The Moos Room™

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Bradley: Welcome to The Moos Room. Today, it's just the dynamic duo, Brad and Emily today.
Emily: Yes, yes.
Bradley: Joe is a little under the weather today, so we certainly miss him, but we are going on without him. There will be no veterinary perspective at all today, so I'm excited.
Emily: Good.
Bradley: Sorry, Joe. Sorry, Joe.
Emily: We don't need him.
Bradley: Today, Emily and I are going to talk about one of our passions with dairy, and that's 4-H. A little bit about how 4-H has shaped our dairy career and some opportunities for dairy and 4-H in the future. Give us some all-around perspective today on how some of the youth programs affected us and our lives and what we're doing in Minnesota.
Emily: We thought this was a good thing for us to talk about with the State Fair right around the corner, county fairs are going strong, starting to finish up, and 4-H is run by University of Minnesota Extension. Because of that, I feel like that's how Brad and I have really been able to stay tied to Minnesota 4-H specifically.
Bradley: Interesting tidbit. Emily and I actually met through 4-H dairy programming a long time ago.
Emily: Yes, yes.
Bradley: We had the National 4-H Dairy Conference in Madison, Wisconsin is held during World Dairy Expo Week, and I was the chaperone and Emily was a little 4-H-er attending the dairy conference. We had a blast touring farms and seeing all the dairy sites in Madison.
Emily: Then Bradley broke my ankle. That's neither here nor there.
Bradley: Exactly.
Emily: The National Forage Dairy Conference is a great example of one of those opportunities that is available for youth and obviously, really had an impact on me and what I want to do with my future. Even meeting Bradley, I really don't think we'd be as close as we are today if we hadn't met then. Brad really helped me through my career and that kind of thing. This is basically just going to be me and Brad singing the praises of 4-H.
Bradley: Exactly. It's going to be reminiscing and we're going to get sappy. No, not really, but sure we are.
Emily: Walk down memory lane with the dynamic.
Bradley: Exactly, exactly. You might learn a little bit about Emily and Brad today and how 4-H has shaped our dairy careers. Emily and I are both from Minnesota. I'm from Wabasha County in the southeast part of the state and grew up there with a 4-H and a wonderful 4-H extension agent Patrick Durick who is still in 4-H today.
Emily: Yes. Shout out Patrick
Bradley: Exactly, from the Rochester area. Emily is from Le Sueur County, so more Central Minnesota.
Emily: South Central Minnesota.
Bradley: South Central Minnesota. We both grew up showing dairy cattle. That's probably the big thing that gets a lot of people. Our youth are excited about 4-H and dairy is showing. I showed the correct answer Jersey all the time.
Emily: Ooh, I do have an important question for you, Bradley. It's not a super secret question. Maybe because you don't know what it is, but what was the name of your 4-H club you were in growing up?
Bradley: It was the Hilltop Pheasants was our name of our 4-H.
Emily: Ooh, okay. What was the meaning of the name? 4-H clubs, their names always have a meaning.
Bradley: Long time ago. It was two clubs that joined together. One was called the Hilltop Hot Shots. The other one, which was actually started by my mom was called the Mount Pleasant Pheasants. When those two clubs got a little bit smaller in size, they joined together and took one name from each and called the Hilltop Pheasants.
Emily: Mount Pleasant Pheasants. Say that five times fast. Wow.
Bradley: Exactly, exactly. Those are township names. Most of the 4-H clubs are named after townships.
Emily: Yes, I belong to the Tyrone Troopers.
Bradley: Oh, nice.
Emily: Yes, because we were a Tyrone township.
Bradley: Tell me about showing Emily. We both showed how does that get kids involved in 4-H and how did you do that with showing of cattle?
Emily: I grew up on a dairy farm. There are also opportunities for kids that don't live on farms through the lease program. They can actually lease a dairy animal and still show. For me, so I grew up on our farm and I had the advantage in that I was the youngest in my family, so I got to watch my four older siblings come up in 4-H and start to show and have that experience. I saw how much they loved it, how much they enjoyed it, and I just knew it was something I wanted to do. For me, I think that was really the most formative experience in what built my passion for cows and for dairy.
