my agriculture knowledge, it was an incredible experience. I would like to personally thank all of the sponsors, volunteers, helpers, and everyone else that put countless hours into making the Calgary Stampede International Youth Livestock Summer Synergy Show a huge success.

Summer Synergy Photo


This year I was honored to have been awarded numerous accomplishments within the show! It was an incredible show and I feel blessed to have been able to take part in, compete, and network within the Summer Synergy Show! 
Provincial 4-H Beef Heifer Show
I have attended the Provincial 4-H Beef Heifer Show for a total of 6 years, and each year brings just as many surprises and joys as the year before! This year we moved into the show on Saturday night, and competed against the other 4-H members until Tuesday night. Three full days of competition, and early mornings, left a bunch of tired, worn out, and gleaming 4-H members. Many competitions were available at PBHS including showmanship, team marketing, show team judging, conformation,the Your Hired competition, and individual judging. I was fortunate to have won both show team judging with my partner, team marketing, champion 2 year old commercial cow/calf pair, as well as placed third in the Your Hired Competition. These accomplishments placed me 3rd in overall Aggregate. 
Summer Synergy 
Summer Synergy took place from Wednesday morning till Friday evening. This year was an incredible experience, not only did I learn lots about the agriculture industry, I met new people, and was able to network with others that were involved within the industry. I was fortunate to win Supreme Champion commercial Charolais female, meaning that I qualified to compete in the supreme quest, as well as I won a scholarship from the Calgary Stampede board. My scholarship, along with the other senior recipients were given to us on the main stage during the chuck wagons on Saturday night at the Calgary Stampede. I also was given the opportunity to exhibit my champion cow calf pair at the Calgary Stampede for both Saturday and Sunday. 
Summer Synergy was an incredible achievement for me this year, and I am so honored that I was able to participate in it! I honestly encourage every other youth involved with agriculture to take in the amazing experience of the Summer Synergy show, you'll be glad you did! 


-Jess

Farmers' Market

Have you ever been to a farmers' market? If your answer is no, then you are truly missing out! A farmers' market is a way that farmers from around the community are able to sell their produce and goods to community members on a weekly basis. Many delicious foods, goods, and plants can be bought at the farmers' market and the best thing, they are all home grown, meaning that you as the consumer have the ability to trace exactly where your purchase is coming from. 

Outdoor's Farmers' Market with Multiple Vendors 

Farmers' markets consist of individual vendors, mostly farmers, who set up booths, either indoors or outdoors to sell meat products, vegetable's and fruits, potting plants, and sometimes prepare food and drinks. Farmers' markets add value to a community, and have the ability to join the country folk and the town folk together. There are also certain benefits included with farmers' markets, such as: 

• Farmers/producers sell directly to consumers, minimizing profit loss by circumventing the middleman.
• Consumers get to buy direct from the farmer/producer.
• Consumers can obtain organic fruits and vegetables from Certified Organic farmers
• Consumers get to enjoy fresh, seasonally-grown food that was produced within a drivable distance from their homes.
• More capital remains in the consumers’ community.

Vegetables at the Farmers' Market 

Farmers' markets take place worldwide and reflect their area's culture and economy. The size of a farmers' market can range from just a few stalls, with a minimum amount of vendors, all the way up to numerous city streets long. Advocates of Farmers markets state that the markets help farmers stay in business as well as preserve natural resources. Wholesale prices farmers get for produce are much lower than what they can get selling retail. Farmers who sell direct to the public without going through a middle man get a better price. Preservation of farmland is important for the health of the environment and water supply is a widely held view among people in developed countries. Sustainably managed farms preserve soil and clean water, and create a safe and clean place for habitat's of wildlife. Farmers markets are a traditional way of selling agriculture and home manufactured products. A weekly market day is a part of normal life in villages and town squares throughout the world. A good way for a traveler to sample local foods and learn about local cultureis to attend market day, especially when it coincides with a festival, such as the Ponoka Stampede in Ponoka.   

Raspberries Purchased From the Farmers' Market 

In the Ponoka Farmers' market, the most delicious homegrown raspberries can be purchased, trust me I know this from experience. The Ponoka farmers' market runs every Wednesday morning, and is held in the Ponoka arena. Unlike a grocery store, buying produce from the farmers' market ensures consumers that their product is healthy, fresh, and safe because it was grown locally by another community member. 

