![[ Random Image ]](/wp-content/themes/shorthorn/headers/header3.jpg)
The American Shorthorn Association will be featured on the The American Rancher on RFD-TV on February 1 at 8:00 p.m. CT. Be sure to record or watch this new show featuring several Shorthorn breeders.
If you miss it, the show will re-air on February 2 at 12:00 a.m. CT and February 7 at 11 a.m. CT.
The ASA Annual Meeting will be held virtually on February 6th at 10 a.m. central time zone.
Delegates, you have received an email with information about the annual meeting. You will receive more emails as we have more information!
ASA members, we will send out an eblast as we get closer to the date of annual meeting with information on how to join the Zoom meeting!
General Information for Shorthorn Breeders:
Hotels for Shorthorn National Show in Oklahoma City
Headquarters: Best Western Plus Saddleback Inn :: 4300 SW 3rd St. :: Oklahoma City, OK 73108 :: 405.947.7000 :: American Shorthorn Association Exhibitor :: Rate: $74.99 King, $79.99 Double
Hilton Garden Inn Oklahoma City Airport :: 801 S Meridian :: Oklahoma City, OK 73108 :: 405.942.1400 :: American Shorthorn Association :: Rate: $87.00 King or Queens :: Booking Link
Shorthorn exhibitors gathered in Kansas City, Mo., on October 22 for the American Royal National Shorthorn Show.
Cattle and exhibitors experienced a long day of showing due to an exponential growth in number of head exhibited for the National Shorthorn Show. In 2019, a total of 128 cattle were exhibited in the junior and open Shorthorn and ShorthornPlus shows. This year, the Shorthorn breed more than doubled total for all the shows with 272 cattle shown.
The junior Shorthorn and ShorthornPlus shows were judged by Chris Cassady of Iowa.
“I think for me personally it is cool to be asked to judge Shorthorn shows because it goes back to my roots,” Cassady said. “As a young kid I showed many Shorthorns. It is how I got started. I enjoy looking at these cattle. I don’t care if they are red, roan or white. The good ones are good.”
The open shows were judged by Scott Werning of South Dakota.
“I had a blast sorting through these cattle,” Werning said. “I was really impressed with the quality. This is actually the breed that started a fire in me for this industry. I would see Shorthorns in magazine and thought they were the coolest thing. Some of my first show animals were Shorthorn. I have a long history with this breed.”
The American Shorthorn Association (ASA) has five national shows each year, as well as several regional and super regional shows. Exhibitors can attend these shows to receive points and be awarded National Show Animal honors. Due to COVID-19, the point shows have been adjusted but the ASA plans to resume normal show points in the 2021-2022 show season.
“It is exciting to see our breed continue to grow and as the shows get larger, the quality improves,” said Emily Velisek, ASA Director of Events, Shows and Membership Activities. “Even with the challenges we have faced in 2020 it is nice to see the breed coming together and showing up.”
The next national show for the ASA will be in Louisville, Ky., for the North American International Livestock Exposition. Cattle will be exhibited on November 14, 15 and 16.
In the early days of the global coronavirus pandemic, many Americans faced an unsettling reality: empty grocery store shelves.
Dramatic changes set in almost overnight and left families spending all of their time at home, limiting trips to the store and buying in bulk to prepare for the unknown. While the pandemic sent shockwaves across all levels of the U.S. economy, it also provided the chance to serve consumers in new and creative ways.
The American Shorthorn Association (ASA) recently launched an initiative to promote members who are offering beef products directly to consumers.
It’s called Shorthorn Beef — Locally Raised.
“During the pandemic some consumers faced food shortages, and this brought to light the importance of having a local source for beef,” says ASA President Nancy Grathwohl-Heter. “A local program is appealing to consumers, because they know where their meat is sourced and how it is raised.”
The Shorthorn Beef program is an avenue for connecting the breed’s cattle producers with those interested in buying locally raised beef. The effort includes promotional opportunities through social media, the ASA website and other media platforms.
“It’s really about families supporting families,” says Montie Soules, ASA executive secretary and CEO. “When you purchase Shorthorn Beef, you’re supporting a family farm and their livelihood. We hope this program continues to open doors between the community and livestock producers.”
When buying directly from a local farmer or rancher, Grathwohl-Heter says consumers can purchase a quarter, half or whole Shorthorn beef and receive great-tasting, healthy products at a reasonable price point. She and her family manage DTR Cattle Company near Raymond, Kansas, and were early participants in Shorthorn Beef — Locally Raised.
