Bucks 4-H program helps youngsters learn from animals

Stephen Rush and his family moved to Doylestown roughly 10 years ago. After helping out on a local farm one day, he was told he'd be taking home three of its goats.

"I said, 'Really?' " Rush recalled.

His daughter, Olivia, then 8, had reached that decision after a day with the animals. She picked out a goat, but the farmer said the animal "comes with her sister and mother," Rush said.

Years later, Rush estimated his family had cared for more than 100 goats on their 10-acre property. And Olivia Rush, now 18, who has participated in the Bucks County 4-H program for nine years, just pocketed her fourth consecutive best-in-show for her goat at the Middletown Grange Fair on Thursday, a day before she left for Pennsylvania State University to study veterinary medicine.

The Bucks County 4-H shows off participants' animals each year at the fair, which also features farm equipment, contests, music, and rides. Organizers expected 60,000 visitors during the five-day event, which ends Sunday.

The 4-H program in Bucks has grown substantially over the years, drawing members from suburbs as well as rural areas. Penn State runs the program in counties throughout Pennsylvania through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Young participants care for animals and attend events and meetings throughout the year.

For Olivia Rush, who also has raised pigs, the 4-H program has offered her an early start to pursue her lifelong love of working with animals.

Goats require regular handling, cleaning, and twice-daily feedings, she said, and their living areas need cleaning as well. "They eat before we eat."

She also did her first veterinary work through 4-H, inoculating livestock.

"At first it was kind of scary because I'd never done it before," she said. "But it's pretty simple once you've been doing it a while."

Another participant at the fair, Megan DelBianco, 15, of Wrightstown, is also thinking about a career working with animals. She raises beef cattle through 4-H.

"I spend about six hours a day with them. They get baths twice a day. They're fed 20 pounds of grain," she said.

Rather than seeing the work as a chore, DelBianco said she had had experiences other people miss.

"I go to Council Rock High School North, and there are only about three other kids that have livestock," she said. "[Other kids] miss a lot of responsibility. They don't have a connection with an animal."

The 4-H program in Bucks also emphasizes community service. Carly Swirsding, 13, who was showing three hens and a turkey at the fair, said members of the poultry club in Bucks visited a nursing home, showing residents their hens.

"It was really nice to be there with them and let them know younger people are raising birds like they used to," she said. "Some of them told me stories about when they were on farms."

Robert Brown of Penn State, who coordinates the Bucks County program, is spending all week staffing competitions at the fair. He said the program "teaches them a work ethic that I think is waning."

The impact on participants' character is as important as the skills they learn, he said.

"Kids know, 'I have to take care of these animals, not some days, but every day,' " he said. "These young people, they don't quit."

Nicole Hardy, 15, of Bedminster, an eight-year veteran of the program who has raised four generations of dairy cows, said a core part of the experience was the responsibility of having living things dependent on her.

"Tomorrow we'll be here from around 5 a.m. until 11 p.m.," she said. "It's work ethic that you learn."