Ohio State teaching farms struggle with, overcome COVID-19 challenges

Lindsey Okuley
Fri, 12 Mar 2021 00:12:38 +0000
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A double 8 herringbone parlor where 100 cows are milked twice a day by student workers and farm managers. Credit: Courtesy of Rebekah Meller

Rain or shine, snow or hail, Ohio State farm workers show up to care for the hundreds of animals at university farms. This commitment to the livestock didn’t stop when COVID-19 reached Ohio State.

From the start of the pandemic, farm managers and student workers saw the detrimental effects COVID-19 had on their facilities, Rebekah Meller, assistant manager at Waterman Dairy Farm, said. Meller said moving interactions from in person to virtual was just the tip of the iceberg. Farm managers and workers faced issues with feeding and selling livestock, keeping workers out of quarantine and managing COVID-19’s impact on learning.

Feeding and selling livestock

The loss of students presented an immediate challenge to daily operations of university farms, Michael Cressman, manager of the Columbus Poultry Facility, said. He said he experienced it as soon as classes moved online last March.

That week, he said his poultry production class was scheduled to slaughter their birds. Without students, he and a handful of volunteers had to slaughter and process nearly 200 birds in a few days.?

In addition to a shortage of hands, several farms had a shortage of food for their livestock. Meller said the dairy farm had no source of grain for five weeks due to issues with its typical provider, meaning they had no reliable source of food for their cattle for more than a month.

Similar feeding issues happened at the Don Scott Swine Facility, Steven Moeller, a professor and swine extension specialist in the Department of Animal Sciences, said. He said the farm additionally struggled to find producers to purchase its pigs.

“We had market delays that made us maintain pigs in the barn a little bit longer and that always creates a little bit of a challenge with space,” Moeller said.

Keeping workers

Despite taking COVID-19 health precautions, the coronavirus spread in many livestock facilities, Cressman said. He said both students and managers were forced out of work due to contracting the virus or being exposed to it.

In some cases, entire teams of workers had to quarantine due to exposure on the job, Cressman said. When he tested positive for COVID-19, Cressman said graduate students and faculty volunteers had to step in to manage the farm when all employees were required to quarantine.

“It was a bit of a stressful 10 days,” Cressman said. “It kind of sucks to have to ask somebody else to do your job.”

Mae Harper, a second-year in animal sciences and student worker at Waterman Dairy Farm, said she had to quarantine four times due to COVID-19 exposure. She said these quarantine periods were straining on her daily schedule and mental health.

“Being away from work was definitely stressful, and it was kind of emotional knowing that I was putting all that stress on everybody else,” Harper said.

With many employees out, student employees able to work on farms saw spikes in their working hours, Meller said. When farm managers were out, student workers were tasked with both their jobs and the manager’s.

“[Students] don’t have all the background; they don’t have all the answers to address what a manager would be able to address on a day in, day out basis,” Moeller said.

Impacts on learning

When classes moved online last spring, Moeller said it was a challenge for courses requiring hands-on, interactive lessons, especially when students typically were tasked with handling livestock and practicing care procedures.

Meller said university and state COVID-19 guidelines presented their own challenges to farm operations. In many cases, she said maintaining physical distancing was difficult in some smaller facilities, such as the Columbus Poultry Facility.

“It’s a small facility, so we’re struggling with maintaining social distance in the barn while teaching,” Cressman said.

When limited in-person classes resumed in the fall, Moeller said classes that normally had 60 students were reduced to no more than 20 in order to maintain physical distancing on the farm and the buses that transported students there.?

He said it was especially difficult to perform first-hand demonstrations while maintaining enough distance between students. Spreading students out, Moeller said, meant it was difficult for him to monitor how they handled animals.

“To my knowledge, we didn’t have a transfer of COVID by having students engaged on the farm,” Moeller said.

Despite the challenges, Moeller and Cressman said getting students back on the farms to interact with peers, professors and livestock was worth the extra work.

“It’s almost like there’s a little bit more appreciation because people are getting so little interaction in their class, in the classrooms, and in clubs and co-curriculars,” Cressman said. “I would say there’s an energy and a camaraderie in people [on the farms].”