Most farmers have a lot on their plates, including full time jobs, and management can be a reaction versus a plan.  The "Back to Basics Beef Program' is a Specialist lead program aimed at hitting the reset button on the cattle operation.  Once a thorough evaluation of the land, feed stuffs, record keeping  and herd are compiled by a team of specialist, the reset button can then be reset. This is begun by identifying the positives of the operation and identifying where improvements can be made and then setting attainable goals that will increase efficiency and profitability.  The agent pulled soil test and hay test, a thorough evaluation of the 100 animal herd was conducted (including pregnancy stage, vaccination standing, banding, and proper tagging system implemented) by the UK beef specialist and associate along with the agent and owners, and forage quality and soil fertility was analyzed by the UK Forage specialist.   

The educational program response to this analysis is in part as follows:

• Implement cross breeding.
• Take advantage of high nutritional plain by selecting bulls with more growth.
• Contacting Fish and Wildlife to help with building a buzzard deterrent
• Contact some of the ag engineering faculty to help with designing the working facilities
• Creating a defined calving season, then marketing calves in a sale like CPH after backgrounding. Possibly some AI.
• Implement vaccination and deworming plan.

After the initial analysis a plan was developed to create two calving seasons and the first steps were taken to implement this initiative.  From the pregnancy check cattle were grouped into three categories: cull cattle, spring calving and fall calving.  In November plans were made to artificially inseminate the cows for fall calving.