FFA students across the country will celebrate National Ag Day on March 18.
This weekend, some RD Anderson Applied Technology Center students will back up that
recognition with some practice.
The Center’s FFA Swine Team will show their prize pigs at the Piedmont Interstate Fairgrounds in an event hosted by Spartanburg and Cherokee 4H at the Peach Country 4H Livestock Show. The event will include exhibits of market swine, beef cattle, rabbits, chickens, and dairy goats.
For the RD Anderson group, it’s all about the pigs. And the Swine Team has put in a ton of work to get ready. In the swine facility at the school, students use part of their day to make sure their animals are clean, comfortable, and fed. FFA president Riley Burdette said the’s delighted that the animals are on campus.
“It’s such an advantage,” she said. “I get here about 7:30 every morning and come down here and feed my pig, and make sure they’re good. I come down and clean my pen and do a mini-walk and brushing. Then after my first block I can come down again and notice if they’re not eating as they should, it’s stomach’s upset, it’s bloating. I’ve got that opportunity to come down an hour and a half after that feeding to make sure everything’s ok.”
“Everything” includes five pigs with five different exhibitors, all of them officers in the FFA
chapter. Burdette, Kasey Worley, and Olivia Tyner are at the school in the morning. Sam Craine arrives during the second block before his co-op assignment. Bradlee Smith is on campus in the afternoons.
“I feed three pigs in the morning, and he feeds all five in the afternoon,” Burdette explained.
The hands-on approach is something the team seems to enjoy.
"Most definitely,” Worley said. “I don’t like to just go to school and sit in the classroom. I like to be engaged in what I’m learning. joined the FFA in 10th grade, because ever since I was in seventh or eighth grade, I’d wanted to be in FFA. I helped them with their previous winter project. I’m just an animal person. I love animals. As soon as I started showing, I found out that it’s a lot more than just caring for an animal. It has a lot to do with time management. There was a lot of research that I put into this pig. A lot of time, a lot of love, a lot of resources. It’s taught me a lot.”
Craine, who has a background in showing cattle, said showing has taught him how to take constructive criticism and use it to improve.
“I just take different things from what the other judges have said, and it helps be become a better person and shower,” he said.