Lewis County 4-H SMQA
On Tuesday, March 26, 27 youth participated in the Show Me Quality Assurance Certification at Highland High School. SMQA is a collaborative effort between The University of Missouri Extension, Missouri 4-H and FFA to ensure that members enrolled in food animal projects (including sheep, beef, dairy cattle, swine, meat and dairy goats, rabbits, and poultry) are trained in livestock management practices and handling the use of animal health products.
This years event was hosted by University of Missouri Extension staff, Brenda Schreck- Field Specialist in Livestock and Kaley Bozarth- Youth Program Associate with the help of local livestock volunteers. Completing this program benefits both the food and livestock industries, by reducing management-based incidents that could ruin consumer confidence. Youth visited stations on biosecurity, animal identification, feed labels, medication withdrawal times, proper injection locations, record keeping, carcass quality and carcass value.
At the animal identification table, youth were shown various livestock tags and taggers and proper ways of identifying animals and the importance of this practice. At the injection table, youth gave injections to “bananimals” which meant they were taught how to give subcutaneous (SQ) injections and intramuscular (IM) to a banana. They discussed using the correct size needle for certain medications, how to read a syringe, and proper disposal of needles.
