Iowa beef producers can now have a cup of Java with other industry workers scattered throughout the state without even trekking to the local coffee shop.

The Iowa Beef Center, located at Iowa State, has created a new “virtual coffee shop” called the “Bull Pen” so beef producers can talk shop with other producers. The coffee shop actually is an Internet bulletin board created by the Iowa Beef Center.

“It is another tool to get information out, and [the producers] can share ideas amongst themselves,” said Dan Loy, professor of animal science.

The Web site fits in well with the center’s overall mission, said Iowa Beef Center Director John Lawrence. The center’s a central contact point for the beef cattle industry at Iowa State and for the state of Iowa, he said.

“The Iowa Beef Center is an outreach and educational center for the Iowa beef industry — faculty and Extension members work as a team to better serve our producers,” Lawrence said. “A key part of that is the Internet and the Web site.

“We are finding more and more producers are linked to the Internet,” he said. “We wanted to create a high-quality Internet site — we are trying to sort through and find information that is usable to producers,” he said.

The concept for the Bull Pen stemmed from an idea of a cattle producer after a mass e-mail list for feedlot producers died out, Loy said.

“People got a little annoyed by getting e-mails all the time, and it wasn’t very successful,” he said.

After seeing similar general agricultural sites in the form of bulletin boards, center officials decided to create one specifically for cattle producers, Loy said. Producers can voice their concerns anonymously, if they wish.

“It allows [the producers] to speak more freely with their thoughts and allows them to ask questions of people like John [Lawrence] in a manner they would not normally ask,” Loy said.

The Bull Pen can be accessed through the Iowa Beef Center’s Web page at http://www.ibc.iastate.edu.