Episode 43: Getting to Know Your Hosts Part 2 with Dr. Colt W. Knight
Colt grew up in a coal mining family in West Virginia where they also operated a small family farm and show horse stable. During academic breaks and between schools, he worked in strip mines across the country. Colt earned his B.S. in Animal Science at the University of Kentucky, M.S. in Animal Science at Angelo State University, and his Ph.D. in Animal Science at the University of Arizona in 2006, 2012, and 2016, respectively. In the fall of 2016, he worked on a postdoc with Dr. Derek Bailey at New Mexico State University.
Since 2017, Colt has worked as an Associate Extension Professor for the University of Maine where he serves as the State Livestock Specialist. He teaches Introduction to Animal Science (AVS 145) and runs the Maine Grazing Behavior Lab. The core focus of the Grazing Behavior lab revolves around designing and manufacturing livestock tracking collars, engaging in applied grazing behavior research, and assisting other researchers with technology to interpret animal behavior.
Dr. Knight’s research is broadly focused on selecting animals uniquely adapted to landscapes and promoting sustainable agriculture. Colt is the current chair for the Society of Range Management Livestock Foraging Behavior Committee, as well as, the North East Region Chair for the National Association of County Agricultural Agent’s Teaching and Educational Technology Committee. He also serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Ecological Processes. Colt is actively engaged in outreach and has delivered over 150 seminars on livestock production since starting his career at the University of Maine.
Automated Transcript
Colt Knight: 00:31
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. We are your hosts, Dr. Colt Knight.
Glenda Pereira: 00:36
And Dr. Glenda Pereira. And today, we are going to be releasing a special episode where I get to interview Colt, instead of us having any special featured guests. So, Colt, are you ready for this?
Colt Knight: 00:52
Yeah. But first, I’d like to apologize that you have to listen to me speak for the majority of the podcast instead of letting the, interesting guests go.
Glenda Pereira: 01:00
Yeah. I think folks will really enjoy it. You have a voice for media. You have a podcasting voice. So I’m sure
Colt Knight: 01:07
Well, you know what’s really funny about that? I was going back and listening to some of our old episodes, and the viewers probably think I have a terrible voice because I have been just, like, horribly sick for a bunch of them. And I had a cold, so I was really struggling. They probably don’t think I’m a regular person when I’m talking in my normal
Glenda Pereira: 01:24
life. Robot?
Colt Knight: 01:25
Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: 01:28
So you’re an associate professor here at the University of Maine as well as our livestock specialist. So you have statewide responsibilities. You work, predominantly with all species that are not, a dairy production. Right? So that’s that’s part of my role is serving the dairy production species.
Glenda Pereira: 01:47
So you cover pigs, poultry, as well as beef, and
Colt Knight: 01:54
Small ruminants. I was
Glenda Pereira: 01:55
gonna say small ruminants.
Colt Knight: 01:56
Horses, yaks, ratites.
Glenda Pereira: 01:58
Everything in between.
Colt Knight: 01:59
Anything that’s not dairy, I usually get those questions.
Glenda Pereira: 02:03
Yeah. So, I think it’d be important to let folks know, how, you got to be in this role and maybe talk us through some of the expertise, in grad school and in your upbringing that sort of helped prepare you for the role you’re in today.
Colt Knight: 02:20
Well, I come from a third generation coal mining family in West Virginia. So my granddaddy, my daddy, and then I all worked in, strip mines in coal in the coal mining industry. So when I was in high school well, even growing up, my daddy always said, son, you need to go to school so you can work with your mind and not your hands like I did. And so I immediately ignored that advice. And so first thing out of high school, I went to work in a coal mine.
Colt Knight: 02:49
And my dad was the foreman there. So he, like, immediately put me to work scrapping iron and and scraping off, caked on mud that was like concrete on the big mining equipment. He did everything in his power to make it just a miserable experience for me. And, you know, about six months it took for that to, like, really kick in, and, I went to school at the University of Kentucky. You know, back then, I didn’t really know what college was about.
Colt Knight: 03:20
I thought you went to college to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a teacher.
Glenda Pereira: 03:24
Or a veterinarian.
Colt Knight: 03:25
And and so I was always good in school, and I liked animals, so everyone told me I was gonna be a veterinarian. I worked in a veterinary clinic in high school, and I realized quickly I don’t wanna be a veterinarian. But everyone told me I was gonna be a veterinarian, and they sent me to school to be a veterinarian. But when I was at the University of Kentucky, I was exposed, to the animal science program. And, I had this one really gregarious but tough animal science professor.
