Winter meetings do work; spring heifer sale okayed

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Winter meetings, a staple of Extension teaching, don’t get easier. Meetings are informative, invigorating and for farmers, profitable. But winter makes them difficult.

Nasty weather complicates attendance. Farmers show up, no matter. For this journalist, it becomes worrisome.

It happened at MU Show-Me-Select Replacement Heifer meeting. And, for the following Missouri Cattlemen Association.

I’ve said: Farmers don’t get snow days. But schools, even MU, cancel. Farm kids learn chores are done, no matter the weather. Livestock require care every day. With milk cows, that’s morning and night.

Last year the Show-Me-Select board meeting moved to Friday as lead to the Cattleman’s meeting. Both groups benefit. This year heifer training was added after the business meeting and before the cattle convention.

More folks showed up to learn heifers.

Over all was a bad combo of Flash Flood Warning and Winter Storm Watch. A forecast said 4 to 8 inches of snow in Iowa border counties. First came heavy rain. Temperatures stayed unusually warm for January. That changed into ice, sleet and finally snow.

Leaving the heifer meeting without a raincoat, I was soaked. That was in spite of hearing that forecast. For some reason, I doubted.

All night thunderstorms boomed. The more I heard, the more I thought this is different. But, early Saturday roads were practically dry in Central Mo.

By the time I left the morning session the sky was full of snow. Car windows iced over with snow on top. Not good for driving.

In the morning farmers from the Northwest were getting dire calls from home. Ice under heavy snow made driving terrible. But from the lack of parking left at the Expo, I assumed attendance was good on Saturday as on Friday.

There was good news from the Show-Me-Select board meeting. A new sale at Vienna, Mo., was approved, bringing in seven sale barns across the state. That fills a gap in the Ozarks and Central Missouri.

Anita Hill, MU Extension livestock specialist at Fulton, is sale coordinator. She’s worked almost a year getting place and consignors lined up.

There’s still a hole to fill in the Northwest region. But Jenna Monnig from Mercer County extension center is working on that. A first meeting at Trenton was called off at the last minute. Yep, a snowstorm kept MU beef repro specialist from Columbia from attending.

Jenna can learn from Anita, who’s was from North Missouri. It takes lots of planning, searching, and selling to start a new heifer sale. It’s just my opinion, but that whole Northwest could support a couple of sales.

Dave Patterson, in his introduction talk, told how Show-Me-Select protocols add almost $250 per heifer to average prices of bred heifers. He went back into a new database of all sales since the start in 1996.

He looked up average sale prices for bred heifers across the country. These include nationally known sales by seedstock producers. Average price from Spring and Fall sales this past year topped them all. Missouri gains reputation for quality beef in heifer steer mates.

Patterson had returned from a beef meeting at Kansas State University.

“The image of Missouri cattle has improved,” he said.

That’s a major gain. I recall when Missouri calves were downgraded. Now Kansas feed yards and packing plants learned to seek our quality beef.

Here, first-calf heifers have a bad reputation. They are difficult at calving with many dying. That changes when farmers use MU SMS pre-breeding protocols and genetic advice.

A gain in quality beef comes from what was learned at MU Thompson Farm, Spickard. The MU beef herd became nationally known. That came from management by Jon Schreffler, farm manager from the start.

Heifers that can’t breed are culled, before insemination.

The story lingers how Jon thought Patterson was going to ruin “his” cow herd.          

Write to daileyd@gmail.com. A big thanks to farmers at the meetings who said thanks for these stories.