Texas Panhandle Rancher Fall 2017 Vol. 1
ENhanced EPDs a fall family picnic Making pies with donna
LOOKING to THE FUTURE
TEXAS PANHANDLE RANCHER PRODUCED AND DISTRIBUTED BY
Duane & Donna Jenkins Dale & Brenda Jenkins
Owners Owners
11790 CR 30 HIGGINS ,TX 79046 806.852.4171 806.852.2485
littlerobeangusranch.com | lilrobe@wildblue.net Texas Panhandle Rancher • Page 2
TEXAS PANHANDLE RANCHER Contents
Contributers
Enhanced EPDs
4
Dale Jenkins
8
Will Jenkins
Writer Owner
EPDs and How to Use Them
A Fall Family Picnic Making Time For What Matters
Grandson Photography
Looking to the Future
14
Caleb Whitington
Karley & Agricultural Studies at OSU
Slice of Heaven
Grandson-In-Law Photograhpy
18
Katie Whittington
Behind the Scenes in Donna’s Kitchen
Upcoming Dates
Granddaughter Editor
23
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ENHANCED EPDS
Here on the ranch, we are constantly looking for better ways to select the best genetics possible for both our breeding program and yours. One of the most influential parts of this decision making process is utilizing the industry standard tool, EPDs. EPDs are like a compass - they are a good way to point you in the right directions. As with any tool though, they have to be used in the right way.
WHAT THE HECK IS AN EPD? An Expected Progeny Difference or EPD uses all we know about an animal to predict how we expect their calves will do compared to another animal’s calves. It is not how an individual will perform but rather how its calves will do compared to another individual’s calves. It is a comparison tool and a comparison tool only. When you look at a list of EPDs, you’re looking at a list of numbers. So what information is used to come up with these numbers? There are three areas that are used to gather information for an individual animal that can help us figure out how their calves are going to perform (actually there are four, but more about that later):
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PEDIGREE
The performance of their ancestors. As far back as the eye can see, how did their Dam, Sire, Grandsire etc. perform?
PERFORMANCE
The animal’s own individual data. What was its birth weight, weaning weight, etc.
PROGENY
The animal’s calves’ performance that we already have, if any. What did they average, for example, for yearling weight or carcass quality?
All this information is combined together to compare individuals across the entire Angus breed, whether they are raised in wheat pasture country or on rocks and cactus. What an amazing thing to be able to compare animals from different herds in different parts of the country with some degree of reliability. Before EPDs it was just about pure luck. So let’s look at some of the various EPDs that are available and get a better feel for what the numbers mean. There are currently 23 different traits that are evaluated on each registered animal at the American Angus Association. Each EPD covers a specific area of performance. There is a pretty good explanation of each one on the Angus Association’s website www.angus.org/Nce/Definitions.aspx. There are also several new traits currently being developed. This technology is changing rapidly, so it’s helpful to check in on this site from time to time just to stay up to speed.
WHAT DO THE NUMBERS MEAN? The first thing to know about the numbers used in EPDs is that they are expressed in a unit of measure such as pounds, inches or dollars that correspond to that particular EPD. For example, Birth Weight EPD is in pounds, Mature Height is in inches, and for the multi-trait selection indexes such as Grid Value ($G), it is expressed in dollars. EPDs can be positive or negative which speaks more to the degree of change an individual can have on that particular trait or set of traits. For example, a -2.0 birth weight EPD would mean that an individual would decrease birth weight averages by two pounds as compared to an animal with a 0 EPD. Now remember EPDs are a comparison tool between individuals and deal only with the difference we would expect in the averages of their calves. So let me give an example of how NOT to use this tool and then one on how the tool is designed to be used. Example #1: A male embryo has a Birth Weight EPD of +2.0. (Yes, an embryo’s EPD can be calculated if we know its pedigree!) Since the average birth weight for bulls in Angus cattle for 2017 is 79 pounds, you would expect the birth weight of that calf to be 81 pounds at birth. (79+2=81) Right? Right??? Wrong.
