Dairy Cattle 4-H Project Area

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The 4-H Dairy Cattle project area consists of three project manuals. Each manual covers three years of activities.

Four 4-H Dairy Cattle Project Manuals from Shop4H

Cowabunga! (Dairy 1) explores breeds, selecting calves, body parts, desirable traits, packing a show box, grooming and showing a calf, and identifying stages of calving and care.
Mooving Ahead (Dairy 2) features judging, identifying, ethical decision-making, keeping animals healthy, parasites, behavior, housing, hay quality, milking, food safety and careers.
In Rising to the Top (Dairy 3) , you will practice body condition scoring, select through records, detect mastitis, balance a ration, detect pregnancy, deliver a calf, promote dairy products and explore career opportunities.

If a member completes the 9 years of project manuals, they can work with their county Extension professionals to determine their learning opportunities for their remaining 4-H years.

Scoresheets

Each year, 4-H members should complete 7 activities in the project manual as well as the planning pages at the beginning of the manual.

There are not separate documents with the scoresheets for beef cattle project series. Scoresheets can be located inside the Record Guides on page 2.

Record Guides

Youth who has selected a Dairy Cattle 4-H project typically are raising an animal as part of their project work. A project record guide is part of the animal science project experience. If you enroll with an animal, you will need to select the Breeding Livestock Record Guide (4-H Dairy Cattle) to accompany this project. Record guides are available in both a print and electronic format.

Paper Record Guides

Breeding Livestock Record Guides (ages based on Jan 1st of current 4-H year)

Supplemental Sheet for the Breeding Livestock Record Guides

For most species, the supplement records are lifetime production records, so the 4-H member updates these each year that an animal is a part of their project. Members will need to complete a supplement sheet for each animal included in their record guide. These supplement records will be available online only.

Dairy Cattle

Dairy Cow Record

Electronic Record Guides

Complete electronic record guides in 4-H ZSuite

Dairy-less Dairy Cattle Project

If you enroll in this project area without an animal, check with your local Extension professional for approval and guidelines.

Exhibit Ideas

Most youth in this project area will exhibit an animal at a livestock show.
Poster, Story, and/or Model on one of the following topics:

Dairy Cattle 1 - identifying breeds, selecting calves, anatomy, desirable traits, packing a show box, grooming and showing a calf, and identifying stages of calving and care.
Dairy Cattle 2 - judging, ethical decision-making, keeping animals healthy, parasites, behavior, housing, hay quality, milking, food safety and careers.
Dairy Cattle 3 - body condition scoring, mastitis detection, ration balancing, pregnancy detection, how to deliver a calf, dairy product promotion, and career opportunities.
Examples of Blue Ribbon Exhibits

How Do I Sign Up?

Screenshot of 4-H ZSuite enrollment page to select project

The first step is to create an enrollment in our ZSuite website.

Enroll in 4-H ZSuite

When you get to the CLUBS tab of the enrollment, you will want to ADD PROJECT.

For Dairy Cattle, you should search for:

RECORD GUIDE - BREEDING LIVESTOCK / DAIRY CATTLE YEAR 1 - COWABUNGA!
RECORD GUIDE - BREEDING LIVESTOCK / DAIRY CATTLE YEAR 4 - MOOVING AHEAD
RECORD GUIDE - BREEDING LIVESTOCK / DAIRY CATTLE YEAR 7 - RISING TO THE TOP

Project Videos

Coming soon!

Related Events & Camps

No events available at this time.

Animal Health & Quality Assurance (AH&QA)

Youth exhibitors required to complete the online quality assurance training must do so starting April 1st and no later than June 30th in order to exhibit at any fair, festival or show taking place the remainder of that calendar year in West Virginia.