October 17, 2024 Minutes
Weld County Extension Advisory Council Minutes
October 17, 2024
IN ATTENDANCE:
Josh Docheff
Larry Hooker-Livestock Update
Pat Kindvall
Dr. Darin Lickfeldt
William Nelson
Cindy Nosko-Minutes
Carole Pitre
Gary Schaneman
Sean Short
Lori Stevens
Cary Weiner-Interim Director
ABSENT:
Rick Bowen
Commissioner Perry Buck
Amy Cooksey
Erin Mathews
Mike Schwan
Sean Short welcomed the group and called the meeting of the Weld County Extension Advisory Council to order at 12: 00 pm. The minutes were approved by the board members with Gary motioning for approval and Will seconded. The group then went around and introduced themselves to the new Interim Director.
Sean Short is the Horticulture/Master Gardener rep on the council and is Chair for the meetings. He owns his own company called Blooming Health Farms. It is a non-profit hydroponic and chicken farm that helps justice-involved individuals find purpose, gain skills, and improve well being through the power of proven and innovative farming practices. We work primarily with at-risk youth aged 15-24, providing them with opportunities to learn agricultural entrepreneurship and become valued contributors to their communities. He has also written a book called Thinking Outside the Soil.
Cary Weiner is the Larimer County Director and is our current Interim Director for Weld County Extension. He has been with Extension for about 14 ½ years and Larimer County Extension Director for about 1 ½ years.
Larry Hooker is the Extension Livestock Agent and will be doing the program update a little later.
Carole Pitre is the At-Large representative for the Southwest County.
Dr. Darin Lickfeldt is the Agronomy representative for the council and is the meeting Co-Chair. He is the Senior Manager at Nutrien Ag Solutions in Loveland and oversees a remote team of technical development reps managing pre commercial product development.
Josh Docheff is the Livestock Agent on the council. He is a 6th generation working the family dairy farm in Mead with 100+ cows and runs the Rocky Mountain Milkhouse which sells all kinds of dairy products and they provide local farm fresh milk to the surrounding community. Our milk is different because it is bottled on site, is 100% a2, is non-homogenized and vat pasteurized. They also sell egg nog and farm fresh eggs.
Cindy Nosko is an Office Tech IV front support staff member working mainly with accounting.
Pat Kindvall is the 4H representative for the council and she has been a 4-H leader for 50 years and counting. She also works with the Youth Exec Council and the Fair Royalty.
Lori Stevens is also a 4-H representative with the council. She and her husband have a farm outside of Pierce.
Will Nelson is a livestock representative on the council. He has his own livestock feed and nutrition consulting company on the Cactus Hill Ranch north of Windsor and is one of the largest seep feedlots in Colorado. On September 5th they had about 28,000 lambs and as of yesterday they have about 102,000 lambs, so they’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks.
Gary Schaneman is the business representative on the council and has also been a volunteer Master Gardener for a number of years. He worked for an Ag Chemical company and is now retired and has worked with crop insurance for Colorado, Wyoming, and western Nebraska.
Cary Weiner gave an update on Extension. Hannah filled in for his position as an Interim Director until he was hired so he is returning the favor. The status of her position is still in progress. The regional director is having a meeting with the HR director and the compensation person with Weld on the 28th of this month to work on the job description and whether it should include involvement with the fair or not. If all goes well, they should advertise in November and filling the position in January. He will be the search chair for the position so will probably be reaching out to a couple of you about serving on the committee. Already have a couple of Extension staff that would like to be on the committee.
There are a couple of other open positions in the office. One is the front office support staff with Fair duties as Cheryl left shortly before Hannah did, and the other is the Horticulture Agent position. Kim Eastwood is heading the search committee for that and they are hoping to be able to make an offer sometime in December.
There was no Commissioner’s report as Commissioner Buck was assisting at the Weld County Project Connect event at Island Grove.
Larry gave us an update on the livestock program. The beginning of the year started wit cattle animal ID. His job description is supposed to be 50% youth programming and 50% adult programming. It’s really more like 70% youth and 30% adult. With animal ID we went to retinal scans and a couple of years ago we got a new one. They’re lighter, quicker, and more efficient than the old ones. Each animal has a unique set of blood vessels at the back of the eye and it’s a lot like a fingerprint as each one is different. It is only done for cattle, sheep, and goats. We don’t do the swine as it is too difficult to get them to stand still long enough for the scanning to work. So, with the swine, we do the ear tags and ear notches. The youth also have to take head shots front and each side so that we have good photos of the tag and notches as a means of identifying the hog.
Retinal scanning is best done out of the direct sunlight and that’s where we have issues in Briggsdale as there is no place to do the scanning except for the livestock trailers and some of them make it difficult as they are open to the light so we were thinking of cancelling that one. I did buy some black out curtains that the FFA kids clamped on the side of these trailers and that seemed to help quite a bit, so we’ll see if that continues to help. The market beef ID Day is usually the first Saturday in February and is held at Producers as they have a good facility with shoots and everything.
