The KY Farm Launch program began the second round of cohorts in March. The program is designed for beginning farmers who have land and not sure what to do with it, or people who are still looking for property but want an enterprise in mind before purchase. Cohort started the first 6 weeks learning about business structure, record keeping, tax filing, marketing, business plans, and basic requirements for vegetable, beef, and small ruminant production. In May the participants b

by Sarah Carr, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Kentucky State University Figure 1: Crossbred Boer x Kiko kid. Crossbreeding is not just randomly mixing breeds and hoping that the offspring do well. Rather, crossbreeding is a deliberate management technique that can have significant impacts on production outcomes. Generally, when implementing a crossbreeding program, the goal would be to maximize specific attributes such as carcass characteristics or material traits. Crossbreed

Today there is a desire to control specific species of vegetation in many areas...the use of animals to graze or browse the vegetation to control it, called targeted or prescribed grazing. Prescribed grazing is the use of livestock to achieve desired vegetation management and landscaping goals. Targeted grazing is very similar but is usually used when a specific species is the focus.

Dr. Beth Johnson, Office of State Veterinarian, Kentucky Department of Agriculture The key to any successful business is to produce as much product as efficiently as possible with minimal financial input. As all goat producers know, the major goal of a meat goat producer is to get as many pounds of a sellable product out of a single doe as possible. To achieve this goal we must have live kids born that survive to weaning or later depending on the producers plans for their kid