Starting the beginning of March 2024 Nicholas County, Harrison County and Bourbon County held a Master Cattlemen program. These sessions covered a wide variety of information and knowledge to be passed down to the local and surrounding producers. Each county held 2 sessions each with 6 sessions in total lasting 3hours so that each participant would become a “Certified Master Cattlemen.” During these session participants learned about reproduction/record keeping, marketing/profitability, heard health, genetics for the beef herd, facilities and logistics of winter feeding, and nutrition for optimum production. Each session we had a guest speaker from the beef extension team come and do their presentations and answer any questions that the producers might have had during the class to help expand their knowledge in their own cattle production.

Between the 3 counties we had right around 45 participants sign up to attend these sessions, at the end of the sessions on March 28, 2024, we had 33 participants complete the courses and become a certified master cattlemen and will get to receive a farm gate sign showing that they completed these session along with a shirt that we had gotten made for them.

After each session we would have the guest speaker ask two questions about their presentation for each participant to have a chance on answering and getting a grazing stick, we explained to them on how to use the grazing stick and what they were needed for in their pastures. During our last session I had gotten some donations for local business to do a drawing for those that had attended every session as a thank you and a chance of winning either ear tags and tagger, a sorting paddle, or a jug of Eprinex pour on de-wormer and applicator gun donated from Hinton Mills if their name had gotten drawn. 

During the Master Cattlemen program each person had to also have an updated BQCA before completion of the course, while most of the participants had their updated BQCA we had some that did not, so Nicholas County and Bourbon County held two different options on when they could come to get the BQCA updated. Nicholas County was held on February 26^th and Bourbon County held one March 25^th, each BQCA was held at different times to assure people could get their certification if needed and if they couldn’t make those days we worked with them on getting it completed to become a Master Cattlemen in their counties.