The Moos Room™

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Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG3 is here. We have exciting news, exciting news. We had someone actually call us and leave a message. It's our good friend Kevin Dietzel has a question for us. Before we get started in that, we need to get an update from Bradley. How are the jerseys at your house, Bradley? What's going on?
Bradley: Oh, they're doing quite well. They're eating me out of house and home, like usual, but yes.
Emily: Just like your kids do anyways.
Bradley: Yes, exactly. It's like little kids. Oh, yes, I bred one of my heifers last week, and hopefully, she settled. Not as experienced as what I used to be, so it takes me-- It was a little difficult. Little Jersey cervix, the size of a pencil. I don't know. I hope I got it, but we'll find out in three weeks or a couple of weeks if it actually worked or not, and I may have to go back to AI school to learn how to redo that again. Otherwise, everybody's going good, and my kids are now asking for Brown Swiss and Guernsey's, and everything else. If anybody knows of any good Guernsey's or Swiss, just let me know.
Emily: Brad's expanding to herd.
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: This is a slippery slope, but we're glad you're on it, Brad. We're glad you're on it.
Emily: I think we've all been to those farms where the farmer points to the random pen of whatever and just go, "This is a 4-H project that got out of control." Most farms have that.
Bradley: Yes, it's getting out of control. It's definitely getting out of control. Keeps me young.
Joe: Good, good deal. All right. Let's get into this question that we got in our voicemail. Reminder to everyone, if you want to ask us a question, you can call us at 612-624-3610. All right, let's take a listen.
Kevin: Hello, this is Kevin Dietzel from Hamilton County, Iowa. This question is for Emily. We have two older tractors. The main tractor is mostly used for loader work. It is an International 656-wide front with no rollover protection and no cab. What are some ideas for incorporating kids into chores since most of the time I'm on the tractor, driving out to the pasture, bringing a bale out in the winter, that is. Second part of the question, when my kids get old enough that I want to teach them how to drive a tractor, what is a good way to teach them on an older tractor like that? When I was a kid, I spent hours and hours sitting on the fender, but I know we don't allow our kids to do that. I guess I could stand on the side while they drive. They're too big to sit on my lap anymore. That's my question. Thanks. Bye.
Emily: Ooh, how exciting. A question for me. Thanks so much for that, Kevin. Really appreciate that. Always appreciate your ongoing support of the show, and to all of our listeners out there, Kevin also has a podcast of his own. I believe it's the Lost Lake Farmer Podcast, so be sure to check that out as well. A very multifaceted question. Lots of things here, but really what it gets down to is, of course, just youth farm safety, and I think it's great, and a lot of farmers have a very vested interest in making sure that the young ones on their farm can help them but also be safe while they're doing it.
Kevin brings up a point that I think is really the reality on a lot of farms, and that is older equipment, specifically older tractors. I get that. I'm from a farm like that too. Happy to hear that the one tractor is a wide-front, though, that is definitely good. Narrow front tractors are just such a rollover hazard. Yes, I'm glad, Kevin, that you don't let your kids ride on the fenders or that you don't ride on the fenders or anything like that because that's very dangerous, as we know. A couple of things to think about. First and foremost for me is always you have to think about the kid and the age appropriateness of what you want them to do, but also as we know, age is just a number, right Bradley?
Beyond age, we need to think about other things like what is the child's physical capabilities. If your kid can't reach the pedals, they can't be driving a tractor. It doesn't matter how old they are. We think about their physical development, we think about cognitive development because especially when you have a kid operating any equipment or anything with power, there's responsibility with that, and they need to be able to make decisions quickly and make the right decisions. There's a lot of things tangled up in that, right? As far as teaching kids and especially with tractors, yes, if you don't have access to a tractor with a buddy seat, do not ride on the fender.
You can walk alongside. That is something that I have done even when training adults how to drive tractors. It's just a thing where, of course, you have to be careful, and very aware and attentive to the situation, and of course, if you're teaching your kid to drive a tractor, you will be attentive already. Yes, walking alongside and just doing some coaching as they're going is really helpful, and always, always just start with the tractor off. Again, let your kid get up in the tractor, make sure they can reach the pedals, make sure they can reach everything.
