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Leadership Development Program Completes Session Five In Colorado

Nikki Whitaker Kentucky Cattlemen's Association

Class IX of the Kentucky Cattlemen’s Association Leadership Program held their fifth session in Colorado November 1-4. The group’s first stop was to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) office. Mary Bea Halimeh, NCBA Director of Member & Affiliate Services, welcomed the group and gave a tour of the NCBA office where the group was able to view the Cattlemen to Cattlemen studio and the Beef It’s What’s for Dinner culinary kitchen. Colin Woodall, NCBA CEO, spent the morning with the group explaining NCBA’s history, structure, and long range plan for the beef industry. The next morning the class traveled to Fort Collins to tour the JBS Global Food Innovation Center at Colorado State University. The recently opened facility includes a complete livestock and meat processing center, spanning the meat-animal harvesting process, fully equipped with a livestock arena, Temple Grandin-designed holding and harvesting areas, a research and development center and sensory analysis room, an auditorium lecture hall and meat demonstration classroom, and a retail meat and dairy store and café. Next, the group went east a few miles to the 69,000 head Five River’s Gilcrest Feedlot where the group heard from Jordan Levi and Cole Evans on how Five River’s feeds their cattle and the importance of health management in the feedlot. The visit concluded with a bus tour of the feedlot. On Thursday, the group was able to tour two cattle ranches; Leachman Cattle Company of Colorado, an organization that markets more than 2,000 bulls annually including Angus, Charolais, Red Angus and Stabilizer composites and Weaver Ranch, a Black Angus seedstock ranch operated by three sisters that spans properties in Sedgwick, Virginia Dale and Owl Canyon, Colorado. Both tours proved to be an eye-opening experience for the group. The average size of a Colorado farm and ranch is 890 acres and most cattle are open range on native grasses. The group also learned about irrigated and sub-irrigated pastures as well as dealing with a mix of federal and private lands and water rights issues. Thursday evening brought Session 5 to an end with a late night plane ride back home to Kentucky. Class 9 is sponsored by Alltech and funded through the Kentucky Cattlemen's Foundation. Session 6, the final session for Class IX, is scheduled for Spring 2022 in Washington, DC.

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