News Update
Oct. 1, 2009

Junior Board Debuts New NJAA Logo, Announces LEAD Dates

In their first meeting since elections in July, the National Junior Angus Association (NJAA) Board of Directors approved a new NJAA logo, established a career development contest, discussed potential fundraising and scholarship opportunities, and set important meeting dates and locations. Read more.

For more information, please visit www.angus.org or www.njaa.info.

Cattlemen’s Beef Board Fiscal 2010 Budget Approved

The Beef Promotion Operating Committee has approved investment of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB) Fiscal Year 2010 budget of $42.3 million on a total of 30 national checkoff programs.

At the 2009 Cattle Industry Summer Conference in July, CBB approved a budget of $41.6 million for Fiscal Year (FY) 2010, which begins Oct. 1, 2009. Thanks to checkoff revenue coming in higher than expected and some unspent administration funds in the current fiscal year, the Operating Committee last week recommended an amendment that increased that FY 2010 budget to the $42.3 million, up slightly from $41.7 million in FY 2009.

The approved plan of work funds promotion, research and information programs is designed to build demand for beef using national checkoff funds. The Operating Committee, which is made up of 10 producer members of the CBB and 10 producer representatives from State Beef Councils, had to balance the industry’s requests for funding against anticipated checkoff collections for FY 2010. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) still must approve the plan before any funds can be expended.

Click here to read the full funding description for 2010.

— Release provided by CBB.

MU Researchers Help Identify Cows That Gain More While Eating Less

With more than 2 million cows on 68,000 farms, Missouri is the third-largest beef producer in the nation. Due to rising feed prices, farmers are struggling to provide feed for the cows that contribute more than $1 billion to Missouri’s economy. University of Missouri (MU) researcher Monty Kerley, professor of animal nutrition in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, is studying how cows might be able to gain more weight while consuming less, potentially saving farmers up to 40% of feed costs.

Two years ago, MU researchers started studying which biological processes could make cows feed-efficient. They examined the basic compound that cells use for energy, commonly known as ATP, using previous research that demonstrated how DNA influences weight gain in cows. Some animals can synthesize ATP faster than others, helping them to use energy more efficiently and, thus, gain more weight with less food. Kerley hopes that farmers will use this research to breed more feed-efficient cattle.

“We would love to go to the rancher and say, ‘you can reduce your feed cost 40% with the same weight gain,’ ” Kerley said.

Kerley and his team are using a feed and weighing system that records individual intake and body weight of cattle daily. This research is being done at the Beef Research and Teaching Farm facility in MU’s South Farm Agricultural Experiment Station. Whenever an animal steps to the bunk, or a trough, a computer notes the cows’ arrival and departure times and how much they eat. When they drink, they stand on scales that keep track of their weights. If a beef producer just selected the top one-third of their most efficient cows, forage intake would be reduced by 20%, Kerley said.

Kerley said that when feed intake is reduced, methane emissions and manure production also decrease.

“If cap-and-trade regulations, in some form, become part of America, it is likely that cattle producers will have to defend themselves against claims of methane emission by ruminants,” Kerley said. “If a farmer can demonstrate reduced carbon production, then he or she might be able to ‘sell’ production credits on an exchange. That could provide the farmer with an additional income stream.”

Beef producers are using this research to make genetic selections in their beef herds. Missouri was one of the first states to have a private bull-testing facility that tests for efficiency. The Division of Animal Sciences also has a research emphasis to study genetic control of feed efficiency and methods to predict animal efficiency.

Kerley’s research has been published in a variety of scientific journals.

— Release provided by MU Extension.

Livestock Can Help Rangelands Recover from Fires

A 14-year study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Oregon found that rangelands that have been grazed by cattle recover from fires more effectively than rangelands that have been protected from livestock. These surprising findings could affect management strategies for native plant communities where ecological dynamics are shifting because of climate change, invasive weeds and other challenges.

Much of the rangeland in the western United States is threatened by the spread of cheatgrass and medusahead, invasive non-native annual grasses that fuel wildfires and readily infest landscapes, especially after fires. These rangelands historically were burned by wildfires every 50 to 100 years, but throughout the past century these fires have been suppressed by humans. This suppression allowed some dead plant litter to accumulate, but when cattle were introduced to the region, their grazing helped keep litter accumulation in check.

Rangeland scientists Kirk Davies and Jon Bates and research leader Tony Svejcar, who work in the ARS Range and Meadow Forage Management Research Unit at the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center in Burns, Ore., carried out studies comparing how native plants on grazed and ungrazed sagebrush rangelands recovered from fires. All the sites had similar vegetation profiles and were virtually free of cheatgrass.

In the grazed areas, cattle consumed around 40% of the available forage, which removed much of the potential litter. The ungrazed sites, where livestock had been excluded since 1936, had almost twice as much litter as the grazed sites.

The scientists conducted a controlled burn on all the sites in 1993, and then measured vegetation cover, vegetation density and biomass production in 2005, 2006 and 2007. They found cheatgrass had infested a large portion of the ungrazed sites, leaving these areas even more vulnerable to future fires.

However, cheatgrass did not become problematic on the sites that had been grazed. On these sites,native bunchgrass cover was almost twice as dense as bunchgrass cover on the ungrazed sites. The team concluded that the litter in the ungrazed sites fueled hotter fires that killed off much of the perennial vegetation, which allowed quick-growing invasive annuals to become established.

Results from this study were published in the September 2009 issue of Ecological Applications. This study supports the USDA research priority of responding to global climate change.

ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

— Release by Ann Perry, ARS.

— Compiled by Mathew Elliott, assistant editor, Angus Productions Inc.