TAMPA, Fla. — Over the next month, plenty of prize livestock will be displayed at the State Fair and Strawberry Festival. However, did you know many of the animals are raised by high school students right here in Tampa Bay?
About 40 livestock from Sickles High School alone will be entered into the festivities this year.
“We have almost 30 goats here, two cows, eight pigs, about 20 chickens,” said teacher Sierra Haight as she gave ABC Action News a tour of the farm located on campus.
Haight is in charge of the Future Farmers of America program at Sickles High School.
“Students take what they learn in the classroom, cause we learn animal science, health, diseases, and then they get to apply it to a real-world setting,” said Haight.
Many of these students own their own livestock and keep them right there on the farm behind the football field.
‘They make me so proud because I’ve seen the blood, sweat, and tears personally,” said Haight. “They take care of them, once, even twice a day, some come out three times a day.”
Some of these students, like Teryn Boutte and Bradlee Surber, will go all the way to the State Fair or Florida Strawberry Festival to showcase their skills at the highest level.
“So some of the biggest challenges are his attitude, that’s the biggest one, he’s quite sassy and mean, he does have a little bit of spunk, so we have to overcome that,” said Boutte about her 1,000-pound steer named Zeppelin.
“It's a whole year of preparing from the second I meet him to the second he goes to the fair. It's a lot of competition. There are some people who have been doing this for years, and this is my first year ever,” said Surber about her 1,000-pound steer named August. “I love to tell people, ‘Oh yea, I have a cow, I have goats,’ and their first reaction is, ‘You have a cow!?’”
Then there’s Abigail Liptrap and her pygmy goat named Grute.
“He’s very well-behaved, and he’s like a statue when he is there. He stays right in his position, and he does not move,” said Liptrap.
Things aren’t quite as smooth for Julian Merced and his pig, Archibald.
“All the animals have their own personality. I would definitely say that he has a lot of personality,” said Merced.
Merced said win or lose, competing against the best of the best is a great way to echo your voice across the community.
“With the FFA program, it's really given me a lot of experiences that I don’t think a lot of people get to do until they are into college or starting vet school,” said Merced.
From the grooming to the feeding to the training, these students say attention to detail is a must if you want to bring home a prize.
Then, when the fair and festival are all finished, it’s back to work at the farm, immediately preparing for next year.