Colt Knight: 03:56
He was our reproduction professor, Dr. Lee Edgerton. And I was like, I wanna do what he does. And so I changed my career path to becoming a professor. But but growing up, we had a show horse stage wall and just a menagerie of animals, almost petting zoo esque. My mother went through phases where we had everything from coati mundis, chinchillas, pigs, horses, cow.
Colt Knight: 04:22
I mean, everything. One time she tried to get a black bear, and dad finally put his foot down. He’s like, no. We’re not getting a bear.
Glenda Pereira: 04:29
Yeah. Yeah. But it’s it’s funny you say that because now you are a black bear here at the University of Maine. So maybe there was some foreshadowing then. So, you you mentioned, Dr. Lee Edgerton.
Glenda Pereira: 04:45
And so, what was he a mentor of yours during your undergraduate program? And what were some of the experiences?
Colt Knight: 04:53
Dr. Edgerton was the first professor that I had that challenged you to be a better human and a better better student. So in his class, on his exams, spelling counted. The proper tense counted. So if it was a one point question that was fill in the blank and you misspelled it and used the wrong tense, you could get a minus three on a one point question.
Glenda Pereira: 05:19
Right.
Colt Knight: 05:20
And he held us up to those rigorous standards for oral presentations and whatnot. And, you know, some students really hated that. You know? Like, he’s a stickler. But looking back, your tough professors, the ones that challenged you, made you expand your mind, made you become better people just in general, I think they had the biggest impact.
Colt Knight: 05:41
I mean, another professor that I had was my beef professor and genetics professor, Dr. Fred Thrift, and he was super strict on everything. Like, you had when you turned in your weekly homework, you had to fold it in half a certain way, put your name in a certain spot, and, it was due at 8AM every morning. And so if you turned it in at 08:01, he’d put a dog ear on the corner. And he said, I don’t like to grade late work. So it was minus 75% every day you were late.
Colt Knight: 06:12
Yep. So if you were late so but it was the next day, it’d be 75% of the 25% you had left. So, I mean, it was worth almost nothing to turn it in late. And he was like, I don’t like to grade messy work. So if you scratched anything out or couldn’t read it very well, it was minus it was the same same deal.
Glenda Pereira: 06:29
Right. Same standards. Yeah.
Colt Knight: 06:30
And, you know, some people really hated that. But looking back, he’s building character. You know? He’s teaching you how to to go into the real world. And, I like to take that same approach with my students now about not taking late work.
Colt Knight: 06:46
No excuses. You know? This is your responsibility. You’re an adult. We expect you to act like that.
Colt Knight: 06:51
And and some of those students, I think it might be the first time that they’ve ever been asked to act like an adult.
Glenda Pereira: 06:57
Right.
Colt Knight: 06:58
So it can be a transition. But since I teach freshmen, it’s probably a good thing they get that earlier
Glenda Pereira: 07:04
than later. Yeah. Right. So you teach introduction to animal science here, at the University of Maine, and you cover in that class, a variety of different species. Right?
Glenda Pereira: 07:15
So I think I
Colt Knight: 07:16
go through all the main livestock species plus a little bit about dogs and cats.
Glenda Pereira: 07:20
Yeah. Yeah. So I think in both your, cooperative extension role as a livestock specialist and then teaching that class, you kind of have a nice overlap, of all the things that you discussed related to livestock management.
Colt Knight: 07:34
I think my experience with with livestock on the extension and and running farms and things really overlaps well with the teaching. And I think teaching really overlaps well with my extension work too because they both make me better at each. And teaching, you know, on a week to week basis really keeps me sharp and refreshes my memory.
Glenda Pereira: 07:57
Yep. Yeah. On your kind of back to basics and Yep. You know, basic nutrition, things that we sometimes overlook, care, infrastructure, all of that stuff. And so you went to University of Kentucky.
Glenda Pereira: 08:13
Where did you go from there?
Colt Knight: 08:14
So while I was at the University of Kentucky, my first semester, I learned that some universities have teaching farms, and, they let you live at the teaching farm if you work there for free. And I was like, well, this is way better than a dorm. Because when I went to school, dorms were like like dungeons or prisons built in the the fifties and sixties. Like, one window that didn’t open, center block walls, or just enough room to turn around. I’m pretty sure the beds had prison stamps on the bottom because they were surplus.
