Ep. 7 - Stone County 4-H Takes Over the Podcast Artwork

Stone County Extension Saves the World

Stone County Extension Saves the World is an educational and humorous podcast hosted by Stone County Arkansas, County Extension Agents: Anna Harlan (Family and Consumer Science Agent) and Tyler Caston (Agriculture Agent). They work for the University of Arkansas Systems Division of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service. They cover a wide range of topics in the mission to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices.

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Stone County Extension Saves the World

Ep. 7 - Stone County 4-H Takes Over the Podcast

November 22, 2025 • U of A System Division of Agriculture • Season 1 • Episode 7

In this episode of Stone County Extension Saves the World records on location for the annual Stone County 4-H Food Drive. A few of the Stone County 4-H members take over the podcast to talk about different topics they are interested in. They talk a little bit about horses, leadership, and some of the kids share their experiences working cattle .

This is Stone County Extension Saves the World. I'm Tyler Caston and I'm here today with several 4-Hers. We're doing a food drive out here at the Harp's Food Store in Mountain View. I'll let y'all introduce yourselves because...

Cameron Stoltz. Kyliegh Stoltez.

Madeline Sutterfield.

All right. What have y'all been up to? We're here with 4-H collecting food for the food drive. what do you like about 4-H? What's y'all's project? What do y'all like?

My biggest is getting out of school and learning new opportunities.

Getting out of school, learning new opportunities, yeah? What, do any of y'all, I think all of y'all are my horse kids, right? Y'all do horses?

Y'all been to any, doing any showing?

Not in last week.

Absolutely not.

Why not? What's going on?

Equine herpes disease or virus?

So they, what is it? They found EHV, a couple of horses have tested positive. Is it in Texas or where?

It's in every state besides New Jersey. And it was started in Waco, Texas.

I was looking up some of the symptoms and yeah, they said it could cause lameness. Like they'll sit down, yeah. If they're over 101.5.

They'll sit down like a dog.

It's kind of weird.

There's nothing you can do about it.

And nothing you can do about it, no vaccines, and it can be fatal.

There's a vaccine for one of the strands, but there's like a bunch of different other strands.

And for all we know, this could last several years or a couple of weeks.

So what do y'all know? How would y'all, what are they telling you to do?

So stay quarantined.

If you see other horses be very sanitized when you go back to yours.

Yeah, cleaning your equipment, practicing good biosecurity.

Don't give other people what your usual tacker brushes. It can be spread by brushes.

Yeah, one of y'all were telling me some lady, she didn't even take horses. What happened?

She went to the race where it started, didn't take horses or anything. But when she came back home, she spread it to her horses just from being there. I think so.

Yeah, so that's something they think about.

Yeah, one of her horses died.

Yeah, one of her horses, that's crazy. And what were y'all telling, tell folks how much these horses can cost.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Just depends the industry you're in, especially the cutting industry. It's very hot there. But like we were. Going through, it costs anywhere from 5 to $30,000 just on maintenance, feed, tack, and all that on grooming, just to keep the horse at your house.

Yeah, I mean, to build a barn.

Yeah, I'm not too into horses. I rode them when I was little, but I'm not into it nowadays. We've got one of our 4-Hers showing us cue cards in the background. We'll get him on here in a minute. So what do y'all, what do y'all participate in horse? What all opportunities are there for you in horse for say being in 4-H or FFA? Some of y'all are in both.

A lot of responsibility to it. And I mean, I would even say there's communication in it.

Communication with learning how to communicate with your horse and learning responsibilities. So just tell us, yeah, like if you were to want to own a horse, what all goes into it? The.

First process, I guess, would be buying it. You better get a good check because horses are like anything else. The more money you put in it, the better your horse. You can go buy a yearling horse from, I mean, you can buy them for $1,000. But a good one's going to be anywhere from 1,800 to 10 grand.

And what type of horses are these just like general riding horses or are you working with them?

Well, these are yearling horses and you're not papered horses. They're about 500 to 1000. And then as your paper horses go, they go higher. And the hotter your papers, the better you go.

What if I just, I'm a person, I just want to go out trail riding. Do y'all know what type of horse I'd want to look for? Like if I was going to take it and say go hunting, just needed a horse to ride to the woods.

A broke pasture pony.

Yeah, I would go with just probably some great horse.

I know several, I know a guy who's selling one. I mean, he wants 65 for it, but you can do anything you could want on him.

Yeah, so I could run him. What type of events do y'all do? Do y'all do any competitive events? I barrel race. You barrel race a little? One time, go tying.

Me personally, so it's Team Roping and Caffer.