I would say before you even turn the tractor on, make sure that whoever it is, whether it's a kid or adult, first-time tractor driver before you turn it on, make sure that they know which one's the clutch, which pedal is the brake, how do I shift gears, all of those different things, what all the handles and knobs do. Make sure that that person really has a grasp on that and can tell you everything without you helping them because that's a big part of it too, is just knowing what does what. I know when I was first learning to drive tractors, that was something I struggled with a little bit. I would've benefited from a little more coaching with the tractor off.
I think that that's a really important piece is when you're starting to teach anybody about tractors, that tractor should not be running as step one, it shouldn't. Go through all the steps first.
Joe: There's a lot of things that I think we try to teach our kids and want to involve them in that are dangerous. It doesn't matter if you're on a farm or not, it's just that there's a lot more of those things on the farm. Growing up, I always thought about hunter safety. Hunting was a big thing for my family, and my dad and I. He taught me how to shoot and do all those things. When you think about that process of how all that happens, you don't just jump right in to shooting a big, high-powered rifle right out of the bat when you're 12 years old. It's just not safe, you're not physically strong enough a lot of the time or big enough to do that.
There's a reason you start with a BB gun and work your way up. Then you have a training, you have an actual training that's required to go through. How much can we do that and stepping up? It's hard. It's not like there's a bunch of different pieces of equipment on every farm to work that way up, but is that possible?
Emily: Yes, and that would be another one of my recommendations is to start kids on the lowest horsepower that you have. I know, for me, before I started learning to drive a tractor, I learned just to drive the riding lawnmower. Again, just to get an understand of power, and throttling, and breaking, and some of those things. Yes, just kind of getting that confidence in operation that's really something that I would recommend there. It is a little harder because there's usually less incremental steps to take just because of equipment availability or what you have available on your farm.
I would just reiterate again, doing some of those dry runs. Again, you can teach a kid a lot about a tractor, tractor operation, tractor safety without the tractor running. Have the keys in your pocket. You don't need that when you're first running through everything and that's actually something that we do. At University of Minnesota Extension, we do offer a youth tractor safety certification course for 14 and 15-year-olds, and that's where we start. When the kids are first getting into the tractor and that it's off, and we just have them sit up there, and point out the different things, and all of that. That just really helps with the retention too.
Again, when we think about the cognitive development side, being able to know and remember where everything is, is going to help if they are in a bind or something is not going the way it should and they need to make a quick decision. That's a really big piece of that.
Joe: I always think about even with a car, something that we drive every day a lot of us commuting, whatever we're doing, truck around the farm, whatever it is. The amount of times you see people screw up with a car, something they've been driving a long time, mixing up the gas and the brake, it happens. I can see why you have to be able to think through all these processes and everything.
Emily: Absolutely. Just doing some of that repetition and asking and most importantly, I probably should have said this at the beginning, most importantly, modeling those safe behaviors. If you aren't operating equipment in the proper and safe way I think it's somewhat foolish to expect your kids to do it. That's just farm safety across the board is it needs to be everybody's business. Everybody needs to be acting in a safe way and using equipment and other things in a safe way as well. It really needs to start there and setting that example of this is how we safely operate a tractor. This is how we safely hook up an implement or this is how we safely do anything.
Joe: With Kevin's tractor, can he install a rollover bar or protection on that? Is that usually something that's available?
Emily: Yes. There is a national ROPs Rebate Program. ROPs is a rollover protective structure. Some people mistake the P for the word prevention. A roll bar is not going to prevent a rollover. It's not. That's not how gravity works. Really the purpose of the structure is to prevent a person from getting crushed under the tractor. That's why we really emphasize it's rollover protection, not prevention. Yes, most tractors can be retrofitted with them.