Colt Knight: 08:48
And
Glenda Pereira: 08:49
expensive.
Colt Knight: 08:49
Oh, yeah. And, I remember the dairy and the swine facility both had, positions open. And I went to the dairy first because my grandpa was a dairyman. And I was like, well, that’ll be be natural. But they had all four students living in one room with four beds.
Colt Knight: 09:10
It’s like, I don’t really like this. So I actually went to the swine unit where I lived in a closet for about the first two months until a room came open in a hurricane Andrew FEMA trailer.
Glenda Pereira: 09:21
Interesting.
Colt Knight: 09:22
And so I worked at the swine unit for the majority of the time I was an undergraduate. And then my last semester, I worked at a thoroughbred consignment, farm. So it was all high end. We had football players and stuff owned their horses. Yep.
Colt Knight: 09:38
They also had, a registered Angus beef herd there.
Glenda Pereira: 09:41
Yeah.
Colt Knight: 09:42
From there, I spent some time out west, and then I settled in a master’s program at, Angelo State in Texas. And I was the herdsman for that teaching farm for the I don’t know. Most of the grad students the grad students kinda ran that farm and did all the work. I got to move out to the ranch house there for a little while, and I kinda was checking the calves and and kinda doing that job. Really applied education there in Texas, which was really helpful for the rest of my career.
Glenda Pereira: 10:14
Yeah. And then, from there, you moved on,
Colt Knight: 10:18
University of Arizona.
Glenda Pereira: 10:20
Exactly. So you moved even farther west. And for folks who are listening right now, Colt did cover a podcast on what the beef industry is like in the Western Part Of The United States for those that are interested. So there’s a lot of good information in that episode, and it, of course, comes from some of your experience in your network out in air Arizona and the West the Western Part Of The US. Right?
Colt Knight: 10:43
Mhmm. Yeah. You know, the the Western production is completely different.
Glenda Pereira: 10:48
Right.
Colt Knight: 10:49
You know, and the biggest factor is rain and soil. You know? Whereas we have a plethora of rain and abundance of soil, if something happens to our forages here, we can recover on a year to year basis.
Glenda Pereira: 11:04
It’s
Colt Knight: 11:06
in the Western United States, you know, it
Glenda Pereira: 11:08
It’s been like that. Yeah.
Colt Knight: 11:10
It could it could kill production for the next five years because, generally speaking, the average year when we talk about the average year of rainfall, you always count the highest and lowest. You add them together and you average it. So you would think that 50% of your years are below average and 50% are above average. Right? That’s not actually true in the West.
Colt Knight: 11:32
Right. The majority of years are actually in a drought situation. Yeah. But when you have rain, it’s such a high number, it throws that average up higher. So you actually plan for drought be in your normal situation in the Western United States?
Colt Knight: 11:46
And and I think that’s something that a lot of producers here in the Eastern, especially Northeastern States, are realizing maybe we should plan for drought more often than
Glenda Pereira: 11:56
Right.
Colt Knight: 11:56
Than we’re taking into consideration now.
Glenda Pereira: 11:58
Yeah. Because we are getting these events or these, like, acute events where we have a lot of rain, or, you know, a lot of drought. Our summers have definitely changed quite a bit, in the last couple of years, at least, that I’ve, sort of seen. There’s just so much change, and you you kind of have to plan, for that ahead. So you’re right.
Glenda Pereira: 12:21
The the folks in the West have been already planning with drought in mind and irrigation. They irrigate a lot, but maybe here in the Northeast, that’s something for us to consider, doing in the future. So you went to Arizona, and then how did you make your way back up to Maine? Because you you took some stops along the way.
Colt Knight: 12:42
Yeah. I I did a post doc at New Mexico State University. So I stayed in school till they wouldn’t let me go anymore.
Glenda Pereira: 12:50
And you’re still here.
Colt Knight: 12:50
And I’m still here.
Glenda Pereira: 12:51
You’re still in academia.
Colt Knight: 12:53
You know, well, going to work in the coal mines right after high school, and then all throughout my undergraduate summer breaks, spring breaks, and things, I worked in coal mines too Yep. And and kinda paid my way through school that way. I remember one time my master’s adviser was introducing the graduate students to a a group of, stakeholders there in Texas. He was he was kinda bemoaning the graduate students complaining or or saying how hard it was, and then he said, except for Colt over here. You know?