SO HOW DO YOU USE THE NUMBERS? Example #2: A male embryo (I know it’s hard to get your mind around evaluating embryos) has a Birth Weight EPD of +2.0. A second male embryo has a Birth Weight EPD of -2.0. You would expect, therefore, that the average birth weight of the first embryo’s calves (all of its calves for eternity or until the frozen semen runs out) would be 4 pounds heavier than the second embryo’s calves average birth weight (+2 - (-2) = +4). So if I had to choose at this point which bull would be more likely to lower the overall birth weight of my cow’s calves, I would choose the second embryo.
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That’s the basics behind EPDs the way they were designed to be used: comparing two or more animals by taking the info we have available and using that to predict how much their progeny will be different. Sire A’s EPD minus Sire B’s EPD = the difference in the averages of their calves. It’s designed to help answer questions in a complicated world. So let’s look at some of the other EPDs, and I think you’ll see the process is pretty much the same for each. We can all understand pounds, inches, and dollars pretty well, but let’s look at Calving Ease Direct (CED), for example. It’s expressed as a percentage. If you have two bulls and one bull has a 10 CED EPD and the other has a 5 CED EPD, then the bull with the 10 CED would on average have 5% more unassisted births from his calves than the bull with a 5 CED (10-5=5).Calving Ease Maternal (CEM) is the same way, the difference indicates percentage of unassisted births in the individual’s heifer calves when they have their first calf. So if I was thinking about breeding a set of cows to raise replacement heifers from, and I wanted those future heifers to calve without much assistance, then I would find the highest CEM bull I could buy. If I already had some first calf heifers, and I wanted to choose a bull that would have the fewest assisted births possible, I would choose the one with the highest CED, and I would look at BW EPD as well just to be a little more specific. (Question: At what point is birth weight trend so low that it results in less viable calves? For those of you who have selected calving ease on birth weight only for years, it’s something to think about.) EPDs make it especially easy when comparing animals looking at single traits, but single trait focus can’t tell you the whole story, so they have developed multi-trait indexes. These indexes use the information from several single traits and combine them, taking into account a lot of different factors and express the differences in something we can all relate to: dollars. The Weaned Calf Value ($W), for example, uses Birth Weight EPD, Weaning Weight EPD, Maternal Milk EPD, and Mature Cow Size EPD and combines them with some basic real world assumptions such as base calf price, typical cow/heifer mix, cow weight, feed energy costs, etc. The resulting dollar amount means that if you randomly mated two different individuals to a comparable set of females, and the calves were exposed to the same environment, and a normal number of replacement females were saved from both sires, on average you could expect the value of those two sets of calves at weaning to be the difference between the $W of the sires. It’s the same calculation, Sire A minus Sire B equals the difference in the average of their calves.
DON’T GET CARRIED AWAY Remember we said EPDs are based on all the knowledge we have on an animal: Pedigree, Performance, and Progeny. Well, in the embryo examples above, there was no performance and certainly no progeny, so those EPDs are relying on only one leg of a three legged stool. You might say that that is a pretty shaky, unreliable stool. You would be right. In fact, all EPDs come with a reliability estimate: Accuracy. It might not be printed every time the EPDs are advertised, but it is available on every EPD (the indexed $Values do not have accuracies because the underlying EPDs may have varying accuracies and the economic assumptions are just that, assumption). An animal that has 10 generations of performance, its own performance, and 1000 actual calves to average has a much more accurate EPD than a frozen embryo or a yearling calf.
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That yearling calf might be of interest to you seeing as how many bulls sold for breeding purposes are sold before they ever have a single calf. That would be a two legged stool for those of you keeping count: his pedigree and performance, better than nothing, but no guarantees. There is no ‘paint by numbers’ guide to animal breeding. I like to say animal breeding is more like an art form than a science. If I were to give you the odds that are a reality of using EPDs, and the odds are available (see the Association web page www.angus.org/Nce/Accuracy.aspx you would be tempted not to use EPDs at all. But even though the ‘tool’ is limited, it’s still better than the way it was before EPDs, if you use this tool with your eyes wide open.
