So, my family owns a pretty large farm. We have 17 chicken houses, eight pig houses, and I show
cattle, so I've been raised around animals and agriculture all of my life. I guess that's what
got my interest in the animal science industry. So, I plan on using my education here to help
further our farm. I have a farm, and before I actually introduced cattle to my farm, I wanted to
educate myself in terms of how to take care of the animals. My family has a beef cattle farm,
and we raised beef cattle, and I just wanted to extend my knowledge about the cattle and about
the nutrition. I've had a hobby farm where we raise horses and train horses and have cattle
for the last about 30 years, but as I retired this year, I wanted something, you know, to expand on
and actually become more profitable. I enjoy the Animal Science program because we get to
go on field trips. We have like really real life visuals, so we get to see everything
in real life version, and then we get on our field trips. We get to go to different,
you know, we've been to farms. We've been to research facilities. We've been to several
different places, and we've got to help out in different areas of the animal science
field. The field trip is very interesting in terms of getting a better hands-on experience
on how to uh take care of the animals, not only take care of the animals make sure
you learn about the vaccination programs. Yeah, I've been able to pick up a lot of
things within the class that I ve been able to take back and apply to the farm and how we
actually operate and kind of streamline and make a lot of adjustments to make it more profitable,
healthier animals, better environment, number of changes. I'm in this program, and it's tuition
free in the College & Career Promise program. I would recommend this program to both high school
students because of the free opportunity it is but also to a lot of people that are out there in the
community that are just getting into farming like I am as retired and looking for something new to
do or just that want to improve their knowledge of what they've been doing all their life.
Hi everyone. My name is James Quick. I am the lead Agriculture Science instructor here at Surry
Community College, and we are in our third year of our diploma and certificate approved Applied
Animal science Program, so I want to begin with giving you a little bit of information about our
courses. We use a lot of animal models in our classrooms including Peggy, so I'm going to start
with Peggy, the pig, first. She is often used for anatomy and also locating internal organs
such as her large intestine. Okay, we have just about everything that's included in a real pig
in Peggy. So, these models are very anatomically correct, and the students can use them to become
very familiar with the organs and their functions for every species of livestock animal that we
review. So that's it for Peggy. Next, we're going to move to her friend Teresa. So just like Peggy,
Teresa is very anatomically correct, and we use this animal model to review the reproductive
organs of our gilts or sows. So, as you can see in this model, we have ovaries. We even have a
functional cervix here, so again very anatomically correct, and so the students are able to practice
artificially inseminating, which is a very common practice used in swine production.
And at the end, we hope will result in a little piglet, and we can call him Wilbur for the day.
So, this is Cocoa, our most popular animal model. All the students love Cocoa because they can get
a little more interactive with her. So same with our pig model, she is very anatomically correct,
and we use this model again to review the reproductive organs and to simulate
artificial insemination. And, so the students really like this part that you can actually
palpate Cocoa, and you could feel the cervix. Oh, wait before you feel the cervix, oh there's poop,
okay, which is very again anatomically correct. So, the students are able to palpate Cocoa,
locate her cervix, and then direct an insemination rod through her reproductive tract and simulate
the act of artificial inseminating. And then again our goal is to end up with an embryo.
This is a very beginning stage of an embryo, so a lot smaller than Wilbur over there, but again,
same concept different species. This is our hen model Nugget. They actually named her Nugget,
and that's okay with me. Again, we are using her to review her anatomy, so that we are familiar
when we're processing chickens. But the main thing I want you to notice from this, is this egg,
because the next equipment that I'm going to review may be the coolest yet.
Okay, so picking up from where we left off with Nugget. She should, at the end of the day,
produce an egg. So as a part of one of my courses, I allow students to actually incubate
eggs. So we get donated eggs, and we incubate them for a month and then the eggs hatch out
in this hatcher down here and then the students are responsible for taking care of the chicks that
hatch from those eggs and we keep them in this corral here. So, you can imagine how interesting
class is for those few weeks while we got little chicks sitting in class. Sometimes students take
the chicks and put them on their shoulder while they're taking notes. I don't mind it,
all makes it for you know, a more enjoyable experience. I hope you enjoy this brief
overview of the Applied Animal Science program, but before we go, I want to give the rundown
of a few of the classes that we have. We actually offer - Animal Science, Animal Feeds and Nutrition
and Intro to Animal Care in the fall semester. In the spring semester, we have all our production
courses. That's including Swine, Poultry and Beef including a Health Management class. And
all of our classes are transferable to North Carolina A&T through a two plus two program. So,
if you come here complete your diploma, you could actually transfer to North Carolina A&T Greensboro
and finish out a bachelor's degree in three years, which I think is a great opportunity. And also not
to mention there's no prerequisites for my class, so you could join me and Cocoa spring semester
or fall semester. We'll take you anytime, and I promise I'll try to keep her on her best behavior.
So yes, I hope to see you soon, if you're interested which I know you are, you can find
all my information on surry.edu or you can contact Student Services. Hope to see you soon.