Colt Knight: 13:27
He’s he realized if he doesn’t do good here, he’s goes back to the coal mine. So you never hear him
Glenda Pereira: 13:32
Complain. Complain or Yeah. Or worry
Colt Knight: 13:33
about things, and I always thought that was funny. But it’s kinda true because you get a perspective.
Glenda Pereira: 13:39
Right.
Colt Knight: 13:39
You know, I’m living the good life as a professor, and, I really appreciate my position and being able to work inside when it’s raining, but be able to go outside and work whenever I want to.
Glenda Pereira: 13:50
Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. And so, when you started here at the University of Maine in 2016. Is that correct?
Colt Knight: 13:58
I started January 2, 2017.
Glenda Pereira: 14:01
Oh, January, 2017. Yeah. So you obviously were hired to be the livestock specialist. And and and when you got here, you kind of saw some needs, within the the groups that you, work with, because you’re you’ve become a farmer today, or maybe you’ve always been, you know, part farmer or you’ve maybe not had your farm. You’ve always, you know, managed farms.
Glenda Pereira: 14:25
But today, you own and operate, your own farm, which really helps you apply some of the techniques or some of the things that farmers in the state of Maine and the Northeast are maybe struggling with or haven’t, you you know, have to adapt. And and you’re doing that on your farm to then demonstrate how they can do it as well.
Colt Knight: 14:45
Yeah. When I first got here, probably the first major hurdle that I saw was pasture production of poultry. There were a lot of famous YouTube stars and and folks writing books about raising, poultry out on pasture, and they were saying some things that didn’t make physiological sense. And and I would say, you know, I know from my my training in academia that what they’re saying can’t be true. But everyone wants to believe that it’s true, and so they do.
Colt Knight: 15:19
And so we actually did a study out on pasture with with five different breeds of pasture poultry and and raised a bunch of broilers and and gathered information. We were able to spell some of those myths and actually bring people honest to goodness real production numbers, how much water they drink, how much feed they eat, how much pasture they use, are they eating grass. And, you know, that was really successful. We published a paper, fact sheets, and then I started getting calls from all around the country, from newspapers, people that are writing or growing pasture poultry and asking me questions. And I was like, I’m not really a chicken specialist.
Colt Knight: 16:00
You know, my background is in in beef cattle nutrition. But because I did that study and I actually had some data and numbers for that, I got quite a bit of interest from that project. And for almost two years, I traveled the state and gave extension talks on grazing pasture poultry.
Glenda Pereira: 16:18
And remind me, this was probably right around the time when COVID,
Colt Knight: 16:22
This was before COVID.
Glenda Pereira: 16:23
Before COVID. Yeah. But then even after COVID and, to give some context, in the state of Maine here, we’ve seen a a huge increase in the number of people who have backyard, poultry or, you know, pat and and they’re looking to implement kind of not the state of the art facilities, but work with what they’ve got. So passionate poultry is a natural, management technique for these people who just want to, you know, have some poultry, apply, you know, some small limited fencing or, infrastructure. If you’re
Colt Knight: 16:55
able to put your marketing hat on, pasture poultry pencils out very well. The the premium that people put on pasture poultry is phenomenal. It’s sometimes five times greater than what you could see at the store. So you can buy an entire chicken at the store cooked for $5, or you can sell a pasture poultry carcass, you know, locally for $25.30, maybe $35. Yeah.
Colt Knight: 17:24
And when I did the math on that, it was about 10 to $14 in, production cost per bird. So that that’s quite a bit of margin. Right. Because we’re usually working on much smaller margins in the livestock business.
Glenda Pereira: 17:37
Yep. Yeah. And it’s
Colt Knight: 17:38
a short turnaround time. Six to eight weeks.
Glenda Pereira: 17:41
Yeah. Yeah. So you did this pasture poultry project with one of your grad students.
Colt Knight: 17:48
Actually, we did we did that study before we had the graduate student. And then, Maddie, my my previous graduate student, she actually liked that work that we were doing. She did an undergraduate pasture poultry project, and then she signed on. We found some money through the the Maine Poultry Association, and we we took her on as a master’s student to do some some pasture turkey work.
Glenda Pereira: 18:15
Mhmm. Yeah.