Like I mentioned, there's the national ROPs Rebate Program. In most states, there is funding available that they'll do a cost share or something to get that equipment put on and most ROPs consist of just two components which is the roll bar that goes over goes over the top, and then a seatbelt so that if the tractor rolls over, the bar will prop it up, and then the seatbelt will keep you from falling out. Always my recommendation is if your tractor doesn't have any rollover protection, making every effort to get some and yes, they've tried to make it as easy as possible on the national level, and as affordable as possible as well.
Joe: Emily, I think one of the things that we haven't ever really talked about is what are some age-appropriate tasks at each age level. Obviously, having your kids just in the barn can be dangerous enough if they're young enough, right? They really do want to help and they want to be with you. Sometimes they have to be with you. We know plenty of people that just have to do their chores with kids. When can I really let them start helping with things? That's going to be dependent on the kid like you already talked about physical and cognitive ability, but really when can I start having them help me with things on the farm?
Emily: I would say that the general recommendation for most farm activities we start at age seven. For kids that are six and under you really want to focus on not so much they're helping with things on the farm, but you're creating safe spaces on the farm where they can play or be somewhat supervised, but assisting with actual farm work we really start to look at kids age seven and up. I just have to share there's a wonderful, wonderful resource that goes through different age-appropriate tasks on the farm, and it's called cultivate safety.
It comes from the Children's Ag Safety Network, which is a national network of researchers and educators in Agricultural Safety. If you visit cultivatesafety.org, this website like I said, you can search by age for tasks that are appropriate for them. You can search by categories. If you're interested in if you have livestock, you can click the animals' category and see what jobs kids can be helping with at various ages.
Starting with the main one we're talking about versus tractors, basically, anything that involves a tractor, we're looking at age 14 and up. Again, just thinking about physical capability, cognitive capability, those kinds of things. When we are starting off at the seven-plus age range that can be things like picking rock, I remember picking rock as a kid. Joe just rolls his eyes, like, I liked picking rock. I must be one of the few people in this world that don't mind picking rocks.
Joe: I will take picking rock over picking pumpkins any day because you can throw rocks all you want and bang them around but you actually have to be careful with the pumpkins.
Bradley: What are rocks? [unintelligible 00:15:40] doesn't have rocks.
Joe: That's true, Brad. They've all blown away in Brad's area. The wind has just chased them to the rest of the state.
Emily: With again, that age seven, we're really looking at things that don't involve a ton of equipment. Picking rocks, other things you can do by hand so lifting things, carrying things. Of course, be mindful of the weight of those. I know a lot of farms have large gardens, and so if your kids really want to help with things, having them pick weeds, that kind of thing. Kids are really good weed pickers because they want to help. That's very exciting for them, and they get dirty doing it.
That kind of stuff is really good for those younger kids. As we get in, the kids that are 10 and a little bit older, that's where we'll see more things like they can be climbing up on things, of course, safely, things that have cages on them, et cetera. Doing some more livestock work so feeding livestock, feeding milk to calves, all of that. Again, we also need to be mindful with these tasks that we're talking about whether they have supervision or not.
I know you might have a kid under 10 who helps you feed livestock. Personally, I don't have a great issue with that as long as they're with you, which in most cases when you have a kid that young they are with you, and they're just helping you. As we think about, my kids want to be chore helpers, and I don't want to have to be supervising them. That's when we really need to be paying attention to a lot of these age guidelines. Again, as the kid gets older more things can get added to that helping with cleaning and operating a pressure washer.
That's age 12-plus we're looking at here. Like I said, 14-plus is really where we see a lot of the tractor and equipment stuff come into play. I will note too that skid steers are actually recommended for youth aged 16 and over. This is a very, for me, personally, a really big sticking point. I have seen on social media and other places people teaching kids as young as six to drive skid steers and the kid is in the skid steer alone, and there's an adult in front of the moving skid steer walking backwards coaching them.
I do not approve of that at all. I think that's incredibly dangerous. There is no reason a kid that young needs to be driving a skid steer. I get that the kids want to and they want to be involved and want to help. That's great. I really encourage parents to try to find other avenues to nurture that excitement, and that want to help on the farm. Again, you really need to be thinking about what your kid's physical and cognitive capabilities are.
