Every newly arrived student at UConn learns to make friends and navigate new relationships, but for animal science majors, this extends beyond their classmates and professors to cows, chickens, horses, pigs, and sheep.<\/p>\n
First-year animal science majors get an unforgettable hands-on experience as part of the Introduction Animal Science course. For the first two months of their UConn careers, students learn to train, fit, and show an animal they aren\u2019t familiar with, culminating in a final display of expertise called the Little International Livestock Show, known as \u201cthe Little \u2018I.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a major learning experience,\u201d says Kansas Sienna \u201924 (CAHNR), an animal science major and Little \u2018I\u2019 chair.<\/p>\n
Students have to learn very quickly how to work with an animal they may have no familiarity with, Sienna says. It\u2019s a potentially daunting prospect that students say is one of the most rewarding experiences they can have.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing able to work with the livestock directly has been awesome,\u201d says Rachel Kaihara \u201925 (CAHNR), \u201cbecause, coming from the city, I literally had no idea what I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaihara hails from Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb where riding the \u201cL\u201d is more common than working with livestock. For the Little \u2018I,\u2019 she was assigned a horse named UC Crimson Cash, or Cash for short. The two quickly bonded, which helped Kaihara realize she had made the right choice with animal science.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is definitely the major I was meant to be in,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A hands-on experience working with animals right away is a crucial part of UConn life for first-year animal science majors<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":178762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2298,2224,2235,2225,2306,2234,70],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1927],"class_list":["post-178727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animal-science","category-cahnr","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-voices","category-university-life","category-video","post_format-post-format-video"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 07:25:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178727"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178763,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178727\/revisions\/178763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/178762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178727"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=178727"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=178727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}