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Kentucky Spring Fencing Schools Perfect for Agriculturalists, Homeowners Interested in Fencing

By Christopher Carney

The University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, in conjunction with the Kentucky Forage and Grassland Council, Kentucky Agricultural Development Fund, Kentucky State Universityand Kentucky Beef Network, will offer the 2024 Spring Fencing School.  

Agriculturalists, producers, homeowners and interested community members can attend on April 23 at the Morehead State University Derrickson Agricultural Complex and on April 25 at the Graves County Cooperative Extension office in Mayfield, Kentucky.

“Fencing is vitally important on the farm,” said Chris Teutsch, associate professor for the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, stationed in the UK Research and Education Center at Princeton. “Good fences keep our livestock safe and animals from getting out. Understanding the ins and outs of proper fencing is important for anyone installing fencing on their property, including residential homeowners.”

The schools will begin at 7:30 a.m. local time. The morning session addresses fencing types and costs, construction basics, electric fencing, innovations in technologies and an overview of Kentucky fence laws.

The afternoon session is a hands-on fence-building session where participants put their knowledge and skills to work. The demonstration includes: 

  • Safety, layout and a post-driving demonstration   
  • H-brace construction   
  • Knot tying, splices and insulator installation  
  • Installing Stay-Tuff fixed-knot fencing  
  • Installing high-electrified tensile fencing  

Events at both locations conclude with questions and a survey at 4:30 p.m. Participants should pre-register at least one week prior to the event. Advance registration is $35 per person and includes a notebook, refreshments and a catered lunch. Participants are encouraged to bring safety glasses and hearing protection.

Use the following to register: 

Source : uky.edu

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From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

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Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids