Every year since 2005 (with the exception of 2020,) there has been a Regional Beef Field Day in Trimble, Henry, Oldham, or Shelby County. This year, Trimble County was up to host the event. Being that I started on June 1st and the program was usually held end of September, I was offered the opportunity to pass it to Oldham or Shelby, but I was more than ready to run this event. The next day, I spoke with the Trimble County Cattlemen’s Association president to gather details about the event and to see if he had thought any about it. From then on, we started planning. 

Once we realized that there weren’t any farmers who wanted to host the event at their farm, we started looking into using the park/fairgrounds. The fairgrounds have multiple locations close to each other to help with keeping us in one central location. I scheduled a meeting with the 3 other county agents to start putting the plan in place. I created a flyer with my support staff, set a date, planned the rotations, found the speakers, and started advertising. The TCCA board members met to discuss the layout of all the equipment, cooking areas, serving food areas, and how to properly plan for so many people.

The event was held on September 27th, 2022. We had approximately 190 people in attendance. There were 4 rotations, they went to Kevin Laurent for BQCA Chute Side training, Dustin Ogburn for heifer confirmation and selections and bull EPD’s, John Edwards and Donovan Pigg to talk about USDA grading of beef, and multiple agricultural industries brought CAIP approved equipment. Those included but were not limited to; McBurney’s Livestock Equipment, Ellegood Farm Products, Bear Branch Farm Supply, BEST Livestock Equipment. There were booths set up by sponsors as well as booths by NRCS, Conservation districts, Kentucky Cattlemen’s Association, Kentucky Beef Network, and Kentucky Department of Agriculture. 

The event show cased many different things that can help producers better their herds. Kevin was able to talk and demonstrate proper techniques to include while working your cattle. I had a producer tell me that they worked cattle the following weekend and was able to use practices they were taught at the training, like walking past the cattle’s point of contact to have them continue to move in the chute. People were able to utilize John and Donovan’s input when selecting the cattle, they plan to have processed.  We had a very successful event, and I was happy that we were able to educate so many people from the community.