The Blue Grass Livestock Marketing Group, as well as construction crews, have been working all winter and are now at the point where finish work is being done on the new stockyards located on Ky. 90.

Chief Operating Officer of the Blue Grass Livestock Marketing Group, Jim Akers said everything is coming together nicely and it is looking to be finished with construction by May 23, which is the day set for the grand opening.

“We will have a sale that day,” Akers said. “We will be able to handle about 2,000 head of cattle. I think it will be a big sale.”

While work is being done this week, Akers said it will be more visible from the road after dirt is moved from the front of the building.

“It’s going to be a nice, classy business. It’s going to look good from the highway,” Akers said.

Traffic will be directed to Hwy. 639 where the public will be able to enter the facility. Akers said they were going to take out the entrance off of Ky. 90 for safety reasons, allowing one way into the stockyard grounds.

“We think it’s going to be real convenient for folks,” Akers said. “Once we get started cleaning up a little bit and get the landscaping in, I really think its going to be something the community can be real proud of and we went into it that way. We told people and the judge (Lyle Huff) that is what we wanted to do.”

Akers said it will provide a great service to farmers in the community as well as the community itself.

Also on site, the stockyards will have a veterinarian.

“We will have a vet on site full days during sale days and as needed on other days,” Akers said. “There is an office in the back, as well as a clinic, so if farmers want to bring cows in for service they can.”

“For one, convenience. The location is just awesome,” Akers said. “Especially with the changes to U.S. 127. We couldn’t have picked a better location. It’s worked out perfectly.”

Akers said it will also help the farmers with competition within the marketplace.

“The buyers who follow our sale will be so much more competitive and aggressive than what folks had access down here for a long, long time. You will have major order buying companies in here buying cattle as well as the local farmers. We will have four or five of those major order buying companies that will just put a whole different spin on things.”

The facility will be state of the art with computerized air gates, and other technological systems in order to provide the fastest service to farmers.

“There will be a lot of computerization involved that the normal person may not see, but that’s what drives the efficency,” Akers said. “Being able to have their check ready as soon as their last animal sells …it’s done. These guys down here in this part of the country have never had that kind of service. Everything about this is designed for speed and convenience in trying to get the cattle moved safely.”

With any new business in the community, that business needs a staff and Akers said they will employ around 20 people on sale days.

“We will have full time people in the offices all the time,” Akers said. “We just hired an office manager last week and we are starting to get all the staffing finished up. The week before we open we will have employee training for safety and animal training … all those things. We spend a lot of time on that stuff before we begin. It is always easier to start right than to fix it while your going.”

Other than the area of the facility for the public, the cattle area will be an open section and according to Akers, having the cattle area open will be healthier for the animals and keep the smell down.

“Rather than it being a closed in cracker box that is smelly and wet, no matter how many cattle you put in here it will be dry and clean and that benefits the farmers, buyers, community … everybody.”

Another aspect of the stockyards is that manure is not going to be stored on site. It will be cleaned up and shipped to farmers to spread on their land for fertilizer.

“When we do clean out it will go straight into a truck and off site to be spread on local farms,”Akers said. “I bought a big truck that actually spreads the manure. It will be a one step process. Clean it up, put it in the truck, drive it to a farm and spread it.”

Akers said when you associate a smell with a stockyard, they have stockpiles of bedding and manure on site.

“We are not going to do that,” Akers said.

During a typical day of sale, Akers said they will start receiving cattle the day before. He said if farmers want to leave cattle overnight, there will be an employee on site to take care of them.

The stockyards will have hay and feeding inside the pins, as well as water for the animals.

“We will start selling at 9 a.m. and trying to have most of our feeder cattle sold before lunch,” Akers said. “Figuring on a 2,000 head of cattle day, we think we will be done by four, five or six o’clock. We generally figure on averaging 250-300 cattle per hour.”

In the public auction area, buyers and farmers will be seated in a small amphitheater type area. This area is big enough for around 200 people.

“We got a little bit of money from the county ag development board … there will be two big screen televisions on either side of the sell ring, which will become our weigh boards, but they are also integrated so if the community wanted to use this as a meeting facility, a presenter can come in and stick a thumb drive in one of our computers and have a presentation.”

The facility will also have a restaurant or snack bar type food area, which can accommodate a luncheon for a meeting. The cattle holding area will be behind the sale ring and is around 54,000 square feet in size.

On Wednesday, May 23, the Albany Bluegrass Stockyards will provide lunch from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. for people who want to come out and see the new facility.

“The local Cattlemen’s Association is going to be cooking hamburgers, so for anybody who comes out during that period of time we will provide a complementary lunch. We will have door prizes and all kinds of give-aways to try and give people a chance to get familiar with the facilities.”

The Blue Grass operation started in Lexington around 1946.

“It’s changed hands a few times since then, but it’s been in the control of the people whohave owned it now since the mid-1970s,” Akers said.

One advantage of having markets across the state, according to Akers, is to take pressure off the Blue Grass Market Building in Lexington and to move the service closer to the customer base.

Their website, bgstockyards.com, has daily market values, contact information and special sales information to provide farmers and customers with the most current information on the cattle market.

Akers said during a Cattlemen’s Association meeting held in January, the online sale roughly accounted for 10 percent of their business and it is growing every year.

“We don’t do the all-night sales, but we start early in the morning and we try to run a traditional business,” Akers said. “If we get farmers in here in the morning, I look for him to be sold and gone with a good check in hand by the time supper rolls around. That’s just the way we do business.”

On Monday, Jim Akers, left, COO of Blue Grass Livestock Marketing Group, walked through the sale ring area inside the still under construction stockyards being built in the Snow Community of Clinton County.