Members of youth development program build close relationships with their animals
THE BOND DEVELOPED BETWEEN A CHILD AND ANIMAL IS UNDENIABLE AND UNBREAKABLE. For 4-H kids, that connection is even stronger, and it’s one that starts from the very beginning.
Amiret Busy Bee Elizabeth Buyck is all too familiar with raising livestock, and she sees herself as a mother figure to her animals.
“I feel there’s kind of a mother-kid connection,” she said. “Sometimes it can be a little challenging, but for the most part, you have a really, really strong connection.”
Fellow Busy Bee Calie Johns, like Elizabeth, is just one part of a large farm family and appreciates how raising livestock brings her family together.
“It’s a way to get your family together,” she said. “It’s something fun that we can all do, and we all love doing it. We work really hard and are really dedicated to doing this. And the animals show their love. They just really like getting pampered — they love it, and I love doing it for them.”
Johns, a State Fair qualifier this year, said it’s normal to get attached to her animals. She even has gone so far as to save a bit of hair off the tail of a steer before it went to market.
“You’re so close to them, you bond with them,” Calie’s mother, Amanda, said. “You’re with them every single day, and all of a sudden they’re gone. They are just like a dog or a cat. They love all the attention that any other animal would get. They just crave it.”
Elizabeth said parting ways with a show animal after all the time she spends with them is a difficult task for a kid.
“It’s really hard emotionally,” Elizabeth said. “At market, you have to see them go away. After a certain period of time, they are kind of considered family members.”
“I do cry when they have to go,” Calie said. “I get attached to them so much that I have feelings for them at the end. To me, they’re like a pet because I don’t own any pets.”
Calie’s sister, Jada, showed at the fair for quite a long time, so she is wellversed in the routine of raising animals like the early-morning chores.
Part of that routine of working with the animals, Jada said, is getting them “puppy-dog” trained so they’re ready to be shown. It’s that kind of closeup work that is a big reason why the bond grows so strong. Since Jada only showed breeding heifers when she was in 4-H — she currently has Vegas and her calf, Reno — Jada has never had to send an animal off to market, but she can appreciate how tough that is.
“Seeing people at the State Fair crying after loading an animal on a trailer … that can be hard,” she said.
“She loves her animals,” Jada’s grandmother, Jolynn, said.
“You basically spend your entire summer with them,” said Nolan Verlinde, a State Fair-qualifier as a member of the Currie Poco-a-Poco 4-H club. “It takes a lot of time; you spend a lot of time with them, almost like a pet.”
Like others who raise steer, Verlinde doesn’t look forward to sending his animals off to market, but “it’s kind of cool to work with another one for the next year.”
Georgia Peterson was one of the younger Amiret Busy Bees to show this year at last week’s Lyon County Fair. Peterson has enjoyed plenty of success with her general projects and last week showed her steer Bucky.
“When we had this little fence, he jumped over it and he got out,” Peterson said of her four-month-old friend. “I had to bottle feed him.”
