Symposium to teach youth about animal agriculture

A n educational symposium aimed at 4- H youth, FFA students, breed association youth and their volunteer leaders and advisors will be held March 26.

The event will cover all aspects of animal agriculture and provide an opportunity for youth from different project areas, counties and schools to meet. The program will be held at Rutgers University’s School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in New Brunswick, and will feature seminars on egg grading; feeds and feeding; dairy foods and small ruminants judging; artificial insemination; parasites; broiler production and marketing; sheep shearing; meat bird evaluation and marketing; and anatomy of a horse’s leg. Hands on sessions will include dairy clip-off, building a cart for goats and making beneficial knots.

The New Jersey Junior Breeders Livestock Symposium is sponsored by the New Jersey Department of Agriculture (NJDA), New Jersey Junior Breeder Program, Rutgers Cooperative Extension and the Department of 4-H Youth Development. It also is sponsored in part by Farm Credit, Northeast AgEnhancement and Hart Agency.

The New Jersey Junior Breeders’Fund, a low-interest loan program, offers agricultural education/FFA students and 4-H members the opportunity to advance the breeding of purebred livestock and the production quality of livestock. Loan applicants must be New Jersey residents, have adequate facilities for livestock and be either 4-H members or FFA/agricultural education students.

The registration form can be accessed at www.nj.gov/agriculture/news/events/2011Jr- BreederReg.doc. For more information, call 609-984-4389 or e-mail [email protected] or [email protected].