BQA Feedyard Award winner
Bledsoe Cattle Company is the recipient of the 2020 Feedyard BQA Award. The company is headquartered in Wray, Colorado, and has feedyard facilities in several Colorado counties and a stocker ranch in South Dakota. With its diverse operations, the company places high value on BQA guidelines to ensure consistent, high-quality care for its more than 8,000 head of cattle. Bledsoe Cattle Company provides BQA training and certification every three years for its employees. The company also regularly provides BQA training to its contracted crews, sharing the benefits of proper chute-side BQA techniques with livestock operations across eastern Colorado.
BQA—FARM Dairy Award winner
Boadwine Farms is the winner of the 2020 BQA—FARM Dairy Award. The Baltic, South Dakota, dairy cares for more than 2,000 Holstein dairy cows, with 2,500 acres planted with rotating feed and forage crops. The dairy takes pride in opening its doors to educate interns at South Dakota State University, local students, and consumers across the state. Boadwine Farms’ adoption of modern technology and animal handling practices, including following BQA and FARM guidelines across its facilities, not only ensures that visitors gain a clear understanding of best practices but that cow comfort and care is always the number one priority among its employees.
BQA Cow-Calf Award winner
The recipient of the 2020 BQA Cow-Calf Award is IX Ranch in Big Sandy, Montana. The 126,000-acre ranch has prioritized raising high quality cattle throughout its history, and has found that having exceptional cattle goes hand-in-hand with training exceptional employees. Implementing BQA fits right in with the ranch’s goal to have a “blue-ribbon operation” as said by the Roth family, who have owned and operated IX Ranch since the 1950s. All full-time employees at the ranch are required to be BQA-certified, and IX Ranch has seen improvement across its operations through low-stress animal handling and increased awareness of employee safety.