Colt Knight: 18:16
So it it snowballed into quite a bit of work and information for the producers of Maine. Yeah. Just doing that one little project Right. When I first got here.
Glenda Pereira: 18:26
Yeah. And you have a lot of resources, which we’ll share in the show notes, regarding, managing and raising pasture poultry. But talk to us about your farm. So Colt Knight I’m sorry, Knight Family Farm. Yep.
Glenda Pereira: 18:42
What what do you have there?
Colt Knight: 18:43
We’ve got a 14 acre registered Berkshire pig farm in Garland, Maine. And it spawned from our university research project as well. We had so much luck with the the Maine Pasture Poultry Project. We applied for another grant called the Maine Pasture Pig Program. And the idea was to bring quality genetics to Maine, gather data on how to raise pigs in a backyard or a pasture situation because the the swine industry is so vertically integrated.
Colt Knight: 19:21
There is no information on how to raise pigs in a small scale. Yep. You know, we went to the World Pork Expo this summer as part of a grant, And we were talking to folks, and someone asked me, how many pigs do you have? And I said, six. And he said, 6,000?
Colt Knight: 19:39
I was like, no. I’m
Glenda Pereira: 19:40
6,000 in Iowa, which is swine country. I mean We
Colt Knight: 19:45
were there as part of a small small swine production grant.
Glenda Pereira: 19:51
Right. Right.
Colt Knight: 19:52
And those big folks think anything less than a hundred thousand pigs is small. Right.
Glenda Pereira: 19:56
Right.
Colt Knight: 19:57
And and so I had to change the definition in the grant. I was like, I I don’t think you guys realize what small
Glenda Pereira: 20:02
really
Colt Knight: 20:03
really is. They put us in a different category, micro.
Glenda Pereira: 20:07
Yes.
Colt Knight: 20:08
Yep. But, anyway, we had some we had a disastrous first farrowing. Somehow, communications got crossed, and they overfed the sows. So the piglets were so big, they the sow couldn’t farrow them out on her own. We had to do c sections, and then the sows didn’t make it.
Colt Knight: 20:29
And then the the students here at the university had to bottle feed all those pigs. And there’s one little runty pig that wasn’t doing well. And I brought that one home for my wife to bottle feed, and she pulled through. And I told my wife we’re not keeping livestock as pets. She has to serve a purpose.
Colt Knight: 20:45
Yep. So we bred her and had the first litter of pigs. And they sold so quick. I was like, well, we should have some more pigs. Yep.
Colt Knight: 20:57
And then we kept some back. And, you know, I’ve never had any problem selling pigs. So we’ve gotten to the point now where, I need to build new facilities if we’re gonna get any bigger.
Glenda Pereira: 21:11
Right. Right. So, you you didn’t have the infrastructure originally on your farm to, raise even, you know, six pigs and then obviously all the litters that you have, may maybe two litters throughout the year. No. No.
Glenda Pereira: 21:25
No. So how did you kind of
Colt Knight: 21:27
anywhere from six to 12 litters a year now.
Glenda Pereira: 21:29
Yeah. Yes. I’m sorry. I meant per sow.
Colt Knight: 21:31
Yeah. Yeah. About two.
Glenda Pereira: 21:33
But about about two litters per sow per year. Yes. Sorry. But so what was the infrastructure like, and how did you adapt to what you have today? Because I think, what’s really unique about your role is that you do you you have that experience.
Glenda Pereira: 21:48
And then, you know, for farmers, profitability is everything, and then cost of production is everything. So when you, you you know, you wanna get pigs and it’s like, oh, you have to buy a $10,000 barn to, like, keep them in, that doesn’t pencil out because some for some of these people, this is, like, you know, not a not a hobby, but it’s it’s like something that they have time to do after work. You know, they they have two jobs, the farm job and then their other, nine to five or
Colt Knight: 22:16
or other job. Something that I always try to tell new farmers is you want to grow into your farm business, don’t go into a bunch of debt. Don’t try to start big. Yeah. It’s it’s you wanna go slowly so you expand as your business dictates, not not what you wanna do.
Colt Knight: 22:33
Right. Because everybody wants, like, oh, I wanna get 40 cows.
Glenda Pereira: 22:36
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Colt Knight: 22:36
Or or I want 50 pigs so that I can sell.
Glenda Pereira: 22:39
You need the market.
Colt Knight: 22:41
Yeah. And the the problem with that is is a new business, there’s gonna be all these little things that you weren’t prepared for.
