SAE Visit #2

For my second SAE visit, I had the chance to visit  Brittany Chason at her job at Bortnick’s Dairy. Brittany is a senior who has been active in FFA throughout all four years of high school and serves as the chapter secretary this year. She has a placement SAE and gets paid for her time milking cattle. The visit occurred at Bortnick’s farm in the parlor! The farm is a local dairy where they milk over a thousand cattle a day. They also have a bio-digester on the farm that I got to check out on my visit as well!

Before the visit we had to make preparations both with Brittany and her boss to make sure it was alright for us to visit. We made sure we had everything we needed and headed to the farm! Brittany works in the
second parlor on the farm which is the smaller of the two. She has to milk, make sure the cattle are healthy

and make sure the barn is clean!

For this SAE I think it is important to evaluate the student on their work, an evaluation from their boss and their record keeping. Brittany uses AET to keep track of her time, her activities and her income at Bortnick’s farm. This was an area where recommendations were being made. We talked to the student about the importance of keeping up to date with records and encouraged her to enter her work to AET more frequently. 

I was unsure about how placement SAE’s worked so getting to go along and observe on the visit was great. I think that placement SAE’s can be perfect for students who do not raise animals or maybe want to try something different!