If you have participated in 4-H then you already know the amount of time and effort it takes to complete a successful project. Waking up with the sunrise, measuring and feeding two times a day, exercising, making sure your animal remains healthy, and the researching you do to become fully educated on that animal can be quite exhausting for a child.

As a parent, it can be twice as exhausting. Waking them up to feed, reminding them on correctly measuring food, administering required vaccinations, researching to find out why they aren’t eating or what a weird skin patch is, reminding them to exercise the animal, showing them how to work with the animal to get them show ready, buying feed, buying hay, finding and buying medications, buying other needed supplies, shearing, hauling the animals, and then on top of all that is the record books and keeping records of everything.

It’s literally exhausting just typing it. Not sure how it gets done each year, but it does. This year was my son’s fourth and my oldest daughters second year. All together the projects we participate in are: archery, horses, rabbits, pigs, and sheep. For months these kids work their little tails off. Sacrificing most of their summer vacation.

That hard work tends to pay off when they sell their animal at auction during fair week, when the generous kind people around our rural area bid high. However, this year was not as good. Last year my son’s lamb sold for 12.00/lb and this year was only 5.50/lb. 4-H teaches them real life in that every year won’t be the same within agriculture.

With the lambs, the first three years went pretty routine for us. The lambs gained weight just when they needed to, made weight for auction, and were sold. This year proved to be different as we were not able to get them to gain weight. We changed feed, but by then it was too late. Two of the four started gaining and continued, but the other two couldn’t catch up.

When fair week arrived the two underweight did not make weight. My oldest daughter and nephew were left trying to find out how to sell them. By the end of fair week they were able to get them sold, however my daughter had to hold on to hers, as the buyer wanted the lamb to put a little more weight on.

This was our first year coming home with a market animal. If you ever have a underweight animal in 4-H, you can still sell it, but probably not as much as the auction would bring in. Make a sign and try to always be standing next your animal to be sure to answer questions if needed. Knowledge now gained for the future.

It can be extremely frustrating for a child, but an excellent example of how to deal with it in the future. 4-H is difficult at times, you don’t always win and you aren’t always the best. However, 4-H teaches a child how to care for and raise a quality product for the public to consume. It teaches leadership skills and how to successfully show a project. It educates and builds social skills while working in groups.

The memories these kids make while doing 4-H are some of the best memories they will ever make. The friendships they build will never be like any other friendship. Parents and leaders put endless amounts of time into helping these kids succeed because they know the knowledge they will walk away with to lead a productive life within society.