highly selective and candidates must go through an application and interview process, in an effort to secure one of 25 seats. The Academy includes 4 programs student are able to be certified in. VSAT The Agriscience Academy, or Ag for short, encourages students to play a role in society that deals with agriculture such as livestock and horticulture. In the Animal Science and Services program, students handle livestock such as cattle, in order to better understand the meat industry as well as the veterinary field of large animals. Animals include pigs, sheep, steers and breeding cattle. Students also attend local fairs like the Miami-Dade County Fair and the State Fair in Tampa. In order for this to be possible, the students have to join FFA or Future Farmers of America. FFA allows students to learn leadership skills and parliament procedures. Tractor driving and Speech are also part of the FFA. Students spend about 3 to 10 months (including weekends, holidays, and no-school days) taking care of several SAE projects. The students exercise, bathe, and feed the animals. They also clean the animals' pens. After that, the students take the animals to local fairs. There, the students exhibit the animals to their potential using various equipment. Some competitions have included Showmanship, Fitting and Grooming, and Market. The FFA students compete with each other and other FFA or 4H students of other agricultural schools in Florida, depending on the location of the fair. As soon as the fairs are over, the students must leave their animals because they raised the animals for meat; the animals are then sent to slaughter. Here are more information about the animals the students nurture: Pigs: usually one of the first animals, along with lambs, that the students raise in their first year. Swine are very intelligent and very excited animals. They can range from 180 pounds to 250 pounds. The male pigs come castrated when the students purchase their hogs. The breed normally used are Yorkshire crosses and Hampshire crosses. Lambs: usually one of the first animals that students raise as their first SAE project. Lambs are the most vulnerable projects in the Ag. Academy. They are easily killed by dogs. Students learn to castrate male lambs, and learn to shear the sheep, taking the wool off the animal with a pair of clippers. Steers: a castrated bull calf that ranges from 8 months to 2