THE GENOMIC ENHANCEMENT OF EPDS So now the good news… they are constantly working to improve this comparison tool, and we are now at a moment of monumental change. The development of DNA analysis is one of the most exciting changes in the cattle breeding world since they developed artificial insemination technology. If you had a three legged stool, and you added a fourth leg to it that would be a pretty big deal, but for those animals that only have two legs of information and you add a third… now that’s a game changer. That’s what genomic enhanced EPDs do for the cattle breeding industry. This new source of information peeks inside the very foundational blocks of what cattle breeding is all about. The cattle that are DNA tested now have Pedigree, Performance, and DNA information, and then it can be verified by the average performance of their progeny when we get that data. As more and more animals are tested, they become part of the ancestral pool. That eventually increases the reliability of ALL EPDs. They estimate the effect on an animal’s EPD accuracy by DNA testing is as if they had already had 3 or 4 calf crops evaluated! The upshot of it all is that those odds we were talking about just got better. Maybe EPDs can be useful after all, as long as you keep at least one eye open.
WHAT’S NEXT? So what’s the next big change coming down the road? That’s a great question. Technology seems to be changing at an ever-increasing rate. In fact the next step is already here in something they call ‘Single Step’. I’ll try to address that in the next issue.
Until next time, Dale Jenkins Littlerobe Angus Ranch
questions about genomic-enhanced epds? email us at: littlerobeangusranch@gmail.com. Texas Panhandle Rancher • Page 7
AFall Family Picnic Making Time For What Matters
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Life here at Littlerobe can be busy, and we reckon your life is hectic too. If there’s one thing that connects all the humans on the planet right now its our ability to stay “busy.” Fall often brings football games, school functions, weddings, church events - not to mention all of our everyday work on the ranch. All these things may be good, but in our busy-ness we often overlook some of the most important things, like taking time to enjoy the season with the ones we love. That’s why our family loves the creek. Littlerobe Angus Ranch was named due to the fact that our land sits on Littlerobe Creek - a tiny little trickle that runs in and around some of the best trees in the county. In a countryside that is generally flat grassland, nothing is quite so wonderful as that little creek and the trees and wildlife that call it their home.
At the Creek “I enjoy going to the creek because it is such a nice place with trees all around and the sound of the creek,” Duane says. Every month or so, or whenever the occasion grants it, our family puts the rest of our life on standstill, loads up the pickups with food and drinks and s’more supplies, and we travel together down to the creekside. Maybe its a birthday or maybe someone is home visiting from college. Maybe its just a lovely evening. There’s an old picnic table that Duane and Donna’s oldest son, David, built in Ag class when he was in highschool. We gather around the table and take a few moments to eat and laugh together. “I have such wonderful memories of riding on the back of the pickup with my sisters and cousins singing at the top of our lungs. I always loved it when Granddad would tell a story or a joke by the dying camp fire. Then Dad would break out the guitar, and we’d sing whatever song came to mind,” said Grandaughter Kayla.
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"It is a brief time to lay back and share stories, play music and get away from the chaos and stress of the ranch." -Karley Jenkins, granddaughter
“The creek has always been such a special, centralized part in my life. I can’t even remember the first time we went. I do remember being very young and looking up at the stars and feeling such amazement that I could see the galaxy, right there in our own backyard,” said Katie Whittington, granddaughter. “Friends and family always joined us there, and we would play and sing and dance while my aunt and uncle would play ‘Orange Blossom Special’ on the fiddles.” Fall is always one of our favorite times to visit the creek, but as grandchildren can attest, it never takes any convincing to get Donna to jump on board with the idea. Just mention the creek, and she starts packing up the pickup. Texas Panhandle Rancher • Page 11
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“I love going over to our creek!” -Donna Jenkins
“It is a peaceful, stress-free place,” said Donna. “Time with family there is so special. There’re no distractions of TV, cell phones, computers etc. Just a time for enjoying each other.”
