Steamboat Pilot & Today

Texas Longhorn cattle originally escaped from Spanish herds hundreds of years ago.

"People medicine" such as Kaopectate and Mylanta also help relieve bloated lambs.

Cattle brands are read from left to right, top to bottom or from the outside in.

These are just a few things Hayden fourth-graders learned while visiting Jim and Jo Stanko's Steamboat Springs ranch recently for Ranch Days, a program designed to get children in touch with Routt County's agricultural heritage.

"It's a humongous effort," said Jo Stanko, a member of Routt County CattleWomen, which has helped organize the program for about 10 years. "A lot of people work hard to make it beneficial for the kids and educational."

Ranchers welcome third- and fourth-graders from Hayden, Steamboat Springs and Yampa at ranches throughout the county, teaching them everything from how ranchers keep track of their cattle to why cowboys wear chaps.

CattleWomen and others in the community also brush-up children's knowledge of frontier culture, showing them how pioneers worked raw wool to make felt liners for boots and constructed buildings without power tools.

There was something for everybody to learn, even students such as Buck Earle, 10, who comes from a ranching family and said one of the best parts of the day at the Stanko ranch was identifying noxious weeds in a field with a Colorado Division of Wildlife officer.

Mostly though, Buck enjoyed "seeing the animals and just being here," he said.

Ranch Days is the "grand finale" to a required state history and industry curriculum which Amy Cosgrove teaches her Hayden fourth-graders.

"Any time you do something hands on, it's more meaningful," she said.

For children who come from ranching backgrounds and are familiar with much of what they learn, Ranch Days emphasizes the importance of their parents' industry, Cosgrove said.

Laurie Hallenbeck, who lives on a ranch south of Hayden, showed students common tools ranchers use to keep livestock healthy. With fewer children coming from farming and ranching backgrounds, the program is important in helping youngsters understand their food's origin, she said.

"That's why we're out there educating them ... kids see eggs and milk in the refrigerator and don't know where it comes from," Hallenbeck said.

As the students connected the cow in the pasture to the hamburger on the dinner table, they asked ranchers serious questions about how animals are slaughtered and if the animals feel pain.

Ranchers' use of ear tags to track animals' age and other information made 9-year-old Aspen Zabel wonder, "When you put the tags in their ears is it like having your ears pierced?"

Relating subjects to children's lifestyles helps get the importance of agriculture across to kids not familiar with farming and ranching, Jo Stanko said.

Ranch Days also emphasize that farming and ranching aren't the only jobs in agriculture. Jobs in various fields such as geology and chemical engineering also center around food production, she said.

"We feel that if we can get them to recognize that agriculture is a positive part of their life even if they live in a condo, that's pretty good for one day's work," Jo Stanko said.