With a new funding source and a new water source, a new duo of Indian Lake High School/Ohio Hi-Point FFA students has partnered up for another successful poultry project on campus.
Seniors Meya Karbowiak and Justin Zimmerman are raising 52 turkeys in the FFA Barn on campus. Over the summer, water service was extended to the barn, making it much easier to take care of the birds.
Their baby turkeys arrived as “poults” in July. Since then, Karbowiak and Zimmerman have been feeding and watering, cleaning the pen and spreading new bedding for the rapidly growing birds.
Zimmerman says, "We learned right away that the turkeys were going to be more difficult than we thought, so we had to come up with strategies to keep them safe and healthy."
Karbowiak explained that they added fencing over the top of the pen to keep the turkeys from escaping and they had to remove a few of the more aggressive birds to a different enclosure.
"We learned that they like to attack each other. So that's something that we are working around a lot," Meya says.
For many years, the United Way of Logan County has supported this project.
However, this year, ILHS/OHP FFA Advisor and Ag Educator Kelsey King says the chapter applied for and received an Ohio FFA Foundation Chapter Success grant sponsored by Trillium Farms for $3,500. The grant money is used to purchase the poults and needed supplies.
These turkeys will remain in the barn for a few more weeks. Then they will be processed in early November. The partners plan to sell half of their turkeys ahead of Thanksgiving. The other half will be donated to a local food bank to feed area families over the holidays. They will have more information on how to purchase the homegrown turkeys later this fall.
Karbowiak and Zimmerman will use the experience and money earned through the project for their official FFA Supervised Agricultural Experience in an effort to obtain State FFA Degrees in the future.