Program Goals The goal of our educational programs here at Vermont Tech is to integrate classroom instruction with the Vermont Tech Farm and other Agricultural Businesses. This enables our students to obtain both a technical and practical understanding of material, promotes interaction with the agricultural community and develops the communication skills of our students.

Program Model Our model is setting up “on farm” labs, here students evaluate business practices, interact with owners and employees, and either develop a professional consulting report for the business or do a power point presentation for class discussion.

Model Example Vermont Tech Students under the guidance of Dr. Blessing and Mr. Thygesen completed a comprehensive milk quality evaluation to improve farm profitability for a local organic dairy. This was achieved by evaluating milking procedures and the milking system, performing CMT tests on all quarters in the herd, culturing milk samples to determine mastitis causing organisms, analyzing herd records and then developing a strategy the producer can use to improve milk quality for increased profits.

NAIDC This teaching model prepared our students for the North American Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge. This is a comprehensive farm evaluation contest where our students competed against 20 - 4 year universities and 1 - 4 year college in April. Our Students placed 1 st in their division and joined Virginia Tech and Washington State University (who each won their respective divisions) as Platinum award winners for the contest.

Curriculum Classes where we have the ability to interact with producers are as follows; Nutrition, Reproduction and Genetics, Dairy Management I & II, Farm Buildings, Livestock Production, Large Animal Diseases, Agricultural Business Problem Solving & Evaluation (new for next year), Independent Study – Reproduction.

Cost We would like to develop a more comprehensive network of farms to work with. Currently we are limited in the number of farms we can visit by the cost of mileage and supplies needed for certain types of evaluations, i.e. milk culture plates. Our goal is to develop a strategy to overcome this.

Outreach Given the location of Vermont Tech and the facilities at our disposal we see a tremendous opportunity to be a center of agricultural outreach combining our program and interaction with agricultural businesses and support organizations.

This is a reality, last year we partnered with 3 agribusinesses to bring in Dr. Andy Johnson and Dr. Jan Shearer to have a day long producer meeting. Dr. Johnson is widely regarded as the milk quality expert in the country and Dr. Shearer is acknowledged as a foot health expert. Dr. Shearer did a “hands on” practical presentation to producers, hoof trimmers and students at the Vermont Tech farm on foot health and corrective trimming, utilizing the farm classroom, cattle and hoof trimming chutes. They both combined in the afternoon to give a formal presentation of their respective disciplines.

We are also working as a pasture center for the Vermont Pasture Network in an ongoing capacity.

Areas of opportunity are Maple production, Apple Orchard, Diversified Crops and Livestock.

Available facilities are the Vermont Tech Farm, Red Schoolhouse, Old Dorm Lounge, Langevin House and the Conant Auditorium.

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