Franklin FFA Livestock Program Builds Skills, Confidence and Community
By Karl Wiggers
Louisiana Farm Bureau News
The show ring is packed with students putting their best foot forward for showmanship. When Jesse Daigle steps onto the dirt, he has his game face on.
The Franklin High School junior thrives in the competitive atmosphere of the Louisiana State Livestock Show. But for Daigle, the experience is about more than ribbons and rankings. It’s also about friendship, progress and seeing the results of months of hard work.
“They're like your friends, they're like your buddies at the time, and when you come to the show, you get to see like where you stand, how much progress you made and its just a good checkpoint,” Daigle said.
While the show itself is exciting, Daigle says the moment in the ring represents countless hours spent caring for and preparing his animal.
“I think about, like, how much work you put into it,” he said. “And like, I see myself putting hours and hours of work every day after school and I get to come to these shows, and I get to show it off in a way. I get to come and I get to show up and say ‘hey, look at all this work I put into this.’”
Daigle is part of the Franklin FFA program, where agriculture teacher and FFA advisor Nick Adams has spent nearly a decade building a successful swine program.
Adams says the program’s growth would not be possible without strong support from the local community and livestock industry partners.
“We have breeders who have helped us out throughout the years giving us pigs, giving us discounts to help us out,” Adams said. “Obviously we're a school system that we try to provide everything to our students to really at no cost for them. Most of our students are minorities who don’t have the extra family income to go ahead and spend thousands of dollars on an animal or travel here or there. So we really try to fundraise a lot.”
One of the program’s longtime supporters is Logan Hebert, owner of Hebert Livestock. He has worked with the Franklin FFA program for years and helped supply pigs when the program was first getting started.
“He was looking for some pigs and I was in Illinois in a hot spot for being able to find pigs,” Hebert said. “And so I brought a trailer-load down to start everything and from there, its just grown tremendously.”
Adams credits Hebert and others in the livestock community with helping guide both the program and its students.
“Logan's one of those people who knows what he's doing and he wants to be invested in our kids,” Adams said.
Through the experience of raising and showing livestock, Adams says students develop skills that go far beyond the barn.
“The project of them showing pigs has just kind of translated into them being so responsible and just attention to detail,” Hebert said. “You know, good humans, but even more than good humans, hard workers.”
Daigle is already putting those lessons to work. He now has a part-time job working at Hebert’s barn, gaining even more experience with livestock.
For Daigle, the impact of the program has extended far beyond learning how to care for and show pigs.
“Being involved in this has changed my life and the trajectory of it,” Daigle said. “I've found my future career that I'd love to pursue in this. I've found myself in a way. I've found a family and a support system and I've found many memories to make and reflect upon. This whole program has made my high school years so much more enjoyable than going into high school I thought they would be.”
