WOODLAND HILLS : Pierce’s Animal Science Studies Change Focus

After a stressful week editing videotape at a Burbank television studio, Elissa Lenard slips into her alter ego: a wool-spinning shepherd at the Pierce College farm.

Substituting a grungy T-shirt and jeans for her professional garb, Lenard, 45, is happy for the change of pace. She hopes to someday make raising sheep for wool her full-time profession.

“I still need my current income to live and to be able to buy hay,” Lenard said, fingering the oily fleece of a ewe. “But I’d quit my job right now if I could. This is what I really enjoy.”

Lenard is one of a new breed of students at Pierce who are helping change a shrinking animal science curriculum from a largely meat-producing study to one that emphasizes animal care and the production of wool, milk and other products.

During the past five years, the school’s agriculture department has sought to attract students like Lenard by buying more exotic types of sheep from the Europe and the Middle East, and even llamas, for wool projects.

As recently as several years ago, Lander said, most of the sheep raised at Pierce were bred for slaughter. Now, he said, most are used primarily for their wool.

The change mirrors a shift in focus for the entire farming operation at Pierce, which began in 1947 with an emphasis on raising cattle, pigs and chickens for meat, and which has recently suffered major cutbacks, said Mick Sears, chairman of the agriculture department.

In the past five years, he said, the populations of sheep, cattle and pigs have dwindled in half--to about 30 heads of each--as the department adjusts to students’ greater interest in veterinary science, horse raising and other small-scale animal projects.

“I think there is the growing perception among students, especially in an urban area like this, that agriculture is something that is only practiced out on the range,” Sears said. “Also, most people feel it is difficult to make money that way, whether that is true or not.”

As the face of animal science at Pierce has changed, Sears said, more women have become involved.

Ten years ago, most of the 600 or so students taking classes in the agriculture department were men, Sears said. Now, he said, the number of students has dropped to about 400, more than 60% of whom are women.

Lenard, for one, is glad for the change.

“Some of the old guys laugh when they see us out here spinning wool,” she said. “It’s a macho thing. But I don’t care.”