HEREFORD BUSINESS

You will find a report from Don Richardson on the last CHA Meetings held in Calgary. Lots of interesting stuff taking place with the breed and Don reports extensively on it in a readable manner.

We lost a couple more breeders that I have been made aware of.  Tom Charlton of Bard Polled Herefords, Aldergrove passed away suddenly. Tom had been breeding Polled Herefords since he retired and at age 86 died while checking for new calves. He did it his way. Ron Carberry from Duncan also passed away. Many of you will remember Ron & Joyce being very  active in the Hereford business up until selling out and retiring a few years ago.

A reminder that 2009 is Bonanza in BC, so get ready to celebrate.

BC’s CHA Director Report

February 2008 CHA Board Meeting in Calgary

Thursday February 28 saw the Canadian Hereford Board’s Herd Breed Improvement committee meet in Calgary in preparation for the following days Board of Directors winter meeting. The HBI committee, consists of Chairman Chad Nicholas, with board members Randy Radeau, Byron Templeton and Don Richardson, CHA breeder Chuck Fiss, and staff Val Wells, Karin Schmid, Sean McGrath and Gordon Stephenson.. This group had a full agenda before them.

First order of business was a review of first lactation EPDs by Chuck Fiss. This was undertaken to see if we could identify why some bulls show a substantial decease in their milk EPD when their first daughters come into production but after several years of daughters records most of these bulls eventually recovered to the estimated EPD they had as yearlings. Concern has been expressed that we are missing something in our model which could account for this. Although Chuck was unable to definitively say that we had a model error he did provide us with a solution to get this answer. Instructions will be sent to ABRI, our service provider, which will help to shed more light on this interesting aspect of the continuing challenges we face to keep our model cutting edge and provide breeders with the best estimate possible of their genetics.

Karin Schmid reported that after reviewing the presentation of Whole Herd Reporting benefits which we publish in the front of all our pocket herd books there would be no benefit to actually publishing a Fact Sheet on this subject. Take a minute and reread this item and it will again remind you why we must report all herd mates to give our best calves complete credit for how good they really are!

A discussion of the Pan American Cattle Evaluation and it’s implication for Canadian breeders was held. Little effect will be seen in the June 08 run when the Argentine and Uruguayan data is included because they have such small numbers compared to the overwhelming data which comes out of North America.

The new Sire Summary format was reviewed. This year we have expanded the Sire Summary to include any animal which has any single EPD with 60% accuracy and who has had a calf recorded in the past two years. There is no longer a Young or Reference sire list as these are now covered off in the expanded format. The trait leader list moves from top 50 bulls with over 60% accuracy to identifying the top 10% and 20% of bulls respectively for any given trait with accuracies over 60%. This has resulted in a true identification of all the breed leaders in each trait, consequently the traits like weaning and birth have many more bulls than just the top 50 while traits like the carcass traits, which tend to be lower in accuracy, have lists which are much shorter than the previous fifty we identified in the past. Under the old system in order to find fifty bulls with an accuracy of over 60% for REA we had to use bulls that were not even above breed average for REA. This new presentation more fairly and accurately identifies the true proven breed leaders.

In the introduction to this years Sire Summary we have also included a table to help you interpret just how much value you should put in EPDs of various accuracies. I have included it here for your convenience and maybe to spur you to sit down and reread the Sire Summary intro again as it has some great information in it. Find it at hereford.ca.

Look for the addition of a searchable data base consisting of all the sires used in THE Herds in the last two years and the development of a Proven Superior cow list based on our MPI index.

The committee reviewed the work involved in moving the MPI calculations from Lethbridge to ABRI. It was a challenging and arduous procedure but the result will be substantial cost savings to the CHA and the ability to move forward with developing as second index, the Terminal Productivity Index.

The HBI committee reviewed our web-site policies and recommendations were formulated to put forward to the board for approval and implementation. The bottom line is that changes will occur with the new EPDs in July 08.  All web visitors will continue to see all pedigree information but after that date the EPDs and performance data will only show on the web site if the animal is owned by or bred by a THE member. As a further incentive to get all breeders to become THE herds, your membership in THE will not only get your animals EPDs published on the web but will also give you as a THE breeder access to all EPDs in the system using a personal password. To be fair to historical data, EPDs of all animals born prior to 2003 will not be filtered out. This is the year we started Whole Herd reporting and told breeders that they would no longer be getting EPDs if they were not in THE.

