Campbell County ANR Agent collaborated with the Northern Kentucky area ANR agents to offer a Regional Beef Field Day at Eden Shale Farm. This field day offered opportunities to learn about footing options for holding pens, handling facilities, watering options, fall nutrition and how to develop and select replacement heifers. Campbell County farms are not growing in size unfortunately, so farmers must be innovative to improve production in every aspect of the farm while being cost-effective. Many times, the quote “if you can’t have quantity, you better have quality” perfectly describes these farm operations. Campbell County farmers have utilized cost share programs to construct feeding areas and purchase squeeze chutes which have been instrumental in improving the health and growth of their cattle. This field day added a new focus for these producers to consider- replacement females! Campbell County ANR Agent collaborated with Tim Dietrich, previously a cattle grader for the Kentucky Department of Agriculture and currently the Director of Commercial Relations at Branchview Angus, to discuss the “quality over quantity” concept regarding replacement females. Heifers from the cattle herd at Eden Shale were used for hands- on demonstration for farmers to learn what physiological traits are ideal- bone structure, frame size and growth. These producers learned that when retaining their own heifers they need to select the heifers born within the first 30 days of the calving season because they come from mothers that have high fertility traits. Tim also discussed the economics of retaining heifers versus buying replacements- if producers have less than 30 brood cows it is not economically profitable to retain their own heifers due to the length of time it takes to make off a profit off of a heifer. For the producers raising and developing commercial heifers, which is the majority of Campbell County producers, they learned about a new genetic testing program offered by Neogen that provides a EPD profile that hasn’t been available before now for commercial cattle. This part of production affects 100% of Campbell County farmers and 80% discussed changing their management techniques to be more selective of their replacement heifers to improve their cattle herd.