written by: Matt Woolfolk, ASA Director of Performance Programs

The end of October through the month of November is as jam-packed a time-frame as you will find on the Shorthorn calendar. The American Royal, North American, ASA Annual Meeting, and several Shorthorn sales all occur in a 5 week window this fall; and of course there is always Thanksgiving on the November agenda. With plenty of events across the country still to attend, I hope to see many of you somewhere on the road between now and the end of the year.

It’s certainly hard to think about next year right now, but if you are able to plan ahead, it could be beneficial to you when it comes time to register your 2020 calf crop with the ASA Whole Herd Reporting (WHR) program. Some of the most common questions that we get in the office on an almost daily basis relate to the WHR program. With WHR inventories being mailed out soon, I will take the opportunity to highlight the WHR process and timeline.

Your 2020 WHR inventories will be mailed the first of November. The WHR inventory is where you will account for all active breeding females in your herd and remove any cows that have left your place over the past year. There are two ways to complete your WHR for 2020. You can fill out the paper form you receive and mail it back to ASA with payment, or you can log in to your Digital Beef account and do your assessments there; as well as settle your balance by credit card while on Digital Beef. It is important when removing cows from your inventory to use as accurate of a disposal code as possible. Check the list of disposal codes when updating your inventory to indicate the reason for her removal from the herd (Death, sold for old age, fertility issues, etc.). The disposal codes will be printed with your inventory or available as the drop down menu from the “Dispose/Exempt” button if you choose to do your assessments on the computer.

Yearling heifers that are not going to calve in 2020 do not have to be included on the WHR assessment inventory. To exempt those heifers from your inventory, use the code number 51 “Active-WHR Exempt, Shorthorn heifer held from breeding”. Doing it this way will keep those heifers active so you can do a WHR assessment on them when they have that first calf in 2021. If there is a heifer listed on your inventory that has been culled and will not calve in your herd in 2021, use the proper disposal code to permanently remove her from your account.

The fee for a WHR assessment on a breeding female is $20. If you get your assessments completed before January 10, a $4 per head discount is applied, making the assessment fee $16 per breeding female. From January 10 to March 1, the $20 per head rate applies.

After March 1 through the remainder of the 2020 calendar year, the WHR assessment fee is $25 per breeding female. When you do your WHR assessments for your herd, that fee gives you some value on each of your breeding females. The registration of her calf is included in that WHR assessment fee, as well as covering the first transfer of that calf after you sell it. The WHR assessment only covers the first transfer of the calf, and any future transfers of that animal will be charged to the seller.

While it’s not the typical holiday season activity, getting your WHR assessments done before the early January cutoff is worth the time to complete it in exchange for your peace of mind and break on your wallet when it comes time to start registering calves. Being up to date on WHR will bring one less headache to the calf registration process. The monetary savings of getting ahead of the curve on completing the WHR for 2020 are also noteworthy. We all love saving a little money!

If I am not lucky enough to run into you this month, I hope you and your loved ones have a happy Thanksgiving. Even in the tough economic times we are facing in production agriculture, we still have plenty of blessings from the Lord above. Enjoy the time with those that you care about, and I hope you make sure there is beef on the menu!

Written by: Matt Woolfolk, ASA Director of Performance Programs

When I am struggling to come up with a topic for this column like I was this month, I usually look at the previous month’s article (to make sure I don’t copy it again) and the article from the same month in the previous year; hoping for a topic that was relevant the previous year. My September 2018 article opened with, “To be honest with you, I had a hard time coming up with something to write about for this issue.” I was successful in discovering a pattern: that the September issue is a common time for writer’s block! The best way for me to get rolling in these cases is to start writing what’s on my mind and hope I can tie it back to cattle eventually. That method worked out well for this month.

I spent an August weekend in Des Moines with friends at the Prairie Meadows racetrack. It was a fun way to wrap up the summer before heading into the chaos that is fall sale and show season. With everyone on the trip working in purebred cattle marketing, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we won’t be able to get together again until Denver. If you invite someone in our line of work to a social event on a fall weekend, don’t expect them to show up unless it’s your sale day!

Horse racing is affectionately known as “The Sport of Kings”, but I’m not sure that moniker really fits. Some of you tune in for the Kentucky Derby or other big races and see the high-class party atmosphere, but you may not realize that everyday horse racing is a blue-collar profession. The barns at Prairie Meadows are full of horsemen trying to make their living winning races. While we all tried to find the next longshot winner, the conversation at the table turned to cattle.

One of the guys at the table made the observation, ‘You know, this sport deals with a lot of the same things that we do in the cattle business.” What followed was a lengthy discussion about some of the similarities in horse racing and the beef cattle business. I’ve outlined some of the biggest commonalities in the rest of this article.

Breeding and Genetics: Breeding racehorses is a combination of art, livestock breeding and luck. What makes the Thoroughbred breeding industry much more challenging, is that all matings must be natural service in order to be eligible for registration. Imagine if we had that restriction in the registered beef business! Most of the Thoroughbred breeding in the US is based around Lexington, Kentucky. However, many state Thoroughbred organizations offer special races and incentive programs for horses bred and raced in their state. We watched several races which were open only to Iowa-bred horses while at Prairie Meadows, and they even host a special day of racing to celebrate the Iowa-breds at the end of the season. Similar to our livelihood, it’s important to find a niche for your breeding program where you can fit and be successful.

Conformation: I’m not an expert in racehorse phenotype, but one of my friends has some knowledge of what one should look like. He certainly had a “look” or type that he was studying
for when the horses paraded out onto the track before each race. It didn’t necessarily help him cash any winning tickets. I think as cattlemen we have a better grasp on what type of animal will be a winner in our herds than the horseplayer at the track.

Statistics and Data: Open up a race program and you will find more data than you know what to do with on each race. There are statistics on jockey and trainer performance, as well as recaps of recent past races for every horse in the race. To a novice, it can be a numerical overload, but it can also helpful to find the winning horse and place the right wager. Much akin to our own performance data, EPDs and selection indexes, the information in a racing program can be beneficial if you know how to use it!

Betting Style: Everyone at the track has their own methodology to picking a winner. Some watch the horses in the paddock, while others study the stats in the program. Some play by gut feeling or color of the horse. Regardless, the destination is the same for everyone: to win some money! Study all the different cattle operations out there and you’ll see a similar trend. No two cattlemen go about things exactly the same, even with the same end goal in mind.

Compassion: The crowds are not very big at Prairie Meadows, except for the 10 minutes before and during a race. The spectator numbers grow then because all the people who work in the stables make their way over to watch their horses run their race. Grooms, trainers, and other staff all gather near the finish line to cheer on their horses. You can tell that they care deeply for the animals they are responsible for. As soon as every race ended, they bounced into action to cool their horse down and get them back to the barn for post-race care. What may just be “the #5 horse” to the racegoer is a special athlete with a name and a unique personality to the people who care for them, just like we view some of our cow herds.

Horse racing has always been one of my favorite sports. After the trip to Prairie Meadows and the discussion of how similar it is to our beloved industry, I think I’ve developed an even deeper appreciation for their business. Midwestern horsemen and cattlemen are a lot more alike than we might think, with both groups made up of dedicated, hard-working people trying to make a living in the industry they love. You also have to be a pretty good gambler to make it in either business.