Abstract
Abstract A day-long short course was developed to fill a need for extension programming targeted at producers between the ages of 18 and 40. Faculty from land grant institutions and allied industry personnel were invited to Rocking W Angus Farm in Jefferson, GA, to present and give demonstrations on five topics relevant to young cattlemen. A program evaluation was conducted to 1) Assess demographic characteristics of participants; 2) Evaluate the participant’s experience; 3) Understand the motivation of the participants to get involved in industry activities. The complete evaluation was distributed to course participants at the end of the day. Participants were 47.1% male (n = 16) and 52.9% female (n = 18) with an average age of 22.85 years (range 18–41). Participants were from 19 Georgia counties and 2 South Carolina counties. Twenty-five (74%) were full-time college students while the remainder (26%) represented 11 different professions. Twenty-five participants (75.8%) were current members of Georgia Cattlemen’s Association while 8 (24.2%) were non-members. Fourteen attendees (41%) did not own cattle, but had an interest in owning cattle in the future, and thirteen (38.2) owned cattle at the time of the course. The six (18%) remaining participants identified as interested consumers. A Likerttype scale (1 = “Strongly Disagree” to 5 = “Strongly Agree”) was used to evaluate the experience of short course attendees. The maximum mean from the Likerttype questions was 4.83 and the minimum mean was 3.96. The results suggest a need for more open and frequent communication with the target audience outside of the college student demographic. Also, expansion of communication to young cattlemen outside of North Georgia. The suggestion was made to develop a Young Cattlemen’s email listserv and to rotate the location of the short course each year.
Accepted Version
Published Version
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