By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
On Tuesday, the popular Science Cafe series began this year's programming with a tour of the Fort Hays State University farm, giving area residents a look at the fully functional farm located just west of the main campus.
Paul Adams, dean of the college of education, opened the event.
"We welcome back you for another year of Science Cafes, and I want to tell you that this idea came from Dr. Clyde Cranwell," he said. "He said, 'Yo, Paul, I want people to see what we do out at the farm.' And he said, 'If you bring people out, we'll even serve dinner.' "
Starting the tour from the Reigel Barn, participants were driven around the entire property — seeing machinery, historic buildings, currently planted fields and livestock production while being led by Ryan States of the crops division.
He told the group the farm was initially started with practical needs in mind.
"The university farm was founded in 1908," States said. "It was from the military reservation that was distributed out to the universities. The farm was started to feed the students on campus and produce income for the university."
He said the farm covers approximately 3,825 acres with over 1,400 acres of cropland.
"We've got a little bit of yards, and the remainder is grass for primarily the beef division," States said.
At its inception, he said seven divisions were operating at the farm, including currently active divisions including beef, crop, sheep, swine and shop divisions, but the dairy and equine programs had been discontinued over the years.
Agriculture manager Ivan Anderson, shared details from the beef, sheep and swine divisions as the tour continued.
"The college farm currently is running 250 head of mama cows — predominantly Red Angus is what we're raising right now. We do have just a trace of Hereford cows out here," he said. "The Red Angus is kind of the breed for this part of the state, and we stuck with this breed and are big into it just because it's primarily what you'll see when you drive down around this part of the state."
Nearby bulls, Anderson said, would be marketed all over the state and beyond to farmers and ranchers.
"Some of the benefits of doing that for the students? It's just another way of teaching these kids how to market livestock outside of the conventional ways that we typically think of going to the sale barn," he said. "It's teaching them how to identify the quality and livestock, how to get them out there, how to me talk with other producers and help how to sell the product they have."
Anderson said the sales also help generate revenue for the farm and offset the cost of the farm employees.
"Right now, the animal science part employs nine college students," Anderson said. "So those kids are out here every day of the week. They're feeding this livestock. If they're sick, they're learning how to doctor and administer drugs to them — working with them every day. It's all about hands-on with the students out here."
Huser said currently the farm has 40 steers that were brought in from county fairs.
"We utilize them for introductory classes, where we can do a lot of hands-on work with students where they can learn movement," he said. "One project we did, we walk calves. One did a certain distance, it took it 14 steps, we had it measured off. The other calf comes up 20 feet short of walking the same distance or 20 steps. (It's) talking about energy movement requirements to move good structure versus bad structure. (In) terms of feeling cattle, (it means) learning condition, learning what finish is. There are a lot of benefits to having these gentle cattle here that are safe for students to be around and have been worked with. And they'll be going to market very soon, but they're brought in for purpose of enhancing introductory classes that startup in the fall."
But while the tour focused on the operations, participants also saw historic buildings, some dating to the '30s.
"In this area, we have quite a few WPA projects, but that's the oldest," said Kevin Huser, said livestock judging coach, about a building surrounded by cattle. "It has more of a native stone than the other buildings do."
Moving away from the livestock operations, the group saw sheep and pig operations, before touring the farm's fields used for crop production and grazing.
"You'll typically go out here about the first of May," Anderson said "We don't run a real long grazing season out here, typically just a couple of months because bringing those ewes back in early to boost nutrition levels for breeding and so forth.
But he said the FHSU farm also works to protect the land as much as possible, carefully monitoring the fields for overgrazing.
"Something I think is extremely important is being good stewards over land," Anderson said. "And one thing that we're really careful to watch is overgrazing out here. And you kind of notice through our pastures here, these pastures are empty. ... Once milo is harvested, they'll start going out on milo stocks, but that's something that's really, really always in the back of our mind, you know. How much grass are we leaving? What are we leaving for the next year, especially in this part of the country?
For more about upcoming Science Cafe's visit www.fhsu.edu/smei/science-cafe.
