On April 17th, the Sandhills Cattle Association held a ‘Steers for Students Tour’ at Husker Meats LLC in Ainsworth, NE. We decided to have this extra event because of the increasing interest in our Steers for Students Program and to get as many students as possible into the locker!
If you didn’t already know, the 'Steers for Students' program is a new educational program geared toward the youth of the Sandhills. The donated calves will be penned with the other calves during the Educational, Performance, and Carcass Contest. Their donors will still receive the calf's data during and after the contest. However, the 'Steers for Students' program calves will be sent to Husker Meats LLC of Ainsworth, Nebraska, instead of being shipped to the larger plants like the retained ownership calves. Jim Pinney of Husker Meats and other industry professionals will offer local students and producers a chance to learn about carcass evaluation while experiencing how a packing plant operates. Schools the calf donor chooses will receive the donated beef for their school lunch programs at little to no cost. We have six schools that are included in the program this year, thanks to the generous donation of calves from various ranchers, including Herb & Lori Hall – Halls & Sons, Wes Kilmurry - Atkinson Livestock Market, Craig & Katie O’Kief – Walking X Cattle, Logan & Jennifer Hill – HI/ Cattle Co., and Richard Lackaff - Lackaff Cattle Corp.
On the tour, we had several schools, including Valentine, Bassett, Dunning, Stapleton, & Thedford. We had over 70 attendees who learned a lot of information about carcass evaluation & meat science from Nicolas Herrera, a graduate student at UNL. They also learned about how the locker functions on a day-to-day basis, how to process the animal, and about the various cuts of meat that come from cattle from Jim Pinney and his crew! After the morning tour was held, we had a BBQ rib lunch for all of the schools & then our afternoon tour ended the day around 4 pm! Overall the day was a huge success, with students & even teachers learning new things!
We will have our originally scheduled ‘Steers for Students Program’ on June 29th with West Holt(Atkinson) Public Schools, other interested schools, and the ranchers that donated calves. After the program on June 29th, all the ground beef will go to the participating schools for little to no cost, thanks to donations we have received throughout the year. If you want to help ensure that a school receives its beef absolutely free, please get in touch with us at the Sandhills Cattle Association about a donation today! Contact us at 402-376-2310 or info@sandhillscattle.com.
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