Our Impact
Making A Difference in Our County
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension is working hard for its constituents. The following are examples of Extension’s impact in the county over the past year.
4-H Youth Development
The 4-H program in Carroll County currently operates out of eleven different schools and one library located throughout the county and host over 60 in-school club meetings each month. We also provide a number of extracurricular activities such as our Junior Master Gardener program, a Horse Quiz Bowl/Horsing Around Club, Forestry judging, Cotton Bowl and Consumer judging, a Poultry Judging team, a monthly club meeting for the county, as well as a number of SAFE shooting activities. We currently interact with close to 1500 members of the Carroll County 4-H Club on a monthly basis. The Carroll County 4-H program is expanding, and its leaders are always looking for fresh approaches to better serve the requirements of the local community.
Our biggest impact this year was hosting a Livestock Camp in July. We had fifteen 4-Her’s attend and learn how to care for swine, cattle, and goats. They helped care for these animals daily for a week and learned how to feed them, muck pens, and the importance of clean water. They had classes on nutrition, animal behavior, and grooming. We had several volunteers from the community participate as leaders, teachers, and sponsors. By doing this we saw a huge interest in this side of 4-H and look forward to building more bridges in our community as we start the new 4-H year.
Family and Consumer Sciences
After the COVID-19 pandemic, many residents in Carroll County have become eager to be able to preserve their foods that they began growing during our times of quarantine. Carroll County residents are wanting to become more self-sustainable and less dependent on the traditional food system mechanisms. Likewise, Carroll County Extension is the only resource that residents have that teaches science-based food preservation methods. Carroll County's population is approximately 123,000 and has 32,490 high risk residents that they serve. High risk meaning, those populations more susceptible to foodborne illnesses, which are preschool aged children, the elderly, and those that have compromised immune systems. Currently Carroll County has approximately 17,000 preschool aged children, and 15,000 elderly adults. With this information, providing food safety practices is crucial
During the spring of 2023, Carroll County Extension began providing monthly food preservation classes that covered food safety practices, food preservation methods, and provided resources to research-based recipes. The Carroll County Extension office offers hands-on classes that allow the participants to safely learn how to preserve food through canning. From April to October, there was a total of 9 classes over the span of 7 months which provided a total of 27 hours of direct education. These classes were held in the evening and hosted throughout the week. The workshops cover canning which includes pickling, jams, jellies, and salsa. Additional workshops also included lessons on more complicated canning techniques such as pressure canning.
Agriculture and Natural Resources
The beef cattle industry is one of the top commodities in Carroll County with over 21,000 beef cows. The majority of the farmland can be found grazing cattle on pastures and producing hay for winter forage. The agriculture and natural resources agent is often contacted in regards to beef cattle questions in relation to pasture management, weed control, hay production, and cattle nutrition. Carroll County has consistently over 160 Georgia Cattlemen’s Association memberships and in 2022 a West Georgia Cattlewomen’s Chapter was started with meetings held in Carroll County.
Requests from clients for beef cattle programming has remained steady in Carroll as more new farmers start to raise beef cattle. Many of these requests come from cattlemen and women who have participated in the Cattlemen’s Association monthly meetings but are interested in attending more in-depth seminars to obtain more knowledge in topics such as nutrition, sire selections, reproduction, and pasture management. Cattle producers need reliable, research-based information to improve their management skills. By providing educational opportunities involving real-world techniques and applications in cattle production and forage management, Cooperative Extension programs in Carroll are reducing soil erosion by preventing overgrazing, improving a cattlemen’s ability to handle herd health needs due to the lack of large animals veterinarians in the area, and producing better quality cattle for their herds.
The agriculture and natural resources (ANR) agent in Carroll collaborated to offer beef cattle production programs through the UGA Master Cattlemen Program. The ANR Agent worked with UGA specialists to deliver classes on beef cattle topics such as nutrition, facilities, forages, economics, marketing, herd health, external parasites, reproduction, Beef Quality Assurance, sire selection, record keeping, and Georgia Cattlemen’s Association goals. By attending the program, it is intended for beef producers be more profitable and sustainable. Participants meet one night a week for nine weeks. Over the nine-week period, attendees learned and discussed current issues, meet industry experts, and networked with area producers.