The Kentucky 4-H Program Agriculture Initiative is to “create awareness of the impact of agriculture on daily life and develop marketable skills for the future”.  Fleming County, KY has deep agriculture roots ingrained in the community from businesses to classroom education.  The Fleming County 4-H Livestock Program has set the course for an all-encompassing program, by providing youth various opportunities to learn about everything from hay, feed, and animal identification to daily skills such as public speaking and organizational skills.

Over the last three years, the Fleming County 4-H Program has endeavored to develop the 4-H Animal Science Program outside the realm of a regular 4-H Livestock Club.  By securing two new 4-H Certified Livestock Volunteers, totaling our leader number at three for the county, the program was able to begin offering new and exciting opportunities for our members such as 4-H Livestock Skillathon and 4-H Livestock Judging teams respectively.  These new 4-H Animal Science opportunities have served as an agriculture outlet for many new members that are not your cookie cutter 4-H Livestock Club members that exhibit livestock thus bringing in many new members to our county 4-H program.

The 4-H Livestock Club has been a long-standing program in the community and has seen different generations of the local agricultural community thrive as members, volunteers, and eventually sponsors and supporters.  Through this program Fleming County 4-Her’s are able to learn about how to exhibit and finish an animal for the livestock market.  The Fleming County 4-H & FFA Annual Show and Sale allows youth to learn more about the ins and outs of the livestock market and pricing.  

The 4-H Livestock Skillathon team is a newer addition to the Fleming County 4-H Program that has provided an agriculture outlet for youth that do not have an opportunity or the means to exhibit livestock.  These youth learn in-depth about feeds and seed identification, hay identification, meat cuts, breed and animal part identification.   This all-encompassing animal science program has taken off with growing from seven members in its first year to more than fifteen competing at the local level.  The 4-H Skillathon Team hosts the only competition outside of the Kentucky 4-H State contest.  This provides over 100 youth from across the state (11 different counties in 2019) to get extra practice and prepare for the State 4-H Contest held annually in Bowling Green, KY.

A new 4-H Livestock Judging team coach re-invigorated an existing program, and got our members excited to learn and compete. The Fleming County 4-H Livestock Judging team took several field trips to practice judging live classes, and took extensive class sessions on breed and part id.  The team spent a lot of time learning how to organize and give their reasons orally.  The organization of the group had the older members helping to teach younger members, strengthening their team bond and assisting with information retention.

The 4-H Animal Science program growth would be non-existent if it were not for the hard work and dedication of the 4-H Livestock Volunteer team.  By dividing the 4-H Livestock program in to three equal parts, the leaders are able to manage their section and assist each other when necessary and/or available.  This makes the program more manageable for the type of program they would like to see Fleming County 4-H have.  Through leader initiative, Fleming County 4-Hers have not only learned how to make decisions and defend their decisions through public speaking but also have a more well-rounded 4-H Animal Science education.  One Livestock Leader's take on the 4-H animal science program is " teaching kids to develop decision making skills and teaching them to defend that decision.  Kids are learning to analyze a situation, make a decision and communicate why they did it. These are skills that are valuable as an adult in any situation."