Ponoka Farmers' Market 

When I was in Europe this past March, there was a farmers' market on most of the plaza's, which mostly sold vegetables and fruits. This goes to show that farmers' markets are truly an international technique. If you have never had the opportunity to attend a farmers' market, trust me, your missing out! If you are unsure of a local farmers' market near you, just type in the town that you are looking for, accompanied with the words farmers' market, into the search bar on the Internet! By choosing to buy goods from the farmers' market, you are supporting your local farmers around your community, and ideally giving back and benefiting your own community, so who wouldn't wanna support the farmers' market?!

Linked below are a few websites that give a bit more background on what a farmers' market is, and what specific countries are doing to promote them within the community. 

Farmers' Markets Canada  

History on Farmers' Markets

Farmers' Market Blog

-Jess 

Everything YOU need to know about crossbreeding!

What is crossbreeding?! Most people have heard what a crossbred animal is, but what most don't realize is that there is more behind the technique of crossbreeding, and can be beneficial to many farmers! We are going to jump in deeper and try to determine why commercial farming operations use crossbreeding!

Hybrid Plant- Cross Between Parents of Different Species 

What is Crossbreeding.
A crossbred animal is a result from the technique of crossbreeding. A crossbred animal usually refers to an animal with purebred parents of two different breeds. Crossbreeding is often done with the intention to create an offspring that share the traits of both parents, and is often used to maintain health and viability of the animal. Every type of plant and animal can be a crossbred, and in the cattle industry, crossbred cattle are called commercial cattle. 

My Personal Crossbreeding Background.

Sugar- My 2 Year-Old Charolais Simmental Cross Cow

Being born and raised on a mixed grain and commercial cattle farm, I have grown up hearing the stories and facts behind each farming technique that my father and grandfather use. Since our farm is a commercial beef farm, this means that we have purebred bulls and crossbred cows, which will then produce a crossbred calf. We choose the male and female breeds that will produce the most desired offspring, as well as provide ease during breeding and calving. Crossbreeding is basically a technique used to breed two of the best breeds on our farm, to produce the most structurally correct and easy calved offspring. This doesn't mean that problems aren't accompanied with crossbreeding, there are always problems that can arise no matter the situation. By being able to take two different breeds, and mate them to produce an offspring of desire, crossbreeding on our farm seems very logical and beneficial. 


Since our farm is commercial, we don't raise bulls due to the fact that all of the bull calves are crossbred's. Therefore, we castrate the bull calves to make them into steer calves, and feed them until they are old enough to be sold for meat at the auction market. Purebred producers often raise the bull calves, to then later on sell them as breeding herd bulls. We purchase our herd bulls from other producers, and each of them are purebreds. All of the heifer calves (females) that are born on our farm, all of which are crossbreds, are either sent to the market or are used as replacement heifers, meaning that they will be bred the following year, and will produce a calf. Due to this reason, this is why all of the cows in our herd are crossbreds. To fully utilize the potential of a crossbreeding program, the cows themselves must be crossbred. Crossbred cows, when compared with purebred cows, make better mothers. Crossbred cows wean approximately 15% more pounds of calf/cow exposed than purebreds. 

Pasture of Crossbred Cattle 

Benefits of Crossbreeding.
Crossbreeding provides advantages from heterosis (hybrid vigour) and complementarity (desirable breeds are bred together.) Heterosis occurs when different breeds are mated together. When different breeds are mated the crossbred offspring are less inbred than their parents, and this allows a better chance of avoiding inbreeding depression. All purebred cattle are considered inbred, because they mate within one specific breed. Inbreeding leads to a reduction in performance, which is known as inbreeding depression. As a result of crossbreeding, the offspring perform at a level above the average of their parents. Therefore, heterosis is more important for key traits relating to reproductive efficiency and calf survival. Each breed has its strengths and weaknesses. Heterosis in a sound crossbreeding program can increase productivity in the beef cow herd by 20%–25% over a comparable purebred breeding program. 

 Heterosis Boost with Crossbred Cows

• 10% increase in conception rate
• 10% improvement in calving ease
• 7.5% increase in number of calves raised to weaning
• 5–10% increase in milk yield

 Heterosis Advantage of Crossbred Calves

• 5% increase in number calves surviving to weaning.
• 5% heavier weaning weights
• 3% increase in postweaning gain

Complementarity results when desirable characteristics from different breeds are combined into a crossbred. Crossbreeding achieves a higher frequency of desirable characteristics among crossbred's than that found in either single parent breed. The characteristics gained from the crossbreeding complement each other, and allows for a difference in the structure and growth of the offspring, as well as the calving ease. Choosing which specific two breeds to crossbreed is very important, due to the fact that a poor choice in breeds and animals within that breed have a lasting impact on the success of any crossbreeding plan. An example of a complementary would be mating a Charolais bull (known for growth and retail yield) to a Gelbvieh Angus cross cow. The result, the cow has the milk and fertility, and the calf has more growth/retail yield.

