A new program at a western Kentucky high school aims to teach teens what it takes to raise cattle for food production, taking Hopkins County agriculture students from the classroom to the corral and, even, the butcher counter.
Hopkins County Central High School launched the program earlier this year to give their students first-hand experience on a farm. Ag teacher Benjamin Prevette said, for people who haven’t grown up on a farm, the experience can be an eye-opener.
“The main goal of this is to give students that don't have the ability to actually do this,” said Prevette. “You can learn about cows from a textbook, but it's a whole lot more to learn about them if you can actually go see them and put your hands on them and work with them.”
Agriculture plays an important role in the western Kentucky area’s economy, and HCCHS has continued to teach its students the necessary skills of agriculture. In recent years, the school also launched a program where students manage their own fruits and vegetables farm that provides fresh produce for the school's cafeteria. Now, the school has its own small herd of cattle just up the road at the Hopkins County Central FFA Cattle Farm.
There, students take turns caring for the cows before they are sent to be processed into beef for the school’s cafeteria, with lessons on how to safely handle cattle, manage their feeding schedules, veterinary practices, artificial insemination and more.
Prevette said the program came out of a “crazy hair-brain idea” he had to build on the school’s ag instruction. Other teachers, he said, supported his ambitious idea and, shortly after reaching out to local producers to share the school's plan, community members chipped in to help get it started.
“The big question mark was where are we going to do it at?” said Prevette. “That was the board office's thing was they were very supportive of it, but they did not want it on school property. They wanted to draw up a basically a legal agreement with a neighboring farmer, that way it would be on their farm and not on the school.”
Local landowner Darwin Rideout donated 28 acres of land to the school, about three miles from the main campus, with the only agreement being that the school is responsible for feeding the cows. Agriculture teachers then figured out how to manage the feeding routines between students.
Many students in FFA, animal science, vet science and other agriculture classes, are highly involved in this program, mainly through its rotating feeding schedule. Using an app called ParentSquare, students and teachers coordinate who does what, with which cow and when.
“Basically, like us students, we will go out there and pick which day we want and it honestly sends out like a reminder the day before, so that we know like it's our day to feed the cows and stuff,” said HCCHS student Sawyer Lopez.
Students who have grown up around farmwork also love sharing their knowledge with others through the program.
“Seeing other kids and how excited they are, and just their lack of knowledge and being able to give them the knowledge of this cattle is one of the most beautiful things,” said senior Gracie Grimes. “It's nature at its finest, and they truly don't know. So giving them that knowledge is what's so beautiful about it.”
At HCCHS, Prevette said they ensure that their students are taught the “fine line” between a production animal and a companion animal.
“Those are hard conversations to have because sometimes our students get they get really close to some of these animals,” said Prevette. “But that's just one of those facts of agriculture is that we have to teach our students here's how we humanely care for our animals, realizing that the end goal for this animal is to be put into food production.”
In order for the beef from the program to be used in the HCCHS cafeteria, the cows will be humanely slaughtered at Hampton Meats, a local Hopkinsville butcher shop and U.S. Department of Agriculture-approved facility, where they will also be inspected and processed. Most of the meat from the cow will become ground beef – the easiest component for the school’s cafeteria to incorporate into their menu. Some of the higher quality cuts from the cow, like steak and ribeye's, will be set to the side, though Prevette said he’s not sure how they’ll be used.
While the program is only in its first year, Prevette plans to keep building onto the Hopkins County Central FFA Cattle Farm. He has designs on bringing in tools of the trade – like head catch, squeeze chutes, a palpation cage and a catch pen – to make some processes smoother for students and to teach them how to work with more cattle safely. This includes broadening his curriculum to include lessons on vaccine implementation, spraying treatments and other veterinary practices.
Beyond that, Prevette said, he also plans for the program to become self-sustainable by growing their own hay, corn and soybeans in some local grass fields. If the school board approves his plan, the farm will be able to provide their feed for the livestock they keep.