Glenda Pereira: 22:47
Right.
Colt Knight: 22:49
And if you start small and you grow and you grow, you know, naturally instead of artificially, whenever anything comes up, you’ll be able to handle it. Plus, when you’re growing naturally, you have the client base to support you. Yep. Whereas a lot of folks think that farming is like a god given right. And so if you raise this many animals, then someone will be there to buy them.
Glenda Pereira: 23:15
Right. Right.
Colt Knight: 23:16
Which isn’t always the case. You know, there aren’t government subsidies for livestock production. You know, I get that question a lot, like, when I’m flying on an airplane and people ask what I do and everything. And they’re like, oh, those farmers get all those government subsidies. It must be nice.
Glenda Pereira: 23:32
Yeah. Yeah.
Colt Knight: 23:33
I’ve been listening to the politicians too much. We don’t get those subsidies.
Glenda Pereira: 23:37
Right. Right.
Colt Knight: 23:37
No one is paying us to raise livestock. It’s a real business Yep. With really tight margins.
Glenda Pereira: 23:43
Yep. Yeah. And so you’ve been able to expand because you’ve grown your market. So I think that’s really important. You know, finding that market what whatever that market is for you, find a niche market that you can grow in and then be profitable on.
Glenda Pereira: 23:58
And so, you modified some infrastructure. I think your your, sows and pigs your piglets are right now in, like, a modified greenhouse. You expanded this year. I think you’re expanding your, space for those pigs. So you’ve used them, as a way to clear some land.
Glenda Pereira: 24:16
Right?
Colt Knight: 24:17
Mhmm. Yeah. We we’ve cleared out, I don’t know, about three or four acres of alder, Russian olive, and and elm trees using our pigs. And so those pastures will then become more pig pasture so that we can rotate through. Pigs on pasture are very destructive, and they need a much longer rest time than than ruminant animals might because they’re not they do eat the forage as mature animals, but they’re basically destroying it, looking for fruits, roots, just instinctual behavior.
Colt Knight: 24:51
So it takes a year, sometimes two years, and a wet year for those pastures to recover. So I I really need more paddocks. And as we fence off these sections of woods, they’re actually creating their own Yeah. Own paddocks.
Glenda Pereira: 25:04
Yeah. No. That’s really exciting. And you’ve actually been able to also expand. You put put in some water lines, as well, and, you’ve been able to find some small grants sort of help you, increase, the number of animals that you’re able to have on your farm.
Glenda Pereira: 25:21
So a lot of the things that you, do in your extension role do overlap and and folks haven’t followed you online. You you do document a lot of this, on your,
Colt Knight: 25:32
I like to show the things that go wrong just as much as I do the things that go well. Because, listen, nothing goes smooth when you’re farming or or dealing with livestock. There’s always something that’s happening, and I thought folks might like to see see someone showing those things that go wrong so they could relate to it instead of just showing the the ideal situation. It’s like the folks on social media that only show their beach pictures Right. Their their five star dinners.
Colt Knight: 26:00
And it’s like, oh, man. They have such a great life. Yeah. And then they but they don’t show the other three hundred and sixty days where it’s it’s normal life and things are going wrong. So
Glenda Pereira: 26:11
Yeah. Absolutely. I think, you’re very really relatable, and I think your clients really appreciate that, because they know they can go to you. You have trouble you know, if they have a water question pipeline, whatever, you’ve gone through those steps. You’ve you you can help them troubleshoot, which a lot of the times is what they need is somebody to sort of help them, you know, find out how to move past, you know, installing a water line or whatever the other question it is.
Glenda Pereira: 26:35
But how to do that and how to save to, you know, these things can be really costly.
Colt Knight: 26:39
Well, one of the things that I’ve always I’ve always hated in extension is when a farmer comes to an extension agent and they have a problem, and their answer is always, you need to spend more money on this or that. And that that’s kinda like, oh, you you wanna do this? Well, you need to spend
Glenda Pereira: 26:58
Right.
Colt Knight: 26:58
Money and buy this. And, I always try to find solutions that don’t cost money first. You know, sometimes you can’t raise a hundred cows without infrastructure. You know, that’s not possible. But sometimes people have questions, and there’s ways to to get around spending the money.