Keeping the tradition Now that the next generation of Littlerobe is getting old enough to fully enjoy the picnics, we find even more excuses to make our way to that special place. Great-grandsons, Samuel and Walter, had their first picnic at the creek when they were two months old. They’re two years old now, and they have given all of us this recaptured sense of the beauty and wonder down on the Littlerobe. It’s miraculous to watch them discover and explore the world around them, ride horses for the first time, and chase lightning bugs around the trees. The creek puts in front of us of all the wonderous things the Creator has given us to enjoy and the importance of spending time with our family and friends. While the world keeps spinning around, we find it so refreshing to hit pause now and then and remind ourselves what really matters. The creek is more than just a little running water. To us, the creek is our family heritage - a memento of the things that we want to pass on to our children and our children’s children: memories of laughter, stories, music, and love. Texas Panhandle Rancher • Page 13
Looking to the Future Meet Karley Karley is the youngest of eight grandchildren on the ranch, and she’s always been the most curious. She fell in love with ranching at the age of three when instead of going to daycare, her dad took her with him to the ranch everyday. “My mom would talk about how dad would be carrying a 50-pound feed sack, and I’d be on his back as well,“ she said. “He was excited about it, so I was excited about it. As a kid, I was a big eavesdropper, so any facts I could get or anytime that my parents took on a serious tone, I would listen. When they talked about the cattle and the ranch, I knew it was important. “As I grew older we moved to the ranch, so I got to spend a lot more time helping Grandma and Granddad. I got to work a lot more with the cattle side of the business and was able to start showing a heifer of my own for the local county livestock show, which was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed experiencing how the animals behaved, what foods they needed, and what rations to use.”
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Throughout her childhood on the ranch, Karley said she became more and more interested in the science and medical aspects of cattle ranching. “When i was a kid the vet would let me hold the semen cup,” she laughed. “I was barely old enough to walk, and yet here I was, taking the bag and wrapping it up. I learned a lot about genetic diseases as well. I remember listening to Dad and Uncle Donald Ray and Granddad talk about them, and I really soaked that in. It stayed with me the whole time.”
Genetics
As she entered high school, Karley joined FFA and her school’s Veteraniarian Medicine Program and started interning at a local veteraniarian’s office in addition to working on the ranch. While she felt she was too tender-hearted to become a vet, she loved getting to learn more about the animals and beginning to understand more of the lab work that comes in to play. “I loved analyzing and taking blood samples or a tissue sample or a hair sample to see if they were carriers of some kind of genetic disease,” she said. “I found I would really love to do genetic researching. It’s a very new technology that we have, and its a growing industry. There’s a lot of new possibilities that you can go into. “I’m currently studying to get a BS in Animal Science Production. Usually, if you’re going to go into a research field, you would want to go on to get your Masters. Once I am a grad student, my focus will be more narrowed down to where I can strictly study genetics. That’s what I’m really looking forward to - studying livestock animals to improve the quality of these animals.”
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Karley is currently a freshman studying at Oklahoma State University. “OSU is primarily an Agricultural College, and with the history of our family in OSU with Dad and Granddad and Grandma and my sister Kari and our cousin Sarah, I felt at home there. I love the environment of OSU. Everyone is very welcoming and neighborly,” said Karley. For Karley, there are still many hands-on learning opportunities on the ranch. “Last year I was able to take part in the local Beef Symposium,” she said. “The tour came to our ranch to attend a presentation over genetics with the Zoetis representative. I got to skip school since it was career related, and go to it so I could talk to the representatives and get to meet them. It was so interesting to get to hear more about the industry.”
Emerging Careers in Agriculture Here are some of our favorite up and coming agricultural career fields: 1. Animal Biotechnology The study of molecular biology techniques used to genetically engineer animals, improving their suitability for pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial applications 2. Entomology The study of insects and their interactions with plants, animals, and human culture. 3. Biosystems Engineering This field merges biology and technology to address problems and opportunities related to food, water, energy and the environment.
To learn more about fields of study at Oklahoma State University, visit casnr.okstate.edu.
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Slice of Heaven Making Pies with Donna by Katie Whittington
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Some of my fondest memories from my childhood took place in my grandma’s kitchen. From dress-up tea parties to family game nights to making snowman-shaped pancakes for breakfast, we have shared lots of laughter and fun in the warmth of that kitchen. Grandma uses a pastry cloth, measuring spoons, and rolling pins from her mother. Her kitchen is full of a large variety of tea pots and heirloom mixing bowls. A collection of plates line the ceiling. “We’ve made lots of pies together,” she says, smiling. “I think all of you girls have come over and made pies with me. Part of the fun of pies is having someone to make them with.” She pulls out an old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook riddled with splatters and dog-eared pages. She’s had the cookbook since she was in high school. “I suppose I just kind of learned to make pies by trial and error. We did make pies in the food’s chemistry class. This teacher was very valuable. She said, ‘You need to know how to make a cake without a recipe. Someone will invite you for dinner after church and say, “Oh, won’t you make your favorite recipe?” you need something you can fall back on.’ I doubt anyone would take you to their house after church and say ‘Why don’t you make your favorite recipe?’ now a days,” she laughs.
