4-H beef club meets twice

    The United Beef Club held its second meeting on Wednesday, May 23 at Kevin Gemmell’s house.
    First, president Jared McQuaker led us in the 4-H pledge. Then a club vote took place and Mitchell became our new secretary.
    Jared then asked each club member to share the heart girth measurement of their calf. Bud noticed the heart girth chart was scaled about 100-200 pounds too high.
    Next, Bud gave us a booklet on “Tips for Finishing a Market Steer,” and explained how and when to finish our steers.
    He also reminded us that there were about 90 more days until the Emo Fair, so if our steer is less than 1,000 pounds, we should slowly increase the feed.
    As for a heifer, they usually are lighter.
    Bud also explained that we should give a fair amount of feed to our steers now because as the temperature increases, cattle eat less.
    After that, he passed a covered pail full of feed around for each member to guess the weight. Kevin Gemmell guessed the correct weight of 18 pounds.
    Our leader, Cindy, then divided our club into four groups to play the game “Scatagories.”
    In this game, we had to write as many words as possible that related to a given subject, such as “beef cattle,” and began with the rolled letter, which was selected using a die.
    After the game, it was decided our next meeting would be held Wednesday, June 6 at the Westovers.
• • •
    The United Beef Club held its third meeting  Wednesday, June 6, which was hosted by James and Cassidy Westover.
    First, Jared led us in the 4-H pledge. Then he read out the roll call, which was “When was your project calf born?”
    Next, Bud handed out a booklet entitled “Selecting and Raising Heifers.” Our club read facts about the weight heifers should be depending on the breed.
    We also learned abbreviations like BW (birth weight), WW (weaning weight), and CE (calving ease), as well as about winter nutrition levels.
    After that, Bud handed out another booklet called “Selection of Tools for the Industry.” He read out roll call—“Name one object that is classified by its size, grade, or quality.”
    We read and talked about Canadian Beef Sire Evaluation Program and frame scores, evaluated two bulls, and discussed the pros and cons of each bull.
    Next, Bud informed us that the roll call for the next meeting was to frame score our project calf.
    Then Cindy played a game that was somewhat like “Jeopardy.” She gave every member a slip of paper with a word on it that was related to 4-H and everyone tried to give the definition of the word.
    After we played a few rounds, Cindy said the next meeting would be the “Fun Day” and that a date would be decided later.