I totally agree that skid steers, it should be 16-plus because they're just dangerous. I know we were talking before we started here. Even I still am a little nervous in skid steers. They're not something I love to operate.
Joe: There's a couple of things you said, Em, that really sparked off some things in my head. One of them was the supervision piece. Doing things heavily supervised versus unsupervised is a big difference. Every farm is different. There's all different sorts of factors. If you're going to have a kid mucking stalls and doing that, they have to be able to-- If you're going to do it by hands, they got to be able to push the wheelbarrow or you got to be pushing the wheelbarrow while they muck the stalls.
If you have a barn cleaner, we've talked about the dangers of moving parts and how powerful that equipment can be so then you got to think about, well, to me, that's a heavily supervised activity and not something I want a young kid around at all with all the dangers that are associated with it. The other factor that I thought about right away was if you bring someone in too early to the situation, and they have a bad experience, a real bad experience or a traumatic experience, you've potentially ruined that activity for a long time for that kid where they are going to be really hesitant if not terrified to get back in that piece of equipment. I think that's the other factor for me that I was thinking about a lot was, man, you want it to be a good experience right from the get-go so that that kid can build confidence and wants to be around. Because if it's bad and if it's bad enough, they might not ever get back on that tractor or want to get back in that skid steer. That was the thing that came to mind right away.
Emily: That's a great point, Joe. Even in my young formative years, I had an incident like that. There were certain things that for a long time on our farm, I just avoided because I was like, "No, I'm not going to relive that again." Just being mindful that that kind of stuff does have an impact and we know kids' brains are still developing and that can be a form of trauma. We know that trauma really impacts brain development and the way that we grow into adults and how we perceive different situations. I know it can be so hard to tell your kid no and I know that if you're strapped for labor and need a little extra help, it can be easy to go, "We'll let the 10-year-old drive the tractor."
To me, the cons far outweigh the pros. I know I did things on the farm that I was way too young to be doing and thankfully, nothing terrible ever happened but like I say all the time, all it takes is one time. Yes, you know your kid's the best, but you need to be able to be attentive to their needs and realistic about what they can do and make sure they understand the expectations. Like you were saying too, Joe, as we're getting into supervising and making sure, it really starts with demonstration and coaching your kid how to do these things. Maybe they're going to be supervised, but you're going to let them figure it out. Of course, if something's about to go wrong, step in.
There's a lot of different approaches to take, but I think they all need to go back to being centered on the child, the kid. Don't let a kid do something on your farm because it will benefit you or save you time. If that's the motivator for teaching your kid is, "Oh, so I don't have to do it," then that's not a good situation. Like with Kevin's question, going back to that, I know that his kids want to help on the farm and are really involved and interested in what they're doing. Also, I know that he wants to do it right so that his kids are safe, which is great. Really being mindful and remembering that it will take time. I know every farmer is always in a hurry, but safety takes time. It's time on the front end that will save you a lot of potential hurt in the future.
Joe: We need to ask about four-wheelers and we can't get out of this discussion without ATVs and four-wheelers and the age appropriateness of that. I know I was on a four-wheeler too young without a helmet, rolled it. I got super lucky, got out of it with stitches, concussion, a couple of different injuries, but overall came out of it okay. Could have been vastly different. I definitely, I think, was too young to be on that four-wheeler. Let's remind everyone what the recommendations are as we get closer to the spring thaw here.
Emily: Good old ATVs. The biggest issue is size, is we are putting a kid that is way too small on a machine that is way too big. They make kid-sized ATVs. Again, this is just Emily personally. I don't have an issue with 11, 12-year-old that uses an ATV as long as it's an ATV sized for a 12-year-old. If you think like, "Oh, that's not that big of a deal," or "As long as they can reach whatever."
