Checking out the Chickens: On-Farm Employment SAE Visit

One of the main things that sets agricultural education apart from other education fields is our three-circle model of classroom & laboratory instruction, leadership development through the FFA, and our Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAE's). I believe that SAE's can be the easiest or hardest part of the model to implement, and that difference all relies in how you (as the agricultural educator) can package the opportunity for your students to develop real-life, hands-on work experience in the field of agriculture outside of the typical 8am-3pm (insert whatever hours your school operates) school day.

Many of my students have a Supervised Agricultural Experience, the majority being Entrepreneurship or Placement. Here at Tri-Valley we conduct almost all of our official SAE visits over the summer, especially those of our students who have entrepreneurship projects as many of them exhibit at the County Fair over the summer. Since I'm new to the community we decided to go check out some of our students' SAE's, starting with one of my students who has an on-farm placement.


Meet Nathan - Nathan is a junior in several of my ag. classes and also our Chapter Treasurer. One of my favorites in the classroom (don't worry there are several), he is always ready for a good time and seems happiest when working in the shop with the other boys. His main employment is with the Zimmerman's on a poultry and beef production farm, where he has many daily tasks but the biggest responsibility is the daily culling of the chicken flocks in the four chicken houses.

Now I will begin by saying that before this visit I knew very little about poultry production. I was just starting to teach my poultry science class and so I was just starting to learn about the poultry industry and as I was to learn on this visit, the poultry industry plays a big part in my part of Schuylkill County. So my SAE visit first started with a driving tour of Pitman, one of the main towns around Hegins (where the school is located) and where Mrs. D and several of my students live and work. It was a beautiful February afternoon, cold but sunny, and a perfect day to spend driving through town learning the town landmarks and seeing where several of the farms are located.


There were no preparations to be made ahead of time other than scheduling the visit and remembering to bring jeans and boots to wear, and as we drove up a slight hill flanked by fruit trees we arrived at the Zimmerman's. After introducing me to Sam, Nathan's boss and one of the farm's owners, Nathan, Mrs. D and I loaded up into the golf cart as Nathan drove us to our first chicken house to begin his shift.

Now Nathan did forewarn me about what I would experience walking into the chicken house but nothing could prepare me for the immediate fogging of my glasses and overwhelming smell of ammonia as we entered the massive but tiny (and fluffy) flocks of over 2,000 chicks per house. Nathan's job was to walk through each of the chicken houses and collect any deceased chickens, and also cull any chickens that were not reaching the level of health and growth they should based on their age.


I was amazed both at how much Nathan could know about the birds' health by looking at them and also by Nathan's ability to explain everything he was doing and how everything operates to me. Nathan is usually one of my students who doesn't always want to talk and participate in class so it was a great experience for me to see him in his element explaining how he monitors the chickens' health when to me they all looked like a massive group of walking yellow fluff-balls.

Having to evaluate the program, it was clear that Nathan was learning skills along the way. He was not just picking up dead chickens as it might first appear. He was learning how to monitor the chickens' health via physical signs, how to selectively cull birds before issues could become worse or birds could use up many resources, and learning about how the business production works as a whole. His tasks changed based on the season and appeared that he continued to grow in responsibility.


His biggest recommendation for improvement was to improve his record keeping skills. He had been keeping his records in his hard-copy record-book. We suggested he move over to the online AET system so he could update it on his phone while he was at work, and getting him to switch over is a work in progress.

Overall, at Tri-Valley we "grade" their overall SAE program on their record-keeping skills and some students are better than others. We also grade it based on the interactions we have with students at their placements or with their entrepreneurship projects at Fair - can the students explain what they are doing and the reasoning behind it or are they just completing tasks, and it seems that most students are doing a good job at finding projects that work for them and also allow them to grow in some function.

Overall, I had a great first visit for the semester, and learned a lot about chickens and my student Nathan, and I'm looking forward to my next visit.