Farmscape for June 20, 2005  (Episode 1838)

The Farm Animal Council of Saskatchewan has officially introduced a new robotic teaching tool designed to help raise public  understanding of animal care issues.

Faith the Animal Care Specialist is an advanced remote controlled robot attached to a tricycle and she is being used to help promote responsible animal care in Saskatchewan.

Farm Animal Council of Saskatchewan Executive Director Adele Buettner says the device is equipped with speakers that allow the handler to hear what is being asked, and her voice activated mouth moves along with the handler's voice.

Clip-Adele Buettner-Farm Animal Council of Saskatchewan 

We were looking for a creative way to reach more of an audience at trade shows, at fairs, at exhibitions so we came up with the idea of the bike bot.

The intent is to reach children and adults alike and talk to them about animal care.

Some of the programs we go to will target specifically to school children but we also target a broader audience to high school kids and adults, pending again the venue we're at.

Her message is clearly animal care.

That's her objective, that's her job description and that's why we have her.

We blend in our animal care messages, pending again the venue.

If it's pork specific or dairy specific, we'll give them some statistics on what type of production is available in Saskatchewan.

We will talk about loose housing verses not.

We will talk about the different commodity groups and what a producer will go through in a course of a day.

At a dairy event we may walk through what time the producer gets up and what they have to do.

Quite more general in information but we will give everybody a sense of what a farmer's day is like on the farm.

Buettner says Faith is available to visit shows exhibitions or meetings and she can be booked by calling the Farm Animal Council of Saskatchewan at 306-249-3227.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council