Week One with Extension by Cheyenne Van Echo

Hey everyone, my name is Cheyenne Van Echo and I am very excited to be one of the 2023 Workforce Development Extension Interns! I live on my family’s farm in Rocky Ridge, Maryland. We primarily raise meat goats with a few dairy goats, pigs, poultry and horses. Growing up in Frederick County 4-H introduced me to University of Maryland Extension. I remember exploring the Extension website as a junior 4-Her curious about what exactly Extension did.

This curiosity followed me throughout my 4-H career and into my college experience as I eagerly applied to this internship after hearing about it from a fellow UMD student who interend last year. I am currently majoring in Animal Science in College Park and plan on graduating next spring. As a student at UMD I have been exposed to numerous career opportunities, but Extension has always been at the back of my mind. I hope that this internship will give me an in-depth understanding of what a career in Extension might look like and allow me to experience the daily life of a state specialist and county agent to see if I can truly picture myself in this field.

So far the experience has been nothing short of interesting and I can happily say I believe this will be a very fun summer! We started out our week with a tour of the Western Maryland Research and Education Center and the Washington County Extension Office. My fellow intern, Emily Stamper, and I got the opportunity to meet two of our mentors Jeff Semler and Amanda Grev (Sarah Potts is our third mentor) as well as other staff at both locations.

We drove out to the pasture area where they are conducting their pasture management studies. After the tour we jumped right into work collecting forage samples, setting up more temporary fencing and mowing one of the fields.



Wednesday we had our first weekly connection meeting with the other interns across the state. This was a great chance to meet other interns and discuss logistics of the internship. After this zoom meeting, I met Amanda and Emily at a park and ride in Frederick and we carpooled to the USDA Plant Distribution Center in Beltsville. There we got a quick tour of their facilities and observed the new technology they are using and how they have their current experiments set up.

We then traveled to Kent County to have dinner with a few other Extension specialists before heading to a pasture walk at Goose Hill Farm, a 78 acre horse farm neighboring a large organic dairy farm. This educational event was very informative and I was very pleased to see so many producers attend and ask questions about pasture management!



My week was cut short as my mom and I traveled to Tennessee Thursday-Sunday. When I came back Monday we had another weekly connection meeting and then went out to the field to work with the sheep and cattle. We used a different shoot system for each species. On the sheep we recorded their weight, body condition score (BCS), famacha score and took a fecal sample. I felt body condition scores after Susan Shnoden scored them and observed her interpreting famacha. In the future I would like to get famacha certified so this was a great opportunity to watch an expert and try my hand at scoring them. I also got to take a few fecal samples! On the cattle we also recorded weight, BCS and Amanda collected fecal samples.

I am very excited to learn more about Extension and learn about the career from my mentors!