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Thompson Research Center hosts field dayIt has been nearly 15 years since a field day was held at the University of Missouri Thompson Farm Research Center in northern Missouri. Judging by the size of the crowd at the September 22 field day the work being done at this research farm has not gone unnoticed. "I have been involved in a lot of research projects on campus and from here to Washington, D.C., but I have to say this is one of the most significant research projects that this university has ever been involved in," Abner Womack, senior economist at the University of Missouri Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, said. "You have a situation here that occurs once in a lifetime because the set of researchers here come together once in a lifetime. The potential of the research that is being done here is absolutely awesome." George Drury donated land that would become the Thompson Farm Research Center in 1956. At first the 1,600-acre farm was used primarily for crop management research. Since the 1990s the farm has been known more for beef cattle production system research. Researchers at the center have developed timed artificial insemination (AI) protocols for beef cows and heifers. This research led to the development of the Show-Me-Select Replacement Heifer Program. David Patterson, University of Missouri Extension beef reproduction specialist, said research started in 1997 to clearance of CIDR cattle inserts and this progressed to CIDR based protocols. "What we have been working on here for the last several years is beef cattle reproductive management," Patterson said. Patterson said they have combined research with a focused breeding program with the objective of developing of fixed-time AI protocols for beef cows and heifers. The byproduct of that work is the development of a white tablecloth quality beef product. The success rate of fixed-time AI or appointment breeding has been proven in 70 herds across the state of Missouri with nearly 7,000 cows. Patterson said those 7,000 cows were appointment bred with no heat detection and had an average pregnancy rate of 62 percent. Only four of those cooperator herds had pregnancy rates under 50 percent. Patterson is now moving into a new program called Tier Two breeding that will develop premium markets for the steer siblings of the improved heifers. This program will take an integrated approach to expand marketing opportunities for small- to medium-sized producers. "The idea behind this project results from things we began seeing when we went out into the field with these timed AI programs," Patterson said. "People were not making good decisions in regards to sire selection. They were not recognizing that these AI firms have done a lot of the work on identifying these sires in terms of accuracies." The potential for combining timed AI with high accuracy sires can be seen in the 2008 calf crop from the Thompson Farm Research Center that were finished at a Kansas feedlot and sold on a U.S. Premium Beef marketing grid. The high accuracy calves were 64 percent Choice, 36 percent Prime, and 79 percent qualified for Certified Angus Beef (CAB). In comparison a set of natural service calves were 100 percent Choice, 45 percent qualified CAB, and none graded Prime. Jerry Taylor, University of Missouri Wurdack Chair in Animal Genomics, explained the benefits of decoding the DNA of cattle. "We know all 3 million base pairs in the bovine genome," Taylor said. "By knowing the genes, we know how a cow becomes a cow." How they get this information to producers in a form they can use and afford is the question. "I can take any two animals, do a genomic test and tell how related they are without knowing their pedigrees," Taylor said. "We don't need pedigrees anymore, we can do DNA typing." At one point in his presentation Taylor passed around glass slides that contained an array of DNA markers for traits for beef cattle. The markers are single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP). Taylor said the slides cost him $2,400 each but said that similar slides for use by producers would soon be much cheaper, around $14. According to Taylor 50,000 to 1 million SNPs can be arrayed on a single SNP chip. The field day also included presentations on blood pregnancy testing, ultrasound and fetal sexing, the economics of using high accuracy sires, weaning calf management, hay testing, wildlife management, and forest management. Doug Rich can be reached by phone at 785-749-5304 or by e-mail at richhpj@aol.com.
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