Colt Knight: 27:20
But I always try to be more economical at first because money’s tight. Most most farmers in New England, they’re not farming full time. They’re have another job. So you gotta be mindful of their time and and what they can and can’t do.
Glenda Pereira: 27:35
Yeah. Certainly. So I think, that’s really helped you be successful in your role. And this year, or last year, you actually, were promoted to associate professor. So we get to keep you for even more time.
Glenda Pereira: 27:52
And so I kind of just wanna leave folks with some of the upcoming program that you have and and where they can find you, things to look forward to, so that they can come out and learn from you, here in the state of Maine.
Colt Knight: 28:08
I’m not real sure when this episode will release, but in August, we have some small ruminant workshops and some business workshops going on the August. And then throughout the fall, we’ll be doing some winter care of livestock series with, poultry, small ruminants, maybe some beef cattle things. And and I always like to do pig stuff. We always talk about pigs quite a bit. The October, I’ll be going to Kansas City for the, National Swine Educators Conference.
Colt Knight: 28:41
I was elected to the executive board for that committee for on the National Pork Board last fall. So I’ll be doing quite a bit with the National Pork Board, at least for the next three years
Glenda Pereira: 28:52
That’s exciting. Long term. Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a lot of programming that you’re doing here in the state of Maine, and, folks can also obviously listen to this podcast.
Glenda Pereira: 29:01
You upload a lot of stuff to your YouTube channel. You have quite a bit of fact sheets. So you’re always, producing content that farmers, specifically farmers in Maine and New England, can really look forward to and utilize, in their day to day.
Colt Knight: 29:18
Yeah. Since the pandemic, I’ve tried to transition more into the digital space. Folks just got busy during the pandemic, and and they’re they’re not coming out in person like they were before. Yeah. You know, I used to do 50 or so in person seminars a year before the pandemic.
Colt Knight: 29:39
And, I still do that much work now, but most of it’s transitioned to digital. I’m creating vid videos, online content. We’ve started this podcast.
Glenda Pereira: 29:49
Yeah. So you kind of stole the word the words out of my mouth. We we we we started this podcast or you had this idea originally because you’ve been, doing more work in the digital space, and farmers are busy. So, they need to to kind of access content in a different way. Right?
Colt Knight: 30:08
Mhmm. Yeah. And and it’s and it’s our job not to blame farmers for not coming to our, programs. It’s it’s our job for to produce the content that the farmers want.
Glenda Pereira: 30:19
Right. Yeah.
Colt Knight: 30:20
And it was clear after the pandemic that they don’t want traditional extension education. And we, as extension educators, need to, transition to the delivery method that they want. And it seems like, videos and podcasts are the thing. You know? And I got into the videos because we during the beginning of the pandemic, Zoom meetings were really popular.
Colt Knight: 30:48
We had a lot of and then it got to be where, can you just send me the recording? Right. And the more I thought about it, I was like, well, Zoom has terrible audio and visual. If we’re gonna spend the effort to create a video, why not make a good video that we can send out instead of just recording me talking over a PowerPoint Yeah. Kinda thing.
Colt Knight: 31:11
Yep. And so those videos, I think, have been really successful.
Glenda Pereira: 31:14
Yeah. I agree. I can agree more. And so with that, thank you, Colt, so much for, giving us a little bit of insight, into your background and how you you came to us here, in Maine. And, I’m really excited for us to continue recording these episodes, and and hosting the pod co hosting the podcast together.
Glenda Pereira: 31:37
We’ll be releasing some specific episodes regarding some of the program we’re doing. I know folks are eager to learn more about us. And I know you said people you know, you know, I’m sorry for having to listen to you, but I think you’ve got a lot of, good information and knowledge to share, with folks here on the main FarmCast. So was there anything else you wanted to share that we left out?
Colt Knight: 32:01
I would really like to highlight that if folks have questions or their their topics they would like to suggest, we are completely open to that. We’re always looking for for new ideas for podcast, and we want to hear what what you think.
Glenda Pereira: 32:16
Yeah. So where can they reach us?
Colt Knight: 32:20
The best place is emailing us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.
Glenda Pereira: 32:26
Yeah. So we have our own, email that people can reach out to us if they have questions, concerns, and ideas for future of podcast episodes.
Colt Knight: 32:37
Yeah. And I’m hardly ever in my office. So if you do call, be sure to call.
Glenda Pereira: 32:44
Alright. Thanks so much, Colt.
Colt Knight: 32:46
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
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