Market sheep, goats and swine are done the first full week in May. Sheep and goats come in and it’s done in the Livestock barn. So, we do one ID Day in Greeley, one in Briggsdale and one in Keenesburg. For the swine, they come into the office to buy the ear tags, go back out and tag their hogs, then take headshot photos front and sides so that the tag and the ear notches are visible. Then they send in the paperwork to the office and they have to have it in office by the afternoon of the Keenesburg ID at which time they are able to drop them off there if office is closed. The changes we will be looking at next year will to be looking at Briggsdale to make sure it will still work.
The animals that were nominated this year for Weld County Fair and State Fair were as follows:
*Market Beef were 125 compared to 133 in 2023.
*Market Sheep were 180 compared to 178 in 2023.
*Market Goats were 192 compared to 205 in 2023.
*Market Swine were 437 compared to 480 in 2023.
The decrease in the swine number can be attributed to not having the larger families like we used to and also the costs have increased in feed and price of hogs, so people just don’t buy as many as they used to per child.
We had the Livestock Judging Contest on April 13th at Island Grove. The junior division had 14 teams and 93 individuals and the senior division had 12 teams and 88 individuals. Livestock judging is the evaluation of an animals’ characteristics and making a comparison to other animals and the ideal standard of that particular class, and after evaluating each animal individually, a ranking is assigned to that class.
The Goat Extravaganza was held April 26-28 at island Grove. The purpose of the Weld County Goat Extravaganza (WCGE) is to provide attendees with opportunities and knowledge that will help you with your goat enterprise. There were 94 youth, 227 adults and 590 goat entries. It was held in the Exhibition Building, Livestock Building and the vendors were in the 4-H Building. It turned out to be a well-attended event with people coming from in and out of state. The Colorado Youth Dairy Extravaganza was held June 9-11 this year and was open to all active 4-H, FFA and Junior Breed Association members. The purpose is to provide educational opportunities to help the youth with their projects, and to make it fun. There were 82 youth that attended and 125 dairy cow entries. Some of the events they had were clinics, quiz bowl, ice cream social, pizza party and even a costume contest where the youth go all out dressing themselves and their cows in costumes.
Livestock interviews are done in 5 locations, Briggsdale, Ault, Greeley, Ft. Lupton, and Keenesburg. The reason for these interviews is so that the youth that have livestock projects get motivated to complete their record books, keeping them up to date and to help them develop public speaking skills. Maintaining a record book for a livestock project takes motivation and diligence as they have to record all data and activities related to the animals’ health and nutrition, in addition to tracking expenses, comparing market versus fair prices, and generating financial summaries. Weld County is the only county that has been doing this so far. The record book is considered incomplete if four or more categories aren’t up to date. Thos books have until before the fair to bring them up to date. At the conclusion of their livestock project, the 4-Hers submit their book for final judging. Anyone whose final book is rated incomplete cannot show in the next years’ fair unless they go to a training on livestock record books.
The office received 768 record books this year and there were 18 volunteer judges that graded them. Each judge then submits their top record book. The extension staff goes through each age group and selects their top two from each age group. The champion and reserve champion of each group are selected for a cash award, which is given out at the Recognition Night event.
We’ve started family series programming that are geared to the new incoming members.
*Understanding deadlines as this can get confusing to many, also livestock interviews, the animal housing form, livestock record books and fair entries.
*Animal Care and Nutrition – Brett Kirch, CSU Animal Science Professor does the presentation.
*Prepare for Fair-Weld County livestock exhibitors teach about how to prepare for the fair.
The livestock shows that we have at the fair include market/breeding beef, market/breeding swine, market/breeding goats, market breeding sheep, market/breeding rabbits and market/breeding poultry, although we didn’t have a poultry show this year due to the Avian flu. The youth, instead, did a demonstration with a stuffed chicken and a display board. The poultry was then sold as one group with the earnings being split between the sellers at the livestock sale.
The Jingle Bell Jackpot is November 3rd this year and it’s to help the members who are participating in the National Western Stock Show in January. There was to be swine, sheep, and goats for this as it was supposed to be in December, but we weren’t notified until October 1st that the event was moved up to November so there will only be swine this year as we are unable to get it all together that quickly. We expect to about 120 swine exhibitors and no goat or sheep this year. Larimer County cannot participate.
We had the Weld County Fair carcass contest on September 3rd. There were 110 family members present. The idea of the contest is to identify those carcasses that excel in meat yield, or present lean. In todays’ industry, percent lean and carcass weight determine carcass value. We had beef, sheep, goats, and swine. Ultrainsights company ultrasounds all the animals in the contest and CSU ranks all the ultrasound data. We had $12,000 in cash award sponsors which meant $3,000 paid 1st-10th place winners for each species.
Larry also does adult programming.
*Conducts farm visits throughout Weld County each week to get out there to meet families and interact.
*Networks with Weld County Livestock Association for programming ideas. The 2024 Colorado Farm Show programming was very successful. For Beef Days there were 95 in attendance, and we didn’t do Sheep Days this year.
*Will be conducting another educational program in the Fall.
*Zoom series for poultry consisting of four different programs: basic poultry production, poultry nutrition, disease, and biosecurity and, harvest and food safety.
The attendance for this programming had a better turn out for the zoom meetings rather than having them in person.
With no further business or new business, the meeting was adjourned at 1:00 p.m. The next Council meeting will be on December 19th at noon at the Extension Office.