A crazy month!

I can't believe it's already August, as I get older it seems the days just go by faster and faster! Although I think I have to owe most of July going by real fast by how busy I was, in July pretty much two out of the four weeks was spent away from home, spending most of my time in a barn with a bunch of cattle!

From July 12-17 was Summer Synergy in Olds Alberta. We headed up to Olds with our five head of cattle around noon on the 12th and got them settled into their tie out pens and everything set up for the week! Throughout the week along with feeding, watering, washing and bedding our cattle so they were nice and comfortable I participated in a variety of different competitions such as multi judging, show team judging, and showmanship during the week. And then Friday was the big show day, where all the kids in all beef breeds, dairy and sheep showed the animals they worked hard to prepare for the show. All the competitions during the week and the conformation show we got points on how well we did and those points got accumulated for the chance to win a scholarship at the end of the week. There was also a marketing component that counted, consisting of making a blog which is how this whole blog got started in the first place and thanks to all of you for reading, following and viewing I was one of the 27 who received a scholarship and was recognized at the Calgary Stampede grandstand on Saturday!

It was a crazy, exhausting week but totally worth it in the end, walking across the grandstand in front of thousands of people was an experience that I am not soon going to forget! It was an excellent week and I would encourage anyone between the age of 9-21 to come to Summer Synergy in the future, it is a great week and a wonderful opportunity to meet new people and a great way to make get some scholarship money!

Well, after that fulfilling week in Olds, I came home to catch up on some sleep, relax a bit and get ready for the week after for our trip up to Saskatoon Saskatchewan for the 2011Canadian Junior Hereford Bonanza July 26-31. Every year this show is hosted by a different province and this year it was a huge success with our highest numbers ever. My siblings and I took eight head on the long almost seven hour drive to Saskatoon. It is quite similar to Summer Synergy with different activities like showmanship, judging, grooming and team competitions happening throughout the week with the big open show at the end! I did alright in the show this year with my yearling heifer placing third in the class and the 2 year old bull 40W, featured here received the honor of reserve champion senior bull! 

Bonanza is probably one of my favorite parts of summer, I have been going since 2008 when Alberta hosted it in Medicine Hat and I have loved it ever since. It is another great way to meet fellow junior members that love to show and raise the Hereford breed! Again I encourage any Hereford enthusiasts under the age of 21 to come out and have fun with us, it is another great opportunity for scholarship money, free semen through the semen donation program and the chance to win money for a heifer through the heifer lottery, all you have to do is become a Canadian Junior Hereford Member.

It has been a great month, quite an exhausting one and I'm still catching up on sleep but it has totally been worth it.

Team Alberta



Numbers Galore

A few days ago I did a blog on ultrasounding carcass traits in animals and had mentioned EPD's, today I will go into a little more depth on EPD's.

EPD stands for expected progeny differences. Here is an example of EPD's for an animal. To some of you this may look like just a bunch of numbers, I will do my very best to explain what the numbers are and mean.

• Calving Ease - is an EPD that has a multitude of factors that impact calving ease from gestation period, feed, climate, cow size to breed. Calving ease is how well a cow will calf, we want calving ease to be higher so that most of them will be unassisted.
• Birth Weight is the EPD that gets calculated using the birth weights of the bulls and cows progeny as well as the calves birth weight. The lower the number the better. This bull for example has a birth weight EPD of +3.6 and he is used on cows. Our one heifer bull has a birth weight EPD of -1.1 which is low and part of the reason he is used on heifers because you want heifer's calves to have low birthweights so that they can easily calf and don't need assistance.
• Weaning weight is based on the weight of the calf's and its parents weight at weaning (when we take the calves away from the moms). In this case it is the higher the number the better. For example if another bull at an EPD of 0.0 this bull with the weaning weight of +55.8 will sire offspring with an average of 55.8 pounds heavier at weaning then the bull with an EPD of 0.0.
• Yearling weight is the same as weaning only it applies to when the animal is a year old.
• Milk  is another one of those EPD's that you want higher numbers. You can't have a cow that doesn't produce any milk so you want high EPD's, it is a measure of the amount of pre-weaning performance gained by calves which can be attributed to the milking ability of a bull's/cow's daughters. The EPD is expressed in pounds of calf.
• Total Maternal is half the weaning weight plus the milk of the mother.
• Maternal Calving Ease is the calving ease of the mother.
• Scrotal Circumference is determined and adjusted from the yearling scrotal circumference of a bull's or cow's progeny, in centimeters and again the higher the EPD the bigger the better.
• Cow Weight is the EPD of the cow weight.
• Stayability is the probability that a bulls daughters will stay in the herd for so many years.
• MPI is maternal productivity index.
• FMI is feedlot merit index
• Fat is determined from the ultrasound measurements and the lower the number the less fat the animal has and the better.
• REA is the rib eye area EPD also from ultrasound, higher numbers mean larger rib eyes.
• MARB is the marbling of the animal also determined from the ultrasound with higher EPD numbers also meaning more marbling.