“Our family has been raising Shorthorn cattle for four generations, and we strive to produce a tender and delicious product that exceeds consumer expectations,” Grathwohl-Heter says. “We enjoy having a conversation with consumers and sharing our story as a family-owned Shorthorn cattle operation.”
The gentle, quiet Shorthorn breed — ideal for family-focused farms and ranches — has long been known for its superior-quality beef, ASA says. The breed also has a unique ability to produce high levels of marbling combined with greater levels of muscling than other breeds.
“Shorthorn cattle have always been known for producing tender and highly marbled beef,” Grathwohl-Heter says. “The Shorthorn Beef program highlights the breed’s great end product, and helps breeders create more value and demand for Shorthorn genetics.”
Participating members will receive marketing support and be featured on the ASA website among the growing directory of Shorthorn breeders with beef to sell. They will also be able to brand their product using the program’s official logo.
“Through this new effort, we hope to provide a niche market for fresh, high-quality local Shorthorn Beef,” Soules says. “Our more than 6,000 adult and junior members from across the country are committed to raising the best possible Shorthorns and supporting the way of life they enjoy. We want to share that message with consumers.”
In addition, Soules sees the effort behind Shorthorn Beef — Locally Raised as an extension of the breed’s American legacy. The Shorthorn was country’s first beef breed and traces its U.S. history to the 1780s.
Next year, the organization celebrates its 150th anniversary — making ASA the nation’s oldest beef cattle association. Go online to access the list of Shorthorn Beef participating breeders or contact ASA for more information on how to get involved in the new program.
As most of you know by now, the North American International Livestock Exposition is on! It was announced on September 18th that they are planning to move forward and have the show, which makes us all happy after hearing Denver had postponed. With that being said, it is going to look a little different at NAILE this year. Please find the information below for what we know will be happening at NAILE. There is always possibility of change. As we get more information, we will do our best to pass along information to our breeders.
Disclaimer, this is what we know as of now but there is possibility this could change. We wanted to get this information out to our Shorthorn Breeders to try and stop rumors and help you make decisions before entries close. Entries close on October 1st with late entries being October 10th.
Stalling Policy; we will be following the NAILE stalling policy.
NAILE uses our entries from the previous year to plan how much stalling we receive for our breed. They will take a percentage away from our previous year entries and then take a percentage away for no shows of current entries. So, what does this mean for you?
We get less stalls assigned for Shorthorns than what are entered. We advise that you enter more head then what you plan to bring because we will cut down on your stall space from what you enter by the same percentage that we are cut by NAILE. Please add space for tack to your entries. (NAILE does not allow any tack space when assigning breed stalling space)
If you have any stalling request, we will take them, but we cannot promise that you will get them as we will be stalling where you fit best. Stalling request need to be in by November 1st to Emily at emilyv@shorthorn.org, in order for them to be taken into consideration. Also, please contact Emily if you are coming or not coming to the show. Stall space will be made solely off of number of head entered.
The Steer Profitability Competition (SPC) is designed to provide junior members meaningful exposure to the opportunities and challenges associated with cattle feeding. The SPC will not only allow participants to measure and compare the profitability of their own animal(s), but of greater importance, it will introduce young beef enthusiasts to peers, mentors, industry advocates, and experiences that are exceedingly difficult to acquire for any beef producer. Participants in the SPC program will be powerful voices as they transition from junior membership to adult participation within the beef industry.
By the International Genetic Solutions Science Team
Regardless of how users designate contemporary groups (CG), all calves born from first-calf dams will be placed into a separate CG from calves out of mature cows. Given the vast majority of producers actually man- age this age group separately, it is reasonable to define their calves as their own CG. Handling these as separate CG will reduce the environmental noise caused by differ- ent management strategies and biological constraints for this age group.
The magnitude, and even direction, of the correlation between weaning weight direct and milk, has been long debated in scientific circles. In fact, there is a wide range of estimates that exist in the scientific literature. Given that, the science team developed a model that assumes milk and weaning weight direct are independent (i.e., genetic correlation of 0). In addition, with some of the other proposed updates, it was discovered that the evalua- tion solved more effectively when genomics were removed for Milk EPDs. In light of this discovery, the IGS Milk EPD will not use genomic information for the time being.
Males usually have a higher growth potential than females simply due to gender. As a consequence, the variation associated with their weights also tends to be greater. This difference in the amount of variation between the sexes are set to a male scale in the up-dated growth trait predictions.
