According to the 2018 Kentucky Agriculture Statistics Service, Beef Cattle receipts for Kentucky totaled $750million in 2017. Enhancing management skills for beef producers is critical to the goal of improving profitability in beef enterprises. 

         In a cooperative effort among the Green River Area counties and U.K. Extension Specialist, including assistance from the Natural Resources Conservation Service and local cattlemen associations, 38 beef producers, including 11 from Ohio County, participated in the 2020 Green River Area Master Cattlemen Program.

         The Master Cattlemen program is an intensive 40 hour educational program focusing on all aspects of cattle production and marketing.  It is designed to provide cattlemen with vital, cutting-edge information that will allow them to increase profitability in the very competitive cattle industry.

         A post-session evaluations to measure changes they plan to make on their farms as a result of attending Master Cattlemen indicated the following:

• 95% wrote down their goals and mission statement 
• 89% put new practices in place to improve hay quality.  
• 89% planned to make changes to their feeding program 
• 94% indicated they plan implement practices to improve herd health.

         In the words of two of the participants, “I plan have more grass on the farm now, than I have ever seen on this hill”, and “I plan to improve my hay quality, by getting my hay up in a more timely manner”.