family heritage - pies
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She carefully adds cool water to the dough as I ask her if she’d ever had any disasters with making them. “Of course! But it never stopped me from trying again,” she said. “If it can happen it will. That’s just something you have to learn. If its a disaster, just go on from there and do the best you can. Don’t let it ruin your day.” When she makes a pie crust, there’s often left-over pie dough. This is never discarded. You can spread the leftover dough with butter and cinnamon and sugar and make a delicious, simple “cinnamon pie.” Every time I eat it, I am transported back to my childhood. It’s was almost like the pie was just for us kids. When the pies would be finished, we’d all sit down with a cup of hot tea and a piece of cinnamon pie and enjoy it warm from the oven. “My mother would make cinnamon pie - I think that’s where I picked it up from,” she said. As Donna started her own family, she often made it for her boys, David, Dale, and Daniel, and they loved eating it right out of the oven. “The cinnamon pie was just for snacking. If someone went by and wanted a bite - you just got it.” She also said the cinnamon pie “has ulterior motives, because you use every scrap, and then you’re not tempted to try and make another pie shell.” Another variation on this simple “left-over” pie crust recipe is a fudge pie. Duane’s mother would make these and as equally simple as the cinnamon pie, it is a chocolate lover’s dream.
No-Fail Pie Crust Recipe
1 1/2 cups flour 1/2 tsp. salt 1/2 cup shortening or butter 4-5 tsp. cold water or buttermilk Sift together flour and salt. Use pastry blender or a fork to cut in cold butter or shortening. When you get to an even consistency, slowly add water or buttermilk. If using water, Donna recommends turning the faucet on to a trickle and slowly stirring the water into the mixture to get the right amount. Form dough into two round disks. Chill if desired. Roll the crust out about 1/4” thick, starting each time from the center of the disk and rolling towards the outer edge. When you’ve reached the desired size for your pan, fold dough into fourths - this will enable you to transport the dough to the pan without ripping it. Place at corner of pan and unfold. Add filling of choice. Use remaining disk to add top if desired and crimp edges to seal. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes to brown the edges. Reduce to 350 and bake for another 30 minutes. Enjoy!
Grandmother Carnegy’s Easy Fudge Pie 1 1/5 cups sugar 3 Tbs Cocoa 1 -2 Tbs butter Slowly add 1/4 cup milk
Place in pie crust and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.
Simple Cinnamon Pie
Using any leftover pie crust, roll out dough & place on pizza pan or metal pie pan. Spread generously with butter. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and bake until crisp. (About 10-15 minutes.) Enjoy immediately!
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The culmination of any afternoon in my Grandma Donna’s kitchen is finishing the task at hand and sitting down with a cup of Earl Grey tea and dessert. We talk about the ranch, weird dreams we’ve had, books we’ve read, recipes we’ve tried, funny stories... just about everything. We sit and look through old photographs. There’s no hospitality in the world like being at her table. If you’ve been here to visit, there’s no doubt you’ll have experienced a meal here or a homemade pie. When we were kids, all the grandchildren would sleep on the living room floor together. One by one we’d wake up, come to the kitchen, and go find Grandma. She’d always be there waiting with pancake batter, lots of love, and a smile, and I’m pretty sure everyone who walks through Duane and Donna’s front door feels the same way we did as kids - loved. “The fruits of our labor!” she says as she clinks her teacup to mine.
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Upcoming Dates We hope to see you all there!
Annual cattle Sale Littlerobe Angus Ranch, Higgins, TX March 24, 2018 Beef symposium Canadian, TX Spring 2018
Look For Our Next Issue Coming in March!
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11790 CR 30 Higgins, TX 79046 806.852.4171
www.littlerobeangusranch.com