Breakaway. Breakaway, that's cool. Have any of y'all won any events yet?

I won second place at Rand Rodeo. That's pretty good. That's about it.

I've been to some, qualified to some big races.

You qualified to go to some big races. When's the last time you barrel raced, Madeline?

I had a horse fall on me July 1st of 2024. And it took about four months to recover. And then not long into riding again, I realized something was still wrong with my foot. And I had surgery on my foot this year, June 5th. And now I have a plate, a screw, and two staples.

Sounds like it can be a little bit dangerous.

Hey, but we laugh about it now.

Laugh about it. Well, that's good. You can laugh.

You don't laugh in the situation. You laugh about it after, but definitely not when it's happening.

Like a laugh cry type situation.

Yeah. Sometimes you just gotta laugh or you will literally have a mental breakdown. Yeah.

Want to know why I'm kind of iffy about horses. When I was a kid, we'd go over to the rodeo arena at Shirley. And they had a, my uncle had a little pony and he'd lead us around.

Everybody goes, little pony. No, it's the little ones. You got to watch out. Well.

That little one, I was on him and he kind of let go of the lead rope and that thing took off with me. And I was like, He probably ran me around for like 10 minutes.

Like the people are like, you've got to be scared of the big ones more than the little ones. And the little ones are always 10 times meaner.

The big ones are gentle giants.

Most of the time.

You also got to remember who's messing with the little ones. It's mean kids.

Yeah. I can see how they get annoyed.

So we had a little pony and every time we'd go to get on him, he'd just start bucking.

Yeah. How do you break him out of that? Lunge on.

Lunge him. I thought you said punch him.

Sometimes you have to do that too.

Slayton's brother's got or Slayton's brother got stepped on an ear by a pony one time.

He got stepped on.

His ear, got stepped on his.

Ear, like just his ear or like the side of his head?

I think it was just his ear. We had little ponies and we were flanking them. and making our little bucking ponies.

Oh, and he got stepped on.

My little brother's pony ran him into the gooseneck of the trailer.

Slaton rode the one that we had, and he was the only one that could ride him without getting bucked off.

And then this little pony would lean up on his neck a little bit and just start bucking. Like, you could, like, and this thing would never take a bit. He would never do nothing. He's such a pain in the ****. He just had to ride him halter.

So you're not? talking us up to buying horses. We were going to talk about what we need to do to buy horses. I think we need to start over. No, we're good. People need to know that these critters are...

There's good with the bad.

There's dangerous and there's bad and good. Yeah, so, okay, we buy a horse. Say we spend $1,000, we buy a horse. What else would we expect to need to keep him? She didn't pass by.

It depends on what kind of $1000 horse we bought. If you bought a yearling, you'd have to wait a couple years to ride it. If you bought a sale-born horse ready to go, you may or may have one that'll buck you off.

Also, be prepared to spend a lot of time on any horse you get.

And freezing in the winter and sweating like crazy in the summer. There's a lot of pros and cons.

Pros and cons. So a lot of work to them.

Say you wanted to buy a horse, knew nothing about it. My, I guess I'd say find somebody that knows what they're doing. Find somebody that knows what they, or think they know what they're doing, but know what they're doing.

And study horses and get ready to spend a lot of money.

So horses are going to take money.

Horses every five weeks.

$100 shoes every five weeks. Yeah. So what's your feet? How much do y'all know how much y'all are spending on feet? What do y'all feed a day?

A bag of feet is $15. It's a bag of feet.

15 to $60. Okay. And so how much are we feeding a day?

Us. It depends on how much we're using it. Normally it's a coffee scoop a day.

If we're using them a lot, it's two scoops a day.

So one thing to know about horses is they like to have good high quality. It depends on what we're using them for. Like, you know, if you're just leaving them in the pasture ponies, leaving them out in the barn, they're not doing any work. They're, you know, what they maintain, you can feed them a little bit less. But thinking about if you're actively using those horses, like barrel racing or taking them out and riding them, They're going to need more nutrition, more feed. So it depends on what you're doing, but.

They deserve it too. They're going to work for you.

Or even like older horses or younger horses. Older horses are going to need more feed to keep their weight up and younger horses may not need as much.

And they may need different types of feed as they get older.

So what are some of the different types of feed that y'all usually give?

Our older horses just get rice bran and a little bit of corn.

Rice bran and a little bit of corn hay. Do you give them hay? Yeah.

To pick you for the other.

Our other horses, the older ones, they will not take any other hay besides alfalfa. They're spooled.

Your older horses won't take any other hay besides alfalfa.

