Jersey Youth Academy Spells Opportunity
Exploring careers and gaining dairy knowledge brought 31 Jersey youth from 15 states together for a weeklong journey in Ohio last week.
Beginning in 2009, the Jersey Youth Academy has graduated 223 Jersey youth and provides a unique educational experience to motivate high school and college age students. The program is designed to help these students succeed in their adult careers within some aspect of the dairy industry, but specifically working with Jersey cattle and/or Jersey products. All program costs, including round-trip transportation for participants, are paid by the Academy.
The seventh class of Jersey Youth Academy learned from allied leaders in the industry, including Charlie Garrison of The Garrison Group, who shared with the class his dairy roots and how he chose to be a lobbyist in Washington D.C. on behalf of the agricultural industry. Additionally, the group toured five different Jersey dairies in Ohio, where they learned more about robotic milking systems, on-farming processing, strategies for genotyping, agritourism and a hands-on Linear Type Appraisal and JerseyTag workshop.
The youth group also visited Select Sires, Inc., learning about A.I. career opportunities and were able to watch a bull parade featuring four Jersey bulls in the active lineup. As a memento in history, a class photo was taken with the River Valley CeCe Chrome-ET, the Jersey sire with the most units sold in Select’s history.
Other learning opportunities included a tour of Pearl Valley Cheese, with the owners, Chuck and Sue Ellis sharing the rich history of their cheese plant and the need for high quality solids milk to the class. Also, an international presentation by Jersey breeders from Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Jersey Isle and South Africa through videos illustrated the geography, philosophies, and demographics of the Jersey cow to the group.
Take Aways
One class seven participant, Madelynn Hoffman from Manheim, Pa., states, “This program has helped me become more open-minded about my career choices and is going to make me reconsider some options as I move forward to the college level.”
According to Gabby Rockwell, a participant from Scenery Hill, Pa., said everything during the week was incredibly valuable to her. “The diversity of what we experienced was great. From visiting Albrights Jerseys LLC and seeing nine robots working, to Woodruffs and Young’s Jersey Dairy, where they milk smaller numbers of cows – it showed me that everyone does things differently but is very successful in what they do.”
Further east, Jack Zina from Hadley, Mass., said his biggest takeaway from the week was learning more about the impacts of genetics and nutrition to the milking herd to impact milk values more quickly. “Taking that back home to our farm and milk bottling program will help continue to produce the highest quality milk,” he says.
In two years the eighth class of Jersey Academy will take place and applications will be available in September 2022.
