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Oklahoma Agriculture in the Classroom

Calendar


August

County Fairs and Care of Farm Animals

County Fairs

Most county fairs begin this month

Contact your county Extension office for county fair dates and for information about special activities available to your students.

Learn about fairs and conduct your own classroom fair with this lesson:

Healthy Farm Animals Mean Safe Food

The animal barn at the county fair is a good place to witness the excellent care given to animals grown for food. The basis of animal judging at the fair is to showcase animal health. Healthy animals produce healthy and high quality meat, milk, cheese and eggs. Professional livestock producers display their breeding stock at the fair alongside 4-H and FFA youth competing for prizes. The following guide explains the criteria used for judging healthy beef animals, swine and sheep.

Field Trip

Take a field trip to the animal barn at the county fair and have students use the criteria from the guide above to judge animals they see at the fair.

AITC Lessons on Animal Care
Writing Prompt

Visit your county fair or your local farmer's market, and write a blog describing what you saw.

Books
Easton, Patricia Harrison, and Herb Ferguson, A Week at the Fair: A County Celebration, Millbrook, 1995. (Grades PreK-1)
Detailed account of the care and judging of animals at a county fair, as told by a young 4-H'er showing her pig and the family's horse. Nice photographs and a great deal of text.
Harvard, Christian, Face to Face With the Chicken, Charlesbridge, 2003. (Grades 3-5)
Information about such things as pecking order, predators, chick hatching and more.
Patrick, Jean LS, and Alvis Upitis, Cows, Cats and Kids: A Veterinarian's Family at Work, Boyds Mills, 2003. (Grades 4-6)
During the day and a half covered in this photo-essay, Shea helps her father "pull" a calf (assist with a difficult birth, and Kendell spends a morning with him vaccinating calves.
Schindel, John, Busy Barnyard, Tricycle, 2006. (PreK)
Oklahoma Youth Expo Oklahoma Youth Expo, 2007, Courtesy of Oklahoma State University