The middle row is the accuracy of the EPD's and is very important when looking at the EPD's. For example the calving ease EPD is seven percent accurate.
The row at the bottom is the average EPD's of all the calves born in 2009 of the Hereford breed. An average is made every year of the calves and is used as a guideline to compare an animal to the average. EPD's of different breeds cannot be compared because each breed has their own methods of calculating EPD's and they are simply not comparable.

EPD's showed graphically in percentiles.

EPD's are a lot of numbers but are very useful in choosing herd sires to breed cows to. Through EPD's breeders can also increase the productivity and characteristics of their herd. They are also used to decide which cows to put with which bulls, for example if one cow has a low milking EPD, then we would stick her with a bull that has an above average, high milking EPD and the calf should average out and increase in milking EPD. EPD's are useful in herd management and are starting to be used more by breeders in their herd and in selecting bulls. Please comment and let me know if you have any questions!

Credits: http://www.hereford.ca/performance.asp
http://www.hereford.ca/association_member/PDFs/forms/calving_ease.pdf

Breeding Season!

 Well, it's official the last 23 cows of our 234 AI (artificial insemination) cows went out to the bull yesterday! After we AI our cows we wait three weeks before sending them out to the bull so that way when they calf next year we know if the calf is sired by the AI bull or the natural bull! Now the 2011 breeding season is in full swing with 409 purebred cows with 11 Hereford bulls. Along with about 165 heifers with 4 bulls.

A cow cannot just go with any bull so it is a process to decide who goes with who. So, my dad will sit down and look at the cows mother and father to make sure she doesn't go with a bull that is related to her, we will also look at the calves the cow has had in the past, usually not putting her with the bull that produced the poorest calf, but if she had one exceptionally good calf then she will go to the same bull.The bulls are now out with anywhere from 25 females to 50 females.

LBH 157K RIBSTONE 40W

This is 40W a two year old bull who is the future and that may very well be the best bull that has ever walked our soil. We have used him very heavy, last year as a yearling we AI'd a bunch to him and put him with about 40 cows, this year we AI'd 60 to him and right now he has 50 females. His first calf crop is looking absolutely amazing and I look forward to his future calf crops along with what his sons and daughters will do for us in the near future.



LBH 73L STANDARD 268P



One other bull that also has 50 cows this year is 268P. He is seven years old and has produced countless sons and daughters. Every year he seems to be the bull that leaves the fewest open, he does the job and very well!







CC 77J STERLING 39T



One of our Heifer Bulls. The bulls that we put on heifers are ones that have light birth weights, for calving ease. Heifers are smaller than a full grown cow and they can have difficulties calving out a heavy calf so light birth weight bulls are used to keep the birth weight down, and this bull 39T keeps the birth weights extremely light, some of them are almost to light. But we rarely help one calf because of size. 

The other 12 of our prestigious sires:

MVF 237K STD BRIT LAD 75S

LBH 157K RIBSTONE 66T

SGC 129P SUPER LAD 102T

LBH 268P STANDARD 106T

LBH 268P STANDARD 168T

LBH 157K RIBSTONE 198T

LBH 157K RIBSTONE 236U

BP 144P STANDARD LAD 147W

LBH 39T STERLING 162W

LBH 102T SUPER RIB 47X

MCCOY 58G JACKPOT ET 105X

LBH 236U RIBSTONE 217X

These bulls will be out with the cows until the beginning of July, throughout the summer they will keep us busy by having to regularly move them to a new pasture as needed when they run out of grass, along with being constantly checked, to make sure nothing is wrong with any of the cattle.

If you have any questions on our breeding program or these sires please feel free to ask. If you want more information on the selective breeding of these bulls you can check out my sisters blog post on selective breeding http://justatypicalfarmgirl.blogspot.com/2011/05/selective-breeding.html.

Registration after Registration!

RIt was a little bit of a rainy day so I spent the majority of the afternoon completing the registration of our calves. Being part of the purebred Hereford industry, every year we register our purebred calves. The registration is done on the computer through an online system, thank goodness, I could not imagine doing 458 calves by hand like my grandpa used to do back in the day when Internet didn't exist, however he wasn't registering quite as many.

This is a completed page with the necessary information of the calf. In this case the sire is
a Ribstone so the calf will become LBH 40W RIBSTONE 49Y. If it was a female then
"MISS" would be inserted in front of RIBSTONE.

It is a simple process, the dam is already on record so all we do is enter her calf. By entering the sire of the calf, and then through the sire the calf also gets a name, it's birth date and birth weight. The calve will then get a registration number and will end up with a pedigree that shows the animals name along with there parents, birth date and ownership!

The pedigrees can then be viewed online through the Canadian Hereford Website. Here is a link to one online with all the information of the calf, http://abri.une.edu.au/online/cgi-bin/i4.dll?1=2021292A&2=2420&3=56&5=2B3C2B3C3A&6=5958595B5A24252F23&9=525C595E

This is the official pedigree that we receive from the Hereford Office for our records.