Gelbvieh Red Angus Crossbred Cow

Charolais Bull 

Traits	Heritability	Heterosis
fertility, mothering ability, calf survival	low	high
birth and weaning weight, milking ability and feedlot gain	medium	medium
mature weight, carcass quality	high	low

I hope that gave you a bit of insight on why farmers use the technique of crossbreeding their cattle! If you have any questions please feel free to ask! The Ponoka Stampede starts tonight, and the town of Ponoka is all in preparation for the large annual event! Hope to see some of you out there!

-Jess 


Website Used for Info

Preparations for the Show!

For most things in life, we find that we must prepare in advance. Whether it be for an exam, for a sports game, or even for a cattle show. Often, its the preparations that are done prior to the big event, which make the day a success. Preparations can be done just days in advance, yet some must be done up to months or even years, in advance. I personally spend a large portion of my time preparing, so that I am assured success when the big moment arrives!

When choosing a proper show animal, there are certain criteria's and requirements involved. Many exhibitors want their animal to be a success in the ring, and place above its competitors. A judge selects the absolute best and most complete animal within the class, and the winners are labelled as either Grand or Reserve Champion. In order for an animal to be a success in the ring, prior preparations must be made when selecting which animal to exhibit. When choosing cattle, there are certain ways to judge the goodness of the animal. 

Preparing for Show Day! 

Show Day is what most agriculturally involved youth know as the achievement day, its when everything that you have worked so hard to accomplish is completed! In 4-H we have a show day, where the 4-H members sell their steers, but there are also show days in every single one of the cattle shows that I attend. In order for a show day to run smoothly and successfully, there are certain preparations that the exhibitors must do. I am going to run you through a short list of preparations that I personally make, when choosing, grooming, and showing my show cattle! I hope you enjoy my story, and please feel free to comment on your own specific preparations that you must make in your life:) 

We are going to take this from the absolute top, 

Choosing a Show Animal!

When judging heifers, producers desire

Femininity: If a heifer is labelled as feminine, she will often have a refined head, long neck, and a smoothly  blended shoulder. These qualities set the heifer apart from the looks of a steer or a bull, and are desired in a female 

Structural Correctness: Ensuring that the heifer is correct throughout her shoulder, hip, back, foot, pastern, knee, and hook. The importance of having correct foot, pastern, and hook, is to allow the heifer to have a free stride, allowing her flexibility throughout her legs as she walks. It is important that a heifer is able to walk with ease, to ensure that in the future she will be able to walk as a cow, and be a great addition to the herd 

Body Capacity: The term body capacity is used to describe the rib cage of a heifer, a desired dimensional advantage include depth of rib, length of the rib cage, and spring of rib

Muscling: Muscling is an important factor when judging any type of livestock but is specifically desirable in the cattle industry. A heifer should have a thick, square hind end, and a wide, straight top line. 

When judging steers, the judging requirements are nearly the same as all other market cattle, but femininity is not desired. Steers are also valued to have more muscling and capacity, as well as their correctness of finish. 

Correctness of Finish: The correctness of finish is simply another word for fat, a desired amount of finish includes extra muscling through the rump, more natural thickness, meatier across the top line, and thicker over the back. 

By basing these requirements on the cattle that I am planning on choosing, it will hopefully lead me in the right direction of which animal to choose depending on their strong, proper, and desired characteristics. Once you have chosen which animal from the herd will ultimately be a champion, you must put them on a grain based diet to help further their capacity, and keep them healthy and looking great.

Proper Halter on the Animal

Halter Breaking! 

Throughout the year, prior preparations to the show day must be made, this includes halter breaking! My advice, strap on the halter and hold on tight. It is important to be safe while halter breaking, due to the fact that most cattle are a bit obnoxious at first, and may get a bit wild. Usually, you must put the animal into a cattle shoot in order to get the halter on for the first time, or if your lucky and quick, you might be able to throw it on over the head. After properly placing the halter on animal, tie them to a stable fence, this allowing the animal to get a feel for the halter, and allowing them to realize that it isn't possible to break free from it. It is also important to make sure that the halter is properly placed on the animals head, this ensures that it will not hurt the animal, but makes sure that it is keeping them tied. 

