2024 Marks the 4^th year of Trigg County Extension partnering with the Kentucky Beef Network through Beef Solutions.   KY Cattlemen's Ground Beef is a branded beef launched by Beef Solutions a partner with the Ky Cattlemen's association.  Most cattle producers have heard of Ky Cattlemen's Ground beef, seen it on the shelf at Krogers or read about it in the Cow Country News. Beef Solutions buys cull cows from Ky farm families who are all BQCA trained producers, committed to excellent animal husbandry practices and in turn retails the meat through grocers.  This allows an opportunity for consumers to connect more with livestock producers in the state, promotes the good practices our producers are already doing to the public, and provides a healthy wholesome high quality product to consumers easily available at their local grocery store. 

Producers get the benefit of a few extra dollars per head on their cull cows because they are being sold directly into the food chain. Trigg, Lyon, Christian and Caldwell counties all sold cattle to Beef solutions in 2022-24.   Tractor trailer loads organized by Trigg County Extension were marketed in our 2023 year through Beef solutions.  For a total of 118 head of cows owned by  producers.   These cows came from Trigg and 3 surrounding counties.  

The ANR agent and extension office Staff assistant headed up organizing loads with the help of our local KBN representative Ben Lloyd and Dan Miller.  Producers were provided live weights and dressing percentages on their cattle this will assist them in the future in deciding what might be the best ways to market their cattle- even the culls.  It gave them an opportunity to better understand pricing of cull cattle both in this program and at the stockyards as well.  Most producers reported that they thought their cattle brought around $10-15% per head more than they would have at the stockyards the same week.  

Price analysis with Farmers who shared their payment information with Extension showed a %16 premium over local cull market prices.  At the average Cow wt. 1141#, and dressing 49% putting together these loads for producers got them an average price of $1537 per head for their culls and added about $25,394 to our local producer’s bottom line- for cows they were culling anyway. All of our producers who participated reported being satisfied with the prices received and were planning or willing to send cattle again.   The interest in sending cull cows through the Beef Solutions program has grown tremendously in our area I expect 2024-25 to be another good year for this program.