Bradley: It just gets you right into it that you're always working with. Most people show heifers, small calves, young calves, and in 4-H to start it out. Even I think about my kids today, I showed Jerseys when I was in 4-H and now my kids show Jerseys and Holsteins and crossbreds. It's still nice to see the passion there that youth have for showing cattle.
It is the door to getting them excited about agriculture and about dairy. There's many other opportunities that showing leads to. In Minnesota, of course, we have the wonderful State Fair. Sorry, Iowa, for those of you that listen in to Iowa. Shout out, Kevin. Minnesota State Fair is one of the grand State Fairs. I have been to Iowa State Fair.
Emily: Not one of, it's the.
Bradley: It's the but I have been to the Iowa State Fair and it's a wonderful fair for agriculture as well. If you're in that area, check out the Iowa State Fair too. Minnesota State Fair does a lot of things with 4-H and with dairy, and it brings kids from all 87 counties in Minnesota all together in St. Paul at the State Fair. We shove about 400 dairy animals into a huge cattle barn from heifers to cows. Kids get to meet everybody from all over the state. That is probably one of the best things that I see from a dairy perspective is just Minnesota's a huge state where they can learn what other people are doing all over the state from dairy perspective.
Emily: With that too, it allows the youth to start to build their network. I went to college at the University of Minnesota for [unintelligible 00:06:59] Ski-U-Mah Go Gophers. When I got to school at the U, I already knew a ton of my classmates because I had shown in 4-H with them. We saw each other at the State Fair and at Quiz Bowl and all that.
That was so cool that it was like I already had these people I knew people I could depend on for help or studying together or whatever it might be. I think that's a really great point, Brad, about how this brings youth in from all over the state and really allows them to get to know one another. Minnesota's a big state, so these are people that the kids might not otherwise meet.
Bradley: We have some cool things that we do with the State Fair where we get kids together to do workshops so they learn about some dairy activities, AI, making butter, calf raising, all of that stuff. Workshops that we do. We have obviously the showing, which is a lot of the reason why the people go to the State Fair. We also have the 4-H Dairy Showcase that we started maybe 7, 8 years ago now, or maybe it's even been 10 years.
Emily: Oh, it's more than that. Let's see, I graduated from 4-H in 2010 and that was the second year of it.
Bradley: Yes, maybe.
Emily: 2009. Yes.
Bradley: 13 years. Wow.
Emily: 12 years.
Bradley: That's been a good thing to recognize dairy youth in Minnesota. It's not an auction. They have to go through a application process and fill out all of the activities they're in for dairy. It's not just about showing it. You can be in Quiz Bowl and dairy judging and if you're doing demonstrations on dairy or whatever aspects that you might do in dairy around the state, and they judge your leadership profile.
Obviously, you have to have an animal that does well at the State Fair to get into the dairy showcase. There we really recognize a lot of good dairy youth with nice monetary gifts and banners and really helps encourage youth to be more involved in the dairy industry in Minnesota.
Emily: Yes, and I've been really closely involved with the Dairy Showcase the past several years. Again, shout out to Patrick Durick, our coworker. He is really the driving force behind that from the 4-H side. He does a lot of work on that. I get to work with him on that. That's how I got to know Patrick actually.
We get these kids that are in the showcase several years in a row, which is great, and they deserve it. It's so cool to hear about what they do with the money that they win because almost all of them are either reinvesting it in their project. Using it to buy an animal or buy equipment or facilities or something like that or they're putting it in savings for college or something. They are making really good choices with this money, and like I said, I think especially that they want to reinvest it back into their project really shows, like Brad said, that really powerful connection and gateway that 4-H can be for youth into dairy.
Bradley: Right, and I think a lot of that starts at the county level. Obviously, we maybe haven't given enough credit to the county 4-H areas, but that's where a lot of this starts. I'm a leader in our county here where we're doing dairy judging and Dairy Quiz Bowl, and we have some dairy ambassadors where we're going out into the public teaching the public about dairy and providing samples of product, trying to get people more excited about the dairy industry and dairy products.
