In the mid 1990’s a group of ANR Agents from the old Quicksand Area and Northeast Area, along with Extension Forage Specialist Dr. David Ditch, pulled together three beef cattle Associations to form the Eastern Kentucky Beef Cattle Council. The mission of this Council was to improve the quality of life for limited-resource farmers in eastern Kentucky.

This Council experimented with different group marketing systems, methods of improving livestock and forage quality through producer meetings and on-farm demonstrations and utilizing new production technologies and practices.

One of the practices that was pushed by this Council as a way to improve herd genetics was teaching producers how to artificial inseminate their beef herds. Over a period of three years, Extension Beef Cattle Reproductive Specialist, Dr. David Patterson, conducted two artificial insemination workshops at D&D Ranch in Perry County. At these workshops, we always had a drawing for an AI kit.

A winner of one of these kits, who was still in High school at the time of the workshops, contacted me this spring and said he just wanted to thank me for that kit he won more than 20 years ago. He said he was still using it and now is children are learning to AI with that kit. He went on to say that he couldn’t tell me how many thousands of head of cattle had been AI bred using that kit and how AI has improved his herd genetics. He also sent me pictures of his children artificial inseminating their herd with that kit.

Who would have thought that something has small as an AI kit can make that big of a difference. Needless to say I was very pleased to get that call.

A couple of other things that materialized from the efforts of that Council was the East Kentucky Heifer Development Program and the annual Eastern Kentucky Hay testing and contest. The Hay testing and contest is still running 25 years later and the Heifer Development program ran for 19 years and his still impacting beef herds in eastern Kentucky.