Adolescent Adventures (by Mason, 8th grade student)

 

img_5696Since there was no school on Monday because of Columbus Day, the first day of the week was on Tuesday instead. Everybody got to school and got off to a good start. All of the chores were done and everybody got to work. An exciting part of today, however, was meeting the baby goats that had been born just this past weekend. I cannot exaggerate how much our classroom loves baby goats. Who doesn’t? They’re cute, furry, and always fun to play with.

img_5694That same day, another animal came into our classroom environment: a lamb that had also been born that weekend. It belonged to Miss Edel’s daughter, Marissa, and its mother wasn’t producing enough milk for the lamb. It was cute, but it was sick, and multiple times throughout the week it looked and appeared that it was going to die, although it never did. Sometime we had him in a small cage where it could rest; other times we just let him roam free inside the classroom, which was fun, even though we constantly asked each other, “Where’s the lamb?” and had to clean up his pee and poop every five minutes. He remained in the classroom for the remainder of the week, and was cared for by the class.

img_5702During the community work day, chicken wire was wrapped around the duck tractor and moved out into the field next to the play yard, and for the moment, it serves as a temporary house for the broiler chickens. They seem to be much happier in there, compared to when they were in the trailer (which they all extremely disliked).

After taking care of the broilers, one student went to look at the goats and saw that one goat was giving birth to twins. More baby goats! When they heard the news, the rest of the students came running over excited, and when I say excited, I mean that one or two of them literally screamed out loud when they heard the news. As I said earlier, we love baby goats.

The 4-H meeting for the livestock club was also held after the community work. All officers were elected. The vice president election was a tie- we had to flip a coin to see who would become the new vice president. It was very intense…

Overall, I think we can all agree that it was a good week. I certainly enjoyed it, and my favorite parts were, without a doubt, the baby goats and the lamb.

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