Do you have a school barn?

[katie_k]

i was just wondering who on here has or had a school barn when they were in high school that was on the grounds for ffa members and ag classes to use to raise animals and teach and learn. can you tell me more about them and what they have to offer. im trying to get my school to support building one. picstures of ideal barns and equipment would be awsome! thanks for all the help!  pictures are reallly desired. 

 

[CPL]

... I wish! There is a school not far from ours that has a barn just behind the High School with turn-out lots and everything for the kids' projects. To me that would be awesome.

 

[PaFFA Proud]

My schools ag dept wants to put one in...they have the land but the dang school supports their losing band and atheletics to use it as a PRACTICE field which they never loose. Our FFA brings home tons of state and national awards and donates a load of money to scolarships and community projects

 

[showqueen95]

My school has a ag barn. I never inside of it but it has a fenced  out lot u can turn ur animals into.  A lot kids use cause they live in town its great. i really push for one too. <rock>

 

[fordkindagirl]

My school district does! Well we have 3. Our district is one of the richer districts and they put a lot of money into our ag stuff. Each barn has 20 steer pens, 180 lamb/goat/hog pens, 2 wash racks (steer one &  lamb/goat/hog one) 4 feed rooms with cabinets, misting system, automatic waterers,  a squeeze chute, steer scale, 2 hog/lamb/goat/hog scales, 4 pastures, 2 runs, place where you dump shavings/manure (they take it away with a front loader), automatic front gates (with a code), and it's all concrete. Each barn cost about 3 mil to build.

Also- they provide wheelbarrows, manure forks, shovels, brooms, etc. And there are 14 security cameras in each barn.
I'll post pictures tomorrow.

 

[Okotoks]

Who knew!
Great idea, never heard of anything like this before the college level!

 

[Rocky Hill Simmental]

High schools do that? I've never heard of such a thing. It sounds like a good thing though!

 

[DLD]

It's pretty common here in Oklahoma.  I'd say that most schools here with an ag program have some sort of facility available for students to keep their show projects.  Don't know of many on the scale fordkindagirl describes, but some are very nice - several I know of have cool rooms for the students use. 

 

[fed_champions]

We had a school barn built my sophmore year. Its a 100 by 200 freestanding structure with 20, 40' by 20' pens. a 20' alley in the middle, a wash rack, a feed room, and a clip room. Turn out pens in the back, and all the chutes needed. we also had a 28' by 8' alluminum trailer that belongs to the school. All the parents and kids from the ffa chapter built the pens and did all thhe metal work inside, it was a huge group project. Before that, i kept my calves in an old barn on one of our leased properties, it wasn't near as nice as the new school barn was though, even though we had a cool room there.

 

[cowgirl864]

we have a school barn, its a free standing pole barn that we use panels to change configerations, we also own two trailers, a enclosed supply trailer, generator, fifty acres of pasture & cut all our own hay we are pretty well self contained. i believe we have the best set up in the state!

 

[BCCC]

We have a 60x80 barn, with a 20 foot lean to. We aren't allowed to put pens inside for any animals. You're lucky is there is one run open for show calves, as the ffa advisor uses all the rest, along with all the big pens and pasture for his cattle. All the hogs stay outside, and every year, the ffa hogs that stay at the farm are some of the worse at the county fair. So long story short, we have a barn....and it's worthless.

 

[kobo_ranch]

We don't but would be nice for the town kids that don't live in the country.  Also really good idea for the urban city kids.  A fellow steer planet young lady on here that I have became very close to lives in San Antonio and think they have one.  She loves agriculture and if not for that she would have never been able to experience it.  I think if they can spend tons on sports they can on agriculture for the ones who want to learn it.

 

[SKF]

My daughters high school has an Ag barn that kids can keep their project animals at but there's so many rules that very few use it. My daughter wanted to keep her pig there but it was not worth it.

 

[CM Cattle]

Our county has recentally built a new high school, and along with it we were given 80 akers to our ffa. So gar we have got a grant to build a fence all around the farm, and for a lot of new equipment. Were working on getting a grant to build a grant in the upcoming year. We have talked about building a place to have less fortunate members who have no place to keep a project animal keep it on the farm. This is a big step up from last years Ag dept. We went from having a run down shop and little tools and equipment to having a farm and all new stuff.

 

[LopezShowCattle]

my high school's ag dept has 3 barn one for breeding sheep and goats another one that is attached to the sheep and goat barn in cattle barn and then the show barn for pigs, sheep, goats, and turkeys
and 5 pastures for the steers and the breeding sheep and goats and also swine pens that is currently used for goats  and the fair equipment cargo box

 

[katie_k]

im still looking for any pictures

 

[Bradenh]

ford kina girl u should definatly post pics. yalls barn is state of the art and ive heard alot about it. ours is just a shed with some hog and steer pens that looks like a dump. even though i never ever go in it

 

[firesweepranch]

I taught high school ag for 9 years before I became a college teacher, and 7 of those years were in California. MOST schools have a farm. It is a must when you have large populations with little to no property to house SAE's on. Of my 7 years, I was at two different schools. One had 9 acres and the other had 5. Both had top quality hog barns on concrete, a lamb barn and pens for steers. The first school had a facility that was over 30 years old, but well kept. It was the smaller one, so I would not allow breeding animals (not enough room). In my second school, we had an awesome setup; the FFA owned 10 breeding ewes (all past champions purchased by a local supporter who farmed for Dole so had lots of money to help) and 4 to 5 breeding sows (same story). I AI'd the pigs to the top sires, and our FFA was just about unbeatable. We would rent a ram for the sheep from a local show lamb breeder, so our lambs were pretty good also. The chapter sold the pigs/lambs to FFA members first at a discount rate (and the student that took care of the animal got pick of the litter for pigs for free, and pick of the flock for the lambs for free), then sold the leftovers to the 4-H club that we allowed to share our farm. It was a really great set up. 95% of my students WOULD NOT have been able to have an animal SAE without our high school farm, and the students took ownership of taking care of it so it was nice. Yes, there were a lot of rules (feed by such and such time in the morning and such and such time in the evening, students must care for their own projects - not the parents, farm clean up days, showmanship practice weekly, weigh in weekly,clean your pen daily, etc.) but the rules were in place to keep everyone honest and on track. You would not believe how many PARENTS would feed the animals on weekends WITHOUT the child there! A big NO NO in my book! I put a stop to that real quick 
I think the biggest shock I had when I moved to Missouri was finding out that schools DID NOT have farms 

 

[fordkindagirl]

Sorry yall, been meaning to post pictures but the cameras acting up! I will try another and hopefully will get some posted tomorrow evening.