Upcoming calf tour for Clandonald 4-H Multi Club

Members of the Clandonald 4-H Multi Club completed their public speaking earlier this month, and are looking forward to a calf tour at each other’s farms in March.

Due to public health measures, people will stay in their vehicles and drive by the farms to check out the calves.

“4-H is beneficial because you are always learning from your projects,” said Noah Jacula.

Jacula is 14 years old and in his seventh year of 4-H. This year he has one steer named Charlie, who is a Red Angus/Simmental cross. Charlie has a bigger frame with curly hair and is mostly red with a bit of white on his face and stomach.

Jacula lives on a mixed grain and cattle farm, and enjoys driving the grain cart tractor during harvest. His speech was titled, ‘Where My Tractor Came From,’ and said driving it in the field is fun – like driving in a big sandbox picking up loads of grain.

“My AGCO tractor came from Jackson, Minnesota. The manufacturers aren’t close to us and are usually further east, in the states, or started in Europe like AGCO. We like AGCO because we get super amazing service from the dealerships. Every brand has a good machine, but this is close and the service is amazing.”

He said the main focus for members now is feeding their projects and training them to lead around. Most of the projects are beef, but the Multi Club does have one donkey project this year.

Jacula is feeding Charlie barley, hay and water twice a day every day, as well as giving him fresh straw for bedding. When the weather is nice soon, he said he will begin halter breaking him and leading him around in a smaller coral to get him used to having a handler on the rope. He will also tie him up to brush him for a couple days consecutively.

“Charlie definitely gets to know me – I’ve been feeding him for a couple months so he’s been getting used to me petting him. They stand around and are pretty chill as they get older,” said Jacula

Members have also been doing the books, tracking the data they’ve been feeding their animals to find out how much weight they gain at the end of the year, how many pounds of nutrition they consumed, and prices of how much it costs.

“With nothing happening for extracurricular we get to spend a lot more time with our animals and work with them. Now that I only have one animal, I enjoy it way more so I can focus on him and love him more,” said Jacula.

Club activities will be going until the end of May. When the show or online videos come up, they will walk around their corral to show off their animals.

“We gain a lot of skills and the buyers get quality meat because the members have put so much time and effort into their nutrition,” said Jacula.