 Thanks for tuning in for this 4-H virtual field trip here at the Blackbell Substation here in Marin, Junction, Alabama and Dallas County. Today we're going to go check out some of the facilities, the equipment, and we're even privileged to see some of the procedures done by some of the grad students and professors from Auburn University. Come on, let's check it out. This is the Kelley Baker Auditorium that houses offices of the station director and staff. It's also used for various extension workshops, employee health screenings, and polling location. And last but not least, the Blackbell Research and Extension Center's residents, they call them. Changing gears, the station was established in 1930 and focused on restoring soil fertility to aid in past development. Let's go check in on the Extension staff and students as they collect data from their test plots. My name is Russell Carroll and we're coming to you today from the Blackbell Research and Extension Center in Marion, Junction, Alabama. And today what we're working on is our Novel Indifight Fescue Variety Trial here at the station as you can see behind me. We have our Longini, our porous harvester, out getting our samples for the year. So this is a statewide project where we look at different varieties of Novel Indifight Fescue and collect yield data on an annual basis so that we can provide information to Alabama producers throughout the state and especially here in the Blackbell region to give them knowledge and information to make decisions on on what variety of Novel Indifight Fescue is going to be the best for this area and the best for their operation. This is again an annual project that we do. We harvest this once a year with our crew here at the station. We've got a really great group out here today. It's really pretty weather. So if you're interested in obtaining this information be sure to visit the Alabama Co-operative Extension website aces.edu. Hope y'all enjoy and we thank you for joining us today. So there's a couple different varieties out here that we're comparing for yield growth today and so we're sampling the varieties and then we'll take them and get a whole plot weight and then we'll take and get a grab sample from that, stick them in an oven, dry them down and run some more nutritive value tests on them after that. Thanks Russell in Madison. I sure am interested in seeing what you guys find. There's another activity taking place at the Carolina facility. The BBREC also has projects including grazing studies as well as animal breeding experiments. Numerous crossbreeding studies at the station have provided valuable information to the beef industry. Let's check in with Dr. Dillon and get a better understanding on exactly what is going to take place today. This project we're working today we're going to look at how different the most stressful time during calf's life is during the weaning phase when we take it from each other but they can still see each other across the fence line. We're doing a nose flap which is an implement that goes in the nose it allows the cows and calves to be together but doesn't let the calf actually get milk from the cow where you separate the cows and the calves and then immediately take the calves to a different location. Obviously we figured this is probably the most stressful because the cows and the calves imagine what you were separated from your parents without any warning though. We're going to take this from here and take the sugar and supplement diet. This also is just a look at how the different diet system is affected by both the weaning. Thanks for tuning in for this 4-H virtual field trip. For more information about Alabama 4-H contact your local cooperative extension office look us up on facebook or at acs.edu under the topic Alabama 4-H.