Of course, now they have the throttle and everything on the handles, but also you need to think about ATVs don't have seat belts. When we're ATVing it's really common that we'll be on uneven terrain or going up and down hills. Think about if you're going up a hill and if you're a little kid, you're going to slide back and your feet aren't going to be able to be anchored onto the platform. Now, you're in danger of just simply falling off.
For me, I think the biggest issue with ATVs, first and foremost, is size, an appropriate ATV for the age and size of the kid, and then helmets and just safe driving habits and making sure we're modeling those habits and that also-- How do I say this? An ATV is not a toy. It is not just entertainment. I know there are people out there that are going to argue and I know that yes, people go on ATV trips and go on trails and that. I get that, but when we're talking also in a farm context--
I remember we had an ATV, it was an old 1980 Yamaha. It was bright blue and it was manual transmission so I had to learn how to shift gears and do all of that, and I didn't learn how to really drive that thing till I was 13 or 14 maybe, which was good because if I would've learned younger, it was way too big for me. This was one of those big old honking ATVs. It was a thing too where my dad was very clear early on that you do not get on this without permission. If you're mad, you don't get on it and tear out of the yard to run away. I would just run into the cow pasture on my own two feet. There was still always an escape route.
We just have to emphasize that this is equipment and it's big and it's powerful and we have to understand and respect that fact and knowing that we're using something that's the right size. We have the proper equipment, i.e. a helmet when we're operating it and of course, teaching your kids just rules of the road. Also teaching kids the boundaries with things of yes, if you're on the ATV to go check fields or something, knowing what roads to take or how are you getting there, or riding in the ditch or whatever it is. There's a lot of inattentive drivers out there and so you can be the safest ATV operator in the world, but up against an inattentive driver, that's not going to end well for anyone.
Joe: Bradley, have your kids gotten involved doing chores and helping around the farm? How have you incorporated them into all of that?
Bradley: That's a whole big subject whether they can work like me or not, but sure. We do it slowly. We have a small little utility tractor that we have allowed them to use just to mow the lawn first. We have a little lawnmower for it. We have, and we stand out there and watch them and showed them how to do it. It probably doesn't have a clutch or anything, so it's a little bit easier, it's just hydrostatic. I still even get worried about them mowing the lawn and using that stuff so we only allow them to mow in the flat areas and not on the road ditches or anything like that. We're pretty cognizant of what they're doing and making sure that somebody else is out there while it's happening.
We've obviously tried to train them well enough. It seems to be going okay, but otherwise, I typically don't let them drive my older tractors and stuff yet. Haven't quite got to that point, maybe we will. Older tractor might be easier, just a little narrow front. John Deere two-cylinder is probably what I'll train them on first. We don't need to get into these big ones. Heck, I can hardly get into a big piece of equipment without trying to figure out what it all does.
I learned how to drive a tractor on a WD45, an old Allis Chalmers, but certainly didn't get into new big equipment to figure out what was going on first because that can be pretty dangerous.
Emily: Bradley learned to drive a tractor by racing the dinosaurs with it.
Bradley: [chuckles] Exactly, that's correct. It's old stuff, but hey, it taught you how to certainly respect a tractor.
Joe: Thank you, Kevin, for calling us and leaving us a voicemail. Great question. Emily was super excited that she had a safety topic to get into today. It's a big one. I will put in the shell notes all the different resources we talked about. You can read them for yourselves. I love the website that Emily mentioned that has the age ranges and the different tasks, that even has notes for the parents on what kind of supervision is recommended, and that kind of stuff as well. A great website there, a great resource. That's it. Let's wrap it up.
Emily: If you have any questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals to anything that I said today, you can always email those to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Bradley: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: If you would rather yell at us with your voice, you can call into our voicemail at 612-624-3610. You can also find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom and @UMNFarmSafety. You can find farm safety and tractor safety certification information on our website at extension.umn.edu. You can view for yourself the resource we are talking about today with age-appropriate tasks on the farm at cultivatesafety.org. Be sure to let us know what topics you want to hear on The Moos Room next. Bye.
Joe: Bye.
Bradley: Bye.
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