Cattle Brush

Brushing, Grooming, and Training! 

Cattle Clippers

It is important that the animal becomes calm, safe, and well trained. This will only happen if the owner puts time and effort into the animal. I often brush and lead around my cattle just to make them a bit more tame. A month prior to the show, I usually wash my animals to ensure that they are clean, and to help train their hair. Washing the animal is done with luke warm water, a brush, and sunlight soap (it seems to get them the cleanest!). After I wash, we have a blower, which looks kind of like a vaccume cleaner, but is used to dry the animals hair, sort of like a blow dryer! Once the animal is clean, we often use a set of clippers to get the long hair off desired places. Clippers are used to make the animal have a more defined face, smoother shoulder, thick and wide hind quarters, and a straight and wide topline. These are the main preparations made before the show, and have the ability to make the animal look even better than they already do! 

-Jess

Four Seasons of Farming

During the four seasons, fall, winter, spring, and summer, specific task need to be done around the farm, and certain events take place! My favorite time of year on the farm would be spring, this is because there are many new babies on the farm, and always lots of exciting things to do! I am going to take you through the 4 seasons in a manner of how they are on our farm! I hope you enjoy learning about what each season has to offer on our mixed cattle and grain operation.

Fall- During the months of fall, usually late September to late December, our farm is busy with getting things ready for the cold winter months. Harvesting the crops from the field usually starts at the beginning of September and continues till the beginning of October. It is important that it is dry out when harvesting takes place, because hay and most of the crops cannot be stored while they are wet. This makes harvesting stressful for many farmers due to the constant change in weather during the fall. The months of fall are also the last months that the cattle are out on the pasture, once the first snow fall begins, the cattle need to be fed manually from the tractor with hay, silage, and grain. The start of fall is also when the steer calves from that year are taken to the auction market. The reason why we sell them in the fall is because often cattle prices are higher, and the steers have more weight on them, therefore bringing the farm more profit. During the fall, the fences and corrals get set up for winter, and anything that needs to be repaired gets completed. During the middle of September, I have to pick my 4-H calves, so that I have the best selection from the steers and so that all of the other steers can be sold at the auction mart. During the fall, I also help my grandma with collecting all of the produce from the garden as well as digging up the potatoes.

Baby Calf Under Heat Lamp

Winter- Once winter rolls around on the farm, everything settles down on the farm. In Canada, the winter months normally last from the end of December until the end of March. The months of December and January are usually pretty calm, because calving hasn't started yet. My dad and grandpa have to feed the cattle each morning and load the hay feeders throughout the day. Feeding the 4-H calves gets chilly around this time of year, and I often don't feel like waking up early on school days to enter out into the cold, but it's my responsibility and duty. On our farm, calving season usually starts around the very beginning of March. Since we are a commercial cattle farm, we breed our cows later in the year so that we miss the majority of the freezing cold weather. This doesn't mean that blizzards don't occur during calving season though. One of my favorite things to do is walk into the barn on a freezing night, and see all of the new born calves keeping warm under various heat lamps. During the cold of winter, my dad and grandpa make sure that all of the cattle are beaded with lots of dry straw, to ensure that they keep as warm as possible and to avoid disease and sickness. Calf shelters are also set up in our fields, these keep the baby calves warm enough during the cold winter days and nights, and are not large enough for cows to get into, ensuring that the calves have first priority. 

Calf Shelter

Spring- Usually takes place from the end of March till near the end of June. During spring, all of the baby calves are born, and we are also blessed with baby kittens! Spring is the season of new life and new growth. Once the ground is thawed out from the cold of the winter, farmers often plant their crop. In order to do so, they must break up the thick and solid ground with a machine called a cultivator. Farmers use the form of cultivation to make the soil more smooth and easy to work with. This makes planting the crop easier and more efficient. Once the crop is all planted into the ground, fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides are sprayed onto the crops to keep unwanted pests such as insects, and pathogens from interference with the crop production. By the end of spring, all of the calves are born, and the cows are moved back out onto pasture, where they graze on grass and hay. There is always the few late calvers, who often won't calf until the beginning of June. In June, we let our bulls out with the cows, so that they can be be bread for next year. Since it takes a gestation period of 9 months for a cow to produce a calf, we plan our system to calve out in march, so they must be bread in June. Processing the calves for that year usually takes place at the beginning of June, and this includes branding, vaccinations, and castration. During the end of spring, I help my grandma plant her garden, this giving me the job of weeding it throughout the summer. 

