Dairy Science Club

[PetPony]

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Has anyone here been in a Dairy Science Club? I know all of the other threads are always about pre-vet clubs, but this one is specifically about dairy cattle.

I will be an officer next semester, but it is not a very popular club. We are struggling to keep it going. Does anyone have any ideas on how to advertise? What are activities I could plan to get people interested?

I want to work with food animals and really like this club and would like for it to keep existing. I wanted to be secretary, but might end up being the vice president.

We have a dairy heifer show every spring, which is really popular, but there is not much else going on. I am willing to put time into it and am just looking for ideas from everybody.

Thank you!

 

[cowgirla]

Yes to the heifer show. We used to do two rounds to narrow it down to the "final two" and then had a mystery species as the deciding factor. (one year, students had to handle and show a chicken!)
Plus classes on grooming/show prep/handling with "an expert." Any other shows in the area you can watch?
Tours especially if you have different dairy setups local to you.
Anything hands on will get people in, even if they are only slightly interested - maybe hook up with the prevet club and learn injection sites and things like that. Or milking techniques.
Is there a dairy barn where you can set up a "calving watch" type of deal?

And if you really need something to bring people in, include cute dairy babies in same way, shape or form. Who can resist that?? And then you can go tour ice cream parlors and cheese factories and sample the finished products!

ETA: Our dairy club used to do AI lectures and wetlabs too

 

[PetPony]

Our dairy heifer show is huge and like a normal heifer show, with hundreds of people coming every year. But maybe we can make something smaller like it for just our club if people are interested.

I will see who I can find that is willing to take on our club to teach us about grooming etc. I was also thinking about talking to the new dairy production vet who will be coming to the vet school in the summer. Maybe he can do something with injections, vaccines, AI etc.

Calving watch would be awesome! Thanks a lot for that idea! I didn't even think of that.

And we could go to eat ice cream for one of the meetings instead of just sitting in a room and talking about things.

Thank you! Great ideas!

 

[equinerider26]

Some stuff our dairy club has done/plans to do:

-Tours of many dairies (Como is central to a lot of innovative dairies)
-Speakers from different aspects of the industry- a lot of times they come with connections to those handy internships and eventual jobs
-Grilled cheese/tomato soup fundraiser and milkshake fundraiser
-Host a milk-a-cow booth at our vet school's open house
-Work with a local elementary school, allowing a class to "adopt" a heifer calf, sending them updates with her growth and development throughout the year/semester
-Work with our university dairy to host a mini "dairy farm day" where elementary students can come explore the dairy, meet the calves, try milking, etc
-An udder dissection where the faculty sponsor (who also runs the dairy) got an udder from a culled cow and walked us through the entire gross anatomy
-We did a service event packaging food at the local food bank, though that's not generally something that is great at recruiting members 😛. But those of us that went had fun!

I love our dairy club

 

[PetPony]

Thank you! There are some great ideas and I'll see what I can do. I'm happy there are some other people in a dairy science club, because so many people seem to just focus on pre-vet club.