We got a stud horse like that. Yeah. You throw out prettiest Bermuda Belle you've ever seen, and he would not eat it. He will starve before he eats it. You throw out alfalfa, and it's gone.

That's how our horses are.

That's how my older one is.

Okay, so we're feeding some sort of grain feed, some hay.

And with the feeding, everybody thinks, Oh, you got to feed vitamins and this, and this. It's really your hay quality that it boils down to. If you've got terrible hay, your horse ain't going to do better.

Yeah, and that's something we do at the extension office. We can send off a hay sample and you can see the quality of your hay, see what the crude protein is, what the digestible nutrients are. That's going to be their energy. You can see the, we look at fiber, I think, more in cattle, but it'll give you like a. Thank you. That will give you like a relative feed value for horses. And then if you can add on like any of those micronutrients if you wanted to know?

And kind of with the hay testing, like the better hay, the better results you're going to get out of it. And that all varies to the price as well.

So what you're telling me is horses, our horses are an investment.

So you can give a lot in them and you can also get a lot out of them.

Do you get a lot, y'all get a lot out of them?

Yeah. Whatever we're wanting to do that day, we throw the saddle on them and ask them or make them do it. And we don't have a problem. We take our horses every year out west and we rode anywhere from 15 to 30 miles a day.

You definitely want to have good, high quality feet for that.

They do it. Do they like it? No. But they just got a lot of heart and passion and it's just that bond you've got with them. And.

And also like what you give to them, you're also, they're going to want to give to you as well.

And you really, you want to get a good-minded horse.

If you've got a good-minded horse, you can do anything with it.

How do you know if they're good-minded? Are there any tricks that y'all would give to know if you're getting a good-minded horse?

Spending time with them. Yeah.

How gentle they are.

Riding them before you buy them.

Maybe a few times if you can.

Yeah, messing with them a little bit. Can you take, say, a horse that's kind of flighty and wants to bounce around, can you take him and get him trained to where he'd be good?

On his age too, a lot.

Yeah, if you spend time with him, you can, definitely.

I mean, yes, you can train him, but once they get over, I mean, like 8, they're hard to train. Because I mean, it'd be like, If you took it, say you took a kid for an example, and he went with you to work every day, time he turns 8, 9, he's going to be a good, honest, loyal, working kid. Kind of like 4-H kids though.

But if you took somebody who was 16 and he never had to do something in his life, it's going to be a little harder.

Yeah. Makes sense?

Well, my main horse I have, he's 21. We bought him when he was 17 and he was turned out like kind of neglected. He had a good life before, but just a few years of roughness. We took him and just a lot of love and compassion and he's the best horse I could ever have now.

We've even got one that we got out of a kill pen that's actually bred right now. We've fattened her up and she looks good. Looks good. She's pregnant.

So Cameron, tell us a little bit about the event we had this past week where we were at the ropes course.

We did the ropes course at Conway at the college and we had to do like communication and teamwork to try to get across the course.

So Madeline, tell us a little bit about your experience at the course.

It was a lot of fun. Definitely bonded with with other people in the group and learned a lot about everybody else.

What were some things you learned about working together on the ropes course? Like when you're up high?

Communication is a big factor in everything.

And working together.

And working together? Yeah. So what were some of the ways you communicated to each other working through that course?

Like we had to take the jug and try to get across the course without dropping it. So that made us really talk to each other.

There was nothing to hold on to.

Just places to put our feet. So we like were linked up together. Hopping each other across.

Hand in hand. Try not to panic.

Yeah. How far off the ground were you? At least 12 feet. She said 10, but it was higher than that.

It was way up there. Yeah, definitely. I mean, like, you knew you were going to fall, but you were also kind of scared about falling, like, because you were harnessed in. Like, you knew you were going to fall, but it was still, like, very stressful.

So was everybody about the same or was everybody a little different on how they felt going across the course?

Everyone was way different.

Yeah, everybody was very different.

So when you say that's probably pretty true in about all things you do is everyone this different. Yeah.

Like you just have to help each other out. Like you can't run off and leave everybody else. You had to stay together and help each other out.

Yes. So Madeline, she was less scared of the high. So typically I noticed that you really were kind of like the anchor for the group. You're in the middle, middleman.

Yeah, I kind of, I helped them all across.

And try not to drop our potato.

Yeah, I was kind of the keeper of the potato. I mean, I would.

Say that's probably pretty typical to leadership. The one who is the most able in this situation is probably going to carry the biggest load.

But y'all still had to pass it off. They wouldn't let one person have it the whole time.