Summer- Summer occurs from the end of June till the middle of September. During the summer months, there are constantly things to do around the farm. At the end of August, the calves are weened from their mother's, this means that the calf is no longer reliant on their mother for milk, and is fully capable of eating grass and crop feed. There is always plenty of weeding in the garden to do, and there is never a shortage of cutting grass. The first cut of Hay is usually cut during late July, allowing up to three more cuts of Hay to be taken off the field up until the fall. Many of the crops are able to be harvested off of the field during the summer as well, this keeping my father and grandfather very busy! 


-Jess

Rotate!

A technique that many farmers use from year to year, is an art called CROP ROTATION. My father and grandfather use this technique as well, it prevents the build up of pests and other unwanted pathogens. 

Diagram of 4 crops being rotated from year to year

What is crop rotation?

Crop rotation is a practice that many crop farmers use that involves the growing of a series of different crops in the same area from season to season, rotating which crop is in which field each season, to gain benefits from the yield. The benefit of using crop rotation is to avoid the build up of pathogens and unwanted pests that often occur when a specific plant species is grown in the same field continuously. Crop rotation can also improve soil structure and fertility.

Why use crop rotation? 

Crop rotation avoids a decrease in soil fertility, as growing the same crop in the same place for many years in a row disproportionately depletes the soil of certain valuable nutrients. With the rotation, a crop that leaches the soil of one specific nutrient, is followed during the next growing season by a crop that returns that specific nutrient to the soil. By using crop rotation, farmers can keep their field under continuous production, without the need to allow them to lie without crop for a year in order to gain back fertility. Crop rotation also reduces the need for artificial fertilizers, which can be expensive. By rotating crops throughout each field from year to year, nutrients is added to the soil. A very common modern crop rotation is alternating soybeans and corn, one provides the nutrients to the soil that the other takes away. Crop rotation is also used to control pests and diseases that can become established in the soil over time. Plants within the same group or family tend to have similar pests and pathogens. By regularly changing the planting location, the pest cycles can be broken or limited. 

So there you have it, the reason why farmers use crop rotation as a form of farming used for gaining higher and more nutritious yields from crops. If you have any questions about crop rotation, please feel free to ask! 
-Jess

We Are The Future!

Growing up on the farm has always been something that I enjoyed, and something I will always enjoy.  I love being able to make a quick trip outside to visit my father at work.  I love being able to leave my blinds open and be fairly confident that the closest peeping Tom is the bull in the pasture.  I love the lifestyle that comes with the agricultural industry. 

Today is my older sister Sam's 20th birthday.  She is no longer a teenager, and it seems every year her life is making her become more and more of an adult.  She was part of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association's Cattlemen's Young Leaders program as well as the Five Nations Beef Alliance Young Rancher's program this past year, and since than has spoken a great deal about getting our story out to our consumers and how important it is as farmers to get involved in the industry and to speak out!  Another thing that she always mentions is the rising age and the declining population of farmers, not only in our area, but all over the world.  

With a declining amount of farmers and a rising age, soon we will have none left.  Imagine a world without farmers.  There would be little to know food, not only meat products, but also vegetables and grain products.  

This really woke me up to that issue, one which I had never really pondered.

The Summer Synergy Livestock Show makes me feel like there is hope for our industry, after all, we are the future of the industry!  The Summer Synergy show is a show which was started to "synergize" (join) many of the already established livestock shows, as well, to join different types of show animals so that we could all learn about one another and get to meet new people. 

What a fabulous idea! Have young ranchers from all different backgrounds such as: sheep, beef cattle, dairy cattle and heavy horse, join together to compete.  This helps the youth to all meet new people, and potentially new business partners! It also helps to inform and involve youth about different breeds of animals, as well as different types of animals!  If the young ranchers can figure out how to work together and work in harmony with one another, what a great industry we will have in a few years!  As a young rancher, I know I am the future, and I love that idea! 

Want to hear from some more young ranchers?? Check out this video filmed at the National Western Stockshow, my sister speaks in it!  These young adults are the near future! 

Hope you liked the video! I sure did! Now I must get back to my sister's birthday! Thanks for reading! 

- Jess