Success on Display in Missouri With the Show-Me-Select Heifer Program by Brandi Buzzard Frobose, RAAA Director of Communications
Value-added programs are simple on the surface, extremely complex to plan and even more difficult to make successful. In the beef business, where margins fluctuate like the Midwestern weather, producers are constantly looking for that home run to push them to the next level of premiums. Perhaps one of the greatest opportunities for value-added success in the beef industry occurred in the early 1990s, after the country had experienced an influx of Continental/European genetics. This, in many cases, led to a remarkable change in breeding programs across the U.S. However, the way in which heifers were being developed during the postweaning to pre-breeding phase was not keeping pace with changes related to growth rate and resulting differences in age at puberty of the heifers themselves. This translated to heifers not being adequately developed to realize their reproductive potential. In fact, pregnancy rates at the end of the first breeding season were astoundingly low. Compounding the replacement heifer problem was the common occurrence of dystocia and lower-than-acceptable breed-back rates among 2-year-old cows.
Dr. David Patterson
Eldon Cole
Inception Enter Dr. David Patterson and a handful of progressive Kentucky cattle producers. This forward-thinking group came together and laid out a comprehensive plan that provided opportunities to assess and improve the region’s heifer development programs. Patterson’s graduate research at Kansas State University focused on nutritional development of heifers in relation to reproductive outcomes among differing breeds or biological types of beef cattle. Reproductive endpoints that he evaluated included
The Show-Me-Select Heifer program swept the state in 1997 and has grown, both in success and size, every year since.
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age at puberty, date at first conception, pregnancy rate at the end of the first breeding season, incidence and severity of dystocia and breed-back rates as 2-year-olds. He, in addition, evaluated the relationship between age at puberty and length of the postpartum interval following a heifer’s first calving. Using his background in heifer development and its relationship to reproductive outcomes, Patterson and the group of progressive cattlemen in central Kentucky drafted plans for what was to become known as The Bourbon County Elite Heifer Program. During this same timeframe, animal scientists at Colorado State University developed the reproductive-tract scoring system which utilizes pre-breeding exams to assess reproductive status of heifers prior to their first breeding season. Working together, Patterson and the producer group designed a program utilizing all available information related to heifer development and created benchmarks that enabled producers to evaluate the success – or perhaps failure – of their heifer selection and development programs on an individual animal basis. Patterson went on to explain that during this timeframe, the Beef Improvement Federation was successful in bringing beef producers together to improve beef herds, with emphasis on the sire side.