And like, there was a lot of different challenges while going through, like you had to, or there was like different levels that were like less scary and some were like more scary. Like the one where it was like, The tire one where like you had to step on a specific part of the tire to where you did not like fall because it was like just like nose dive.

And your teammates were stepping on it too.

Yeah, and so it was wiggling and then the people at the beginning or when you were trying to go across, they would start shaking the thing and I'm like, stop shaking it. It was funny because they were like just trying to push it. They're like, Try to push you out of your comfort zone just to try to find like something you like better or like pushing you out of your comfort zone, I feel like.

So out of that, what are you going to take and use when you're in a leadership position?

Everybody needs help in different ways and you just got to meet people where they are, I think.

Yes, I agree. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, exactly. Cameron, what do you think you took out of that?

A lot of the communication things, it was really helpful.

Yeah, if you're not talking to each other, you didn't know the needs.

And teamwork like running off and like people would try to, or like I noticed on some of the other team, like they would try to like leave people behind a little bit. So we were trying really hard not to leave people behind.

And we wanted to stay together. Talk a little bit about going through our Get Real, Here's the Deal financial simulation that we had with youth leadership in October. And so would you girls tell us a little bit about what we were doing and what you learned in that experience?

We learned about budgeting and how finances work, basically.

Real life situations like rent and electronics and... vehicles. And it's a lot more than you realize, especially when you're thinking like when you're a kid and thinking about all that in the future is kind of crazy, but it's a little stressful. Yeah, it's a little stressful, but it's fun.

We learned how to manage it.

You were given scenarios. So what was y'all's family scenario?

Mine was, I was working, I think I was a dispatcher. And I had to pay child support.

I had, I think I was a baker, so I did not make much, much money at all. And then I had three kids and I had a husband. I know a lot of people were like single parents, so I was really happy that I wasn't. And your husband worked, right?

Like just having a certain amount of money and trying not to go in the negatives. Yeah. Cause like. In real life you get charged for going a penny under how much you have, $30 penny.

Anything in the future you want to try to maybe do different or think more about going forward after that simulation?

Hopefully I make a lot more money. Just watching costs of things that aren't necessities.

Yeah, like you don't have to have the newest phone or the best phone plan or anything like that. Or like I noticed like a lot of things were like, it's like special childcare. Like, I know you want a good one, but you don't want to have to have $5,000 childcare.

Or sometimes it might be less expensive to have a spouse stay at home and keep the children during that time maybe.

Yeah. Like, because sometimes you make more or they make more. Like you could stay home with one of them.

Even for a few years until they could go to school.

I don't think anybody's kids in those scenarios could go to school yet.

No. I think I had one kid that went to school. But when you had school, then you had to go to the after-school activities and those are more money.

What about some of the banking careers that you learned when we went around and they told us a little bit about what they do and what the bank has?

I know we went and visited with one of the loan officers and then the bank tellers. The tellers were really cool and they were just like teaching us how to like go through that.

I think it's cool how there was one girl that started straight out of high school. Yeah, that was really- And she already had a really good job there.

Like she just worked her way up right out of high school.

Well, I'm Kylie.

I'm Slate McCarty.

Cattle working. 13.

We're just kind of roaming around the subject of owning cattle, maybe sharing some crazy stories that have happened.

One time I was working cows, and we was doing where we was putting them in pens and sorting them, and we had one of these mean heifers, and they tried to jump the fence. And one time, me and this friend or buddy, we was working it, and that cow came and ran after us, and it tried to jump over the fence with us.

Yeah, we have one like that. Dad normally sells those kind, but he did in that one, because that's always been our, like, leap cow. Like, it starts, it goes in the fence first. It goes in the pen first, and...

It kind of gets out of hand sometimes, cattle working. Oh, hey, this is going great. And then one of them starts running at you and it's like, what am I to do now? I mean, yeah. You always have like one of those trouble cows that you're always... There's always that one cow. You'll feed them, it'll chase the truck to the gate. You'll have to jump out and shut the gate as fast as you can. You've always got that one that won't cooperate how you want it to. Yeah. That's just really one of the few things about cattle working that really is not your best benefit. Yeah.

We had one of these big heifers and she jumped the fence and tore down the whole panel of the fence when we was working them. And it like bent it all the way down. And we had to bend it back up, but she kept trying to jump it and then she got in the chute and jumped up and had her head stuck. And it was kind of a big problem. Yeah. You don't have laser power.

You'll get them in the chute and you'll be, it'll be growing great. You'll have them in the chute. You'll have them neck all locked up and everything and then they'll just sit down. Yeah. It's the most annoying thing.

We had a stir do that. It was pretty big and it got stuck in there and it died. It broke its leg. It did. Yeah.

