For years, Ohio 4-H has used the ChickQuest program to help youth understand the cycle of life. From monitoring living eggs to observing fluffy chicks, ChickQuest challenges youth to use science, technology, engineering, and math skills to investigate the life cycle of an embryonic chicken egg through hands-on activities and educational lessons.
Sally Hennessy, 4-H STEM educator in Lorain County, seeks to do this and more as she facilitates ChickQuest programming in local third grade classrooms. In addition to educating youth on the growth and development of chickens, she helps teachers i
ncorporate activities on artificial intelligence (AI) technology into the lesson plans to help youth understand how it can be used to help the ag industry become more efficient.
“My goal for connecting AI to ChickQuest is to familiarize the classroom teachers and students with AI-based laser weeding machines that are being used in fields,” said Hennessy.
These machines use artificial intelligence to scan fields and detect weeds, potentially reducing the need for chemical herbicides to treat weeds.
“In third grade most kids are familiar with facial recognition on smart phones,” said Hennessy. “The machine learning that phones use for that is easily equated with teaching a farm machine to recognize pictures of different weeds in a field. It’s 
trained to zap only the weeds, and not the food plants.”
Hennessy ties these lessons on AI technology into existing ChickQuest curriculum by highlighting the ways in which this technology is used to help grow a chemical free soybean that could be used to make feed for chickens. The technology ultimately creates more options for farmers.
“Many Ohioans don’t realize that loads of Ohio-grown soybeans are used to produce chicken feed, and AI technology can be used to assist farmers in growing these crops more efficiently,” said Hennessy. “The feed is then eaten by chickens who produce eggs that contribute to Ohio’s egg industry, helping us become the third largest producer of grocery store eggs in the country.”
“It’s a big deal that kids learn that the agriculture industry in Ohio is awesome, and new ag technologies are helping to give farmers and egg producers more options than ever before,” said Hennessy.
Want to learn more about Ohio 4-H ChickQuest programming? Visit ohio4h.org/chickquest.