Kentucky has a beef cattle population of over 1 million head, ranks 3^rd in the nation in cattle density and has a financial worth of an estimated $1.5 billion.  A survey of Kentucky cattle producers showed that over 75% of farms with less than 25 head do not have a controlled calving season.  In eastern Kentucky most farms are small and around 90% of them have extended calving windows.  The Beef Integrated Reproduction Management program focuses on producer education and on farm demonstrations that improves reproduction efficiencies and profits.  The program currently has 214 demonstration farms with 5401 cows in the program.  The herd sizes range from 3- 250 female cows.  As a program coordinator I coordinate on farm demonstrations in seven counties in Southeastern Kentucky in the SOAR region.   I do initial farms visits to assess the current management level and handling facilities and interview producers to see if the program is a good fit.  I currently have 18 on farm demonstrations in seven different counties.   I set up times with the cooperators to come age, body condition score and pregnancy check the cows then develop a plan to strengthen nutrition, shorten calving seasons, improve genetics, and increase conception rates.  The plan entails at least three different farm visits to set up the cows to breed and then check pregnancy.  

The program has proven successful with increased pregnancy rates from 83% to 93% with double the amount of cows conceiving in the first 30 days.  This means twice as many large calves to sell together as a lot come sell time.  The increased conception rates plus the additional calf weight gain from being older averaged an increase profit of $5622 per producer.  Of the 18 farms I work with in SE Ky the herd management levels have increased.  During one farm visit to age and pregnancy check a herd of 105 cows, I asked the producer the age of the cows he did not know and he did not know how to tell the age of the cows by looking at their teeth.  At the end of the process 47 cows were 12+ years old, had lower BCS due to their inability to pick forage efficiently and were culled, another 36 were 10-12 and were marked to be culled the following year.  This degree of age on cows drastically lowers conception rates and those that do have calves tend to be less efficient mothers.  The producer used the information we gathered to set up a record keeping program which included their approximate age so he would have an idea of when to cull the cows based on age.  He also purchased 40 commercial two year old cows that were 4-6 months bred to replace those culled.