Last week my co-worker, Shelia Stannard, and I attended the Sangamon County Ag Exploration Day to give seven twenty five minute presentation to eighty-nine kids ages K-7th grade. (You want to teach about birth control throw 89 screaming kids in a room together). We talked to the kids about  what cattle eat by making the now famous (well famous for kids in Sangamon county now that is) "cow chow" and cattle by-products by handing out "The Magic of the Moo" coloring book. And seriously what is better to a little kid than snacks and coloring? That is right nothing. Shelia started out the presentation by talking about the by-products and showing examples of each. We had a baseball, dog food, laundry detergent, crayons, deodorant, and more. We told students in the first group part of toothbrushes are made from parts from cattle and one student said he is never brushing his teeth again so we left that out of the next presentations and label that as a fail on our part but other than that the day went great. I followed Shelia's by-product knowledge by talking about what cattle eat. My idea was to show all of today's common feeds and have something that we eat represent it. I had cheerios represent corn, pretzels represent protein, coco puffs represent mineral, marshmallows represent water, and green food colored coconut to represent grass hay. Thanks to Shelia being an awesome cook and can create stuff like that. I first started by having an example of each cattle feed and asking the kids what it is and when they got it right I would follow by talking about the benefits of each feed. Then we made the "cow chow" by giving them each a feed scoop and got the feed out of the feed buckets as you can see in the photo. Okay they aren't real feed buckets and the feed scoop was a plastic cup but they are little kids lets be creative here. At the end of the day the information was well received and we got a lot of positive feedback from the people in charge and they told us they definitely want the IBA back next year as this year was the first time the IBA was in attendance. It feels great to have a positive impact on today's youth and to open the door for more opportunities for the IBA in the future.