Wildlife Wednesday Video Series

Allen County is very diverse in terrain, from flat bottoms to rolling pastures and woodlands there is an abundant amount of wildlife living throughout the landscape. According to the 2017 agriculture census, 21% of Allen County’s 168,697 farm acres is considered to be woodlands. With this large amount of woodlands, wildlife habitat and the banks of the 10,100 acre Barren River Lake present in the county, it’s a no brainer to have wildlife programming readily available for stakeholders. 

In response to the large acreage of woodlands and wildlife habitat that Allen County has to offer, a very successful wildlife habitat video series “Wildlife Wednesdays” was planned and executed by the Allen County Extension Agent for Agriculture and Natural Resources. This video series was videoed and published every Wednesday for five weeks in the months of August and September. In these five videos the topics discussed included: selecting wildlife food plot seed, wildlife food plot herbicides, creating wildlife cover and bedding, enhancing wildlife habitat and how to read a soil test for fertilizer recommendations. With frequent questions on general wildlife topics this video series was a success and with the videos being published on streaming sites such as, YouTube and published on social media sites this information is readily available for stakeholders in Allen County and also individuals all across the country streaming the World Wide Web.

A total of 414 and counting, stakeholders have watched this video series. Getting youth involved is always a plus as well. A high school agriculture teacher from Cumberland County discovered these videos via social media and used them to teach a portion of his classes which included 96 high school students. His comment was “I saw these videos and I thought they were very educational so I decided to send the videos to my students, where they then received a quiz to take over the videos as part of their grade”. In general this video series was very successful and educational. There are plans in the works for more wildlife videos and educational meetings for the future as part of the already existing “Wildlife Habitat Improvement Program” created by the Allen County Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension Agent.