That's troubles. You're always gonna have your troubles. Yeah. Work in a chute because you'll get them, they'll be running. and you'll try to shut the chute on them and you'll pull their shoulders out of place.

And even Slayton's dad came and helped us, but I mean, it was too late.

You couldn't really do much. And for cows, they're kind of difficult to work, but you also got to know what you're doing too. Yeah. Slayton, let's talk about what cattle you have.

We run Black Angus. Most of them are registered. We do have some commercial, but we try to keep them registered, you know, just We really only ever liked Black Angus and that's just kind of what we're sticking with and it's doing real good for us and it's kind of been great for however long we've been doing it.

What do y'all do? Do y'all just sell the cows or do you breed them and like have sell the calves?

We breed them and yeah, we just kind of mess around with them. It really just depends. We'll get our calves in and We do semen and stuff and we'll do embryos and we just bought 2 heifers. They're about 14-5 a piece. So we spent like 29 grand on cattle, on 2 heifers. And we're going to take them and we're going to put, and we're going to breed them and we're going to take the embryos out of them and we're just kind of going to kind of harvest the embryos out of them and just kind of.

I've also been hearing about how that cattle market's going down.

What type of cows do you have, Logan?

Well, we kind of just sold out on all our cows, and we're going to be doing yearlings, running yearlings, and we have Black Anguses, and my brother has other type. I forgot what they were, but...

Well, my dad knows yearlings too. He has...

Three lots, I think. Three or four.

Yeah. Don't you run Charlais, Kylie?

Some of them, yeah. And then we have Red and Bremer's.

What kind of feed do you run?

I really don't know. It's really just a mix of things.

Where do you get Charles?

Like corn and hay and all that.

Yeah, corn. We're just now starting to feed hay because we... just now started kind of running out of grass.

And it's been going good. We've been feeding about 3 bales to our cattle.

Yeah, that cold weather.

That cold weather kind of gets rid of your grass. And we've planted some, we've sowed some winter wheat. We've sowed some Bermuda grass and stuff. And it's been growing great. So Logan, have y'all been up to anything?

We've been trying to keep them on some foster feed with some corn, and then we have two types of feed where we're feeding them both type. So then they'll get all the proteins and all the stuff they need for them.

Kyle, what have y'all been feeding here lately?

I don't know, it's with herbs.

We feed hay, like we feed.

A bale like every two days just for some extra.

It's just now where we're starting to have to feed hay and you'll be going down the road and stuff and you'll be seeing like, wow, they're out of grass. I mean, like, why aren't they feeding hay? And some people like that, they just really don't know. They know what they're doing, but then they really just don't know what they need to feed at that moment sometimes. Some people, they just, they don't know. They'll be running out of grass and they'll only be feeding grain when they need to be feeding hay.

But they'll also, like, if they're feeding them, they may not feed them at the beginning of the winter for hay because they'll feed, start them on grains if they're yearling and stuff, but they'll feed hay on about a couple days later after it really gets into December. But if you own a lot of acreage and you have just a little grass, it can make up to a lot of grass.

Yeah, have any of y'all weaned yet? We've got some steers and some heifers that are looking really good. We're just kind of bulking them up and taking good care of them. Kylie, you got anything like that?

Yeah, we've weaned, I think it was last Wednesday, Wednesday before that, we weaned some off the cows. they're in the lot, in the lot and go to the house. Just we, but the other day we had some sick ones, but then we just ran them all in the shooting tractor camp and gave them traps and stuff.

Logan, you got anything? Do you, have y'all weaned yet or anything?

Yeah, we weaned a long, time ago and, We're planning to sell them out in December or so. And starting, we're going to start buying cows back and stuff. And I'm planning to start buying cows too.

Any of y'all raising some bulls or something maybe? I know we've got a few. We're only going to keep about, we're going to keep one of them. We're going to sell the rest, but any of y'all got any bulls in or anything?

No, I got no bulls. I'm planning to buy a bull and some cows and buy some land or borrow some land from mom and dad to make.

Kylie, you got anything on that?

Any bulls? I don't have any bulls. Me and Cameron have parted on some heifers that dad raised, but me and Cameron are. half and half on them. And I have a show calf one of the Kennan kids showed. Her name is Cherry. And I'm AI in her. Cameron's AI in her later on.

This is Logan Winkle.

Cameron starts.

Today we're going to be talking about working cows. Cameron wants to tell a story.

Yeah, but we can tell a story.

Well, work can tell you gotta really have to know what you're doing and what medicine you're gonna take, and like you're gonna have all the troubles where you left, you little ****. No, I didn't.