That's really where it starts, is good leaders and good staff to help encourage these people. We also have a lease program in our county where we get more people involved in showing as the gateway and then get them excited more about projects in dairy. We talk about national as well, and Emily and I went to National 4-H Dairy Conference, and that still goes on. We were in 2009, right? [unintelligible 00:11:18], I forget [crosstalk]
Emily: No, 2007.
Bradley: No? '07, oh my gosh. It's been that long.
Emily: I'm flattered you think I'm so young.
Bradley: Exactly, and that's been a wonderful experience where you can know people from all over the US that are excited in dairy. We had states from the Midwest, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, but we also had youth from Washington State and New York, and there may have been some people from Florida and all over the US where you can learn about different aspects in dairy and you get a few hundred kids together in Madison, Wisconsin for the week, and it's just a great time.
I have chaperoned that and I am now on the committee for the National 4-H Dairy Conference, so excited to be back together with that. We go to some farms, we've all gone to Crave Brothers Farms, we go to Hoard's Dairymen, ABS Global, we do some things in Madison. It's a great time learning about the dairy industry and just being with other people from all over the US that share the same passion. It's a wonderful experience. Right, Emily?
Emily: Yes, I still have contact with connections I made at National Dairy Conference many years ago from all over the country. Florida, Pennsylvania, California. It's really incredible that we have the opportunity to do that, and I'm so excited that you're on the committee now.
Bradley: Yes, it should be fun. Unfortunately, we're not having it this year. A lot of construction-related issues and stuff on the UW-Madison campus, but we'll be going back in 2022 with the National 4-H Dairy Conference, so it should be a good time. Looking forward to it. I think as a wrap, Emily and I, we want to tell a little bit about how 4-H and dairy has affected our lives and our career.
For myself, it's helped me in my job. I work with the University of Minnesota Extension now. Dairy got me excited, I went to college for dairy production, grad school for dairy. I learned great public speaking skills in 4-H with dairy judging and other conferences that I had a chance to go to. 4-H is really what helped me seal the deal with agriculture and stay in the dairy world. Without 4-H, who knows where Brad would've been? What about you, Emily?
Emily: It's so many things. My story's so similar to yours, and I think we have a lot of colleagues that have this very similar story that for me, 4-H was really my pipeline into the university and into my career. I always joke with people that I'm a U of M lifer, but I really am. I was involved with 4-H through the university since kindergarten. That's how I got involved with showing dairy, and that's how I became familiar with University of Minnesota campus. Then that's where I chose to go to college. Then I like it so much I decided to work there. Eight years later, I'm still here.
I have said this before to anybody that will listen, I really think 4-H is the reason I'm here today. It's why I took the path that I did and I'm so glad that I did. Like you said too, Bradley, the skills you get, public speaking skills, confidence, teamwork, discipline, all of those things, 4-H was my first opportunity to explore those types of skills and work on them, and it definitely came in handy later in life that I already knew how to do some of these things and already felt comfortable working in teams or speaking in public. This was basically an episode for you and me to gush over 4-H and I'm mad about it.
Bradley: Exactly, right, and it was the place where 4-H was really where Brad and Emily met. Without that, we probably wouldn't have a podcast, so yay, 4-H.
Emily: Yes, 4-H is responsible for The Moos Room.
Bradley: That's right.
Emily: At least they're responsible for the dynamic duo.
Bradley: That's right. Exactly. Sorry, Joe, I think we'll call it a wrap there. If you have any scathing rebuttals, please send them to Dr. Joe Armstrong today.
Emily: [laughs]
Bradley: With that, if you have any suggestions to what you'd like us to talk about, feel free to email us at--
Emily: themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M at U-M-N dot E-D-U. Follow us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom and @UMNFarmSafety. You can also find us on YouTube by searching for a U of M extension Dairy and Beef and U of M extension Farm Safety.
Bradley: We'll catch you next time.
Emily: Bye ya.
Bradley: Bye.
Emily: It was just us rambling, which I love.
Bradley: Yes.
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