Grazing School offers more experiential learning for Ag Tech students

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academics 1:15 Grazing School offers more experiential learning for Ag Tech students

By:

Lee Friesland

13 Apr 2024 48

Students specializing in Applied Agricultural Management as a part of the Agricultural Technology Program, spent the day with Industry Partners to gain more knowledge of the farming industry.

"When we do this, we're going to pull from about five to six different bales." We're doing a Grazing School today, which is something that we do once a year with help from the Virginia Forage and Grassland Council. So I've got guests from a lot of different industry partners that are out here today sharing knowledge about rotational grazing with my students. We're learning about roughages and how we're feeding livestock instead of focusing so much on grain and hay, we're able to use the land to feed our animals, which is very cost efficient with farming. So we're doing some temporary fencing and watering to help facilitate rotational grazing, learning how to estimate forage density, learning about soil health, identifying forages and native grasses, and it's a good opportunity for my students to get out in the field and kind of learn some practical things they can apply on the farm. I guess I kind of grew up around animals my whole entire life and plan on always having animals, and these classes are very useful towards that. It's definitely opening my mind a lot. It helps give a different viewpoint on things, and you can see how things actually work. I love this program because it's everything is applied to what I want to do.