I come from a long line of teachers. My beloved Grannie taught 4th grade for 40+ years, and my amazing mom is still stimulating and educating young high school minds on the art of literary critique and essay writing. As she so eloquently states, “my students keep me young!”. I believe that interactive learning is important, so I am inviting all of you to Take the Feed Yard Foodie Cattle Handling Challenge!
I always try to follow her advice so, to mix things up a bit, I would like to do an interactive series looking at cattle handling. Now, as you read this, you should not get that same “sinking sensation” in your stomach that you used to get when you forgot that there was going to be a quiz and showed up to science class completely unprepared…I will not be grading your efforts, and I promise that participating will be FUN! However, the amount of FUN that we have will be contingent on your enthusiasm and willingness to participate (please don’t let me down here, this will only work if you all watch the video and answer the questions!). I laughed to my husband last night that I could offer signed copies of the American Cattlemen magazine as Cover Girl to the folks that participate, but he looked at me like I was crazy so I scrapped that idea…
Participating is easy: Step 1: watch this video of the beginning of an exercising session with a group of cattle (it is about 4 minutes long). Step 2: answer the questions listed below about the video.
Questions:
1. True or False: At the very beginning of the video, as I walk down the outside edge of the pen to the gate, I swing my outside arm back and forth to both get the cattle’s attention and move them away from the gate.
2. True or False: The cattle remember where the gate is located and are interested in exiting the pen.
3. The animal that challenges me right after I enter the pen, is what color? A. Black, B. Black and White, or C. Mousey Brown.
4. True or False: You can tell that the animal is challenging me because it knocks me over on my behind…
5. My walking pattern while working with the cattle is comprised of A. Circling or curved movements or B. Straight lines and angles?
6. True or False: These cattle are very lazy and have no energy as they exit the pen in the middle of the video.
7. How do I respond when the cattle begin to walk past me and exit the pen?
8. True or False: I walk directly down the alleyway behind the cattle without ever changing my angle to them after they leave the home pen.
Extra Credit: Name three ways that these cattle are either similar or different than the cattle in the last cattle handling video that I put up a few weeks ago. Here is the link to the last video if you missed it:
You can leave your answers either in the comment section of this post or send them to me privately via the Ask Me section of the blog. Next Tuesday’s post will talk about both the video and the answers…Have FUN!