What do we have here late in the year?

Yeah, there have been several things that have happened this year, from high path avian influenza and New World screw worm, just sort of new things sort of popping up all the time.

And we talked a little bit earlier about how it's now migration season, so fully anticipating seeing some of those HPAI cases, uh, a little bit of an uptick in areas where we're seeing those birds migrate and, and bringing that into, to new areas.

But also with New World screw worm and the introduction of that in the southern part of the United States earlier this summer, and now we have two, uh, borders that are open, bringing cattle across, uh, from Mexico into the stateside.

Uh, keeping a very watchful eye on how everyone is handling all of the biosecurity measures, both on the Mexico side of the border, but also what happens once they enter into the US as well.

Do you have any, you know, other precautionary measures, or what have we learned about managing that?

Yeah, the biggest, uh, way that, you know, the biggest biosecurity effort that, uh, I think could be the most helpful is just being able to separate, especially those that have backyard flocks, uh, being able to separate wildlife and wild birds from feeding and, and drinking areas so that they're not commingling and sharing and being exposed to those diseases that might be brought on by wild, uh, waterfowl.

So that is certainly an area that, uh, people can, can, uh, reduce some risk.

Tasha Bunting is director of commodities and food systems for the Illinois Farm Bureau, also a proud 4-H leader.

It is National 4-H Week, so we kicked this week off with a 4-H meeting for our 4-H club.

Uh, we happen to be leaders of the Tractor Wheels 4-H club in Livingston County.

So we had our October meeting just the other day and, uh, worked through some of the events that we'll be doing throughout the next year.

But as you mentioned, it's National 4-H Week, so kind of highlighting some of the activities and things that are happening, and one of them that is, uh, pretty easy for a lot of us in our part of the state anyway is turning our porches green, uh, putting out some green lights, and being able to showcase and support 4-H in that way.

And you see constant growth in your members and in your own children because they're a part, of course, of 4-H.

Oh, for sure.

There's so many lessons that 4-H can help teach from teamwork to public speaking, which is a big one at our house.