Students in our school who are in the agriculture program are required to create and perform a yearly project, which is  known as their Students Agricultural Experience (SAE) project. Any student who takes an agriculture class has an SAE project, whether the student is taking an animal science class or magnet program classes.

      Senior Maggie Layman has designed a captivating project focusing on invasive crayfish. Layman explains that she has focused on crayfish as her topic for previous school years, but this year specifically, she is experimenting if the crayfish traps were to be “different colors,” would it attract “more or less” crayfish to the traps.

      The senior explains that she felt influenced to help solve the issue of the invasive species because they are “everywhere,” and she hasn’t “found a single native crayfish since [she] has started the project,” even after she has been attempting to find crayfish around the whole of Harford County.

      The hope for her project is to find a way to largely remove crayfish from areas effectively to increase the population of native crayfish.

      The student’s project was done by painting traps both blue and red, and leaving another trap unpainted. The reasoning behind this, being that “red and blue are the colors that crayfish can actually see.”

      So far, Layman has explained that “the plain silver [traps],” have seemed to catch the most of the animals compared to the red and blue traps.

     Fellow senior Lily Jerscheid  is starting a dog kenneling business as her project. “I have five dogs that I take care of,” the student shares. Hickory Kennels were the inspiration behind the way she will kennel the dogs, but instead of at a kennel, she tends to the dogs at her house.

      Jerscheid  also added that she helped to raise eleven puppies, which “made [her] want to work with dogs more.” This year, Jerscheid took dog grooming as an animal science elective here at NH. This also influenced her to work around dogs as well.

      The SAE projects are set to be finished by the end of the school year. So, if you’re an AG student, keep up on those projects! And if you aren’t an agriculture student, ask a friend what their project is. You never know what interesting things they may be doing!