As the number of genotyped animals has increased, so has our ability to estimate marker effects and identify subsets that are more predictive. Relative to growth traits, a new (and larger) subset of markers has been identified to add more accuracy to EPD.
When we began looking into growth trait data, we discovered that not all birth weights followed expected amounts of variation. Some of the examples of reduced variation included weights rounded to the nearest 5 pounds, reduced variation when hoof tapes were used, and likely-fabricated data with little to no variation. Some of these data are useful, but they are clearly on a different scale and need to be treated appropriately. Dr. Bruce Golden developed a way to use machine learning to recognize unique features of each class of birth weight observation and predict how it was obtained. By accounting for the various categories, the genetic evaluation is still able to use submitted records that fall out of biological expectations for most scenarios, while more accurately accounting for different practices of collecting the weights.
With these proposed changes, a considerable amount of work went into testing if the new models improved growth trait predictions. One of the most common procedures for evaluating updates to EPD systems is to exclude a certain portion of the phenotypes available, run the evaluation, and compare the correlation of the EPD from two systems to the phenotypes that were removed from the evaluation (higher correlation is bet- ter). For these updates, this procedure was used where all animals born after 2018 were excluded from the evaluation system and then comparisons between the current growth trait EPDs and the updated EPDs were made to this phenotypic information. The results for each of the analyses are presented in the following table.
Pearson correlation between parental average EPDs and excluded phenotypes from animals in the IGS genetic evaluation that were born in 2018 or later.
| Trait | Updated Evaluation | Previous Evaluation |
| Birth Weight | 0.52 | 0.50 |
| Weaning Weight | 0.38 | 0.34 |
| Yearling Weight | 0.45 | 0.37 |
The results in the table above show the evaluation updates had higher correlations to phenotypes than the previous growth trait models. This equates to more precise EPDs for Birth, Weaning, and Yearling Weight.
An additional trait that is evaluated with the growth analysis is the Milk EPD. A Milk EPD represents the genetic difference in calf weaning weight based on the maternal environment provided by the dam. Due to the nature of this trait being the maternal component of weaning weight, a different validation strategy must be used to evaluate the updated predictions. To evaluate the updated Milk predictions an expected weaning weight for the excluded animals was formed using the following equation:
Predicted Weaning Weight = Calf WW EBV + Dam’s Milk EBV
This predicted weaning weight was then correlated with the excluded weaning weight phenotypes. Again, the updated predictions of Milk had higher correlations compared to the previous Milk EPDs (0.42 vs. 0.39, respectively). These results show that the updated predictions more precisely predict the weaning weight of an animal than the currently published evaluation. Breeders may notice reranking of animals with the release of the growth trait updates. While the change may be unsettling, the end results by every measure have shown an improvement in the precision of the growth trait predictions.
Last month we put out that we would be continuing the Regional Points with the shows that were left in each region. Unfortunately, since then, almost all of the State Fairs hosting regional shows have cancelled. The Show Committee had a meeting at the junior nationals in Texas and made the recommendation to suspend the regional points for this year because of all the cancellations. The ASA Board of Directors followed the recommendation of the Show Committee and as a result the Super Regional and Regional point system will be suspended for the 2020-2021 show season.
With this change, we are still going to move forward with National Show Points. As, a way to give out more awards for this show season the ASA Board approved to add division winners for our National Show Points. We will score these division winners with the same points that allocate for the National Show Female and Bull awards. It is also approved that there must be at least two National Shows during the 2020-2021 show season in order for any national awards to be presented. This does not mean that an animal must exhibit at two National Shows, just that two Nationals Shows must take place. So far, one of the National Shows have cancelled, Keystone International Livestock Exposition. If any more cancel we will get these updates to the membership as best as we can. During these unprecedented times because of Covid-19 we all have to anticipate possible adjustments happening to everything we do. The resulting awards for the National Shows will be presented at the 2021 Annual Meeting, which is the kickoff of our 150th Anniversary Celebration.
Below are the points that will be used for the National Shows.
5 National Shows
1st: 8 points
2nd: 7 points
3rd: 6 points
4th: 5 points
5th: 4 points
Division Champion: 7 points
Reserve Division Champion: 5 points
Grand Champion: 11 points
Reserve Grand Champion: 9 points
If you missed the July 14th Webinar on crossbreeding, heterosis and their value to the Shorthorn breed, it is now available to view.
Dr. Darrh Bullock, Beef Cattle Extension Specialist for the University of Kentucky, was the guest speaker for the webinar hosted by ShorthornPlus/Composite and Commercial Acceptance Committees.