A remake of the web page and revenue generation on the web site was also discussed. You can look forward to a more aggressive position taken by the CHA in the near future as we begin offering Banner Ads, member logos, business cards with inks to web pages, photos of animals on pedigrees as well as commercial advertising.

While on the subject of web pages I can finally report to you that the Computer Software update has finally achieved an acceptable level of performance and we are expecting to be able to bring back the online system to members in the next month.

Lastly, we spent time reviewing the International Benchmarking of Genetic Trends across the top four breeds in Canada, USA, New Zealand and Australia. We are pleased to report that CHA breeders continue to make progress by increasing calving ease and turning the corner on the birth weight EPD.  Our average calving ease which had showed a steady decline up to 2000 has now recovered to the same level as  we had in 1990 and the birth weight EPD has been constant the last two years, down slightly from the previous five years as breeders work hard to reduce our breed average birth weight EPD.

The HBI meeting ended with Chairman Nicholas giving us a report on recent trends in molecular genetics and a report on the ongoing Net Feed Efficiency trial with Hereford steers at Cattlelands.

  Friday, Feb 29, the board meeting convened under the Chairmanship of Victor Oultan who welcomed the Board members and opened the meeting at 8am. After accepting agendas and minutes from a previous teleconference and our Turro meetings we had the Manager review for the entire board the situation with the computer system and our relationship with ABRI of Australia.

The current situation is as follows.

• The system is working satisfactory
• Registry work is complete for 2007, except for (5) members
• Expect registry work will be back to normal by the end of March
• Ultrasound and DNA work is up-to-date
• The on-line registry will be tested with several members in late March and launched to the membership ASAP.
• The Terminal Productivity Index needs to be developed.
• The Maternal Productivity Index transition is complete and a report was generated in January

The next order of business was to have the honor roll nominations reviewed and a designated director spoke on behalf of each one. Final scores will be tallied and the honorees announced later this spring.

The audited financial reports were reviewed and accepted as presented. Some explanations were available which helped explain the large loss we showed in 2007 but the short answer is that we had revenue submitted in 2007 not make the books till 2008 due to the computer conversion while as well, as we were spending the remainder of the AAFC money from the federal government (the BSE grant to all purebred breed associations). This latter money had to be spent in a short space of time (two years) and only certain items were qualified expenses that could be charged to the program. We had shown the surplus money as income the year before but this year had to show the expenses without offsetting income so the bottom-line looked much worse than it actually was. 

Gordon reviewed the proposed 2008 budget with the Board and indicated it is a break-even budget before depreciation and the use of remaining AAFC monies for research and Ultrasound rebates. The budget appears very tight and is an indication there needs to be a financial plan put in place that reflects the priorities of the Board. The Executive plans to meet in Calgary on May 26th to discuss all the options pertaining to revenues, board structure, over-head expenses, and arrangements with the provinces. The goal is to develop a financial business plan for 2009-2011.

The board heard two speakers on Friday afternoon. The first, Dr Bob Church, formally head of Medicine at the University of Calgary and a cattle producer, spoke on the value in the DNA inventory which the CHA has collected over the years, which has accurate pedigree information attached. In his opinion this represents a very valuable resource which could be leveraged by the CHA to make a deal with one of the large research oriented companies who are developing the gene markers in the cattle industry.

The second speaker was Dale Kelly, former GM of the Charolais, Simmental and Limo Associations of Canada, and now executive director of Bova-Can Labs. Dale explained that they will be changing their name to GenServe and that the Saskatchewan Research Council is withdrawing from its joint venture it has enjoyed with seven major livestock associations, including the CHA, for the past 20 years. Dale said that it is the position of GenServe that the DNA information and samples are owned by the producer/breeder who sent in the samples and that Lab is simply a steward of the samples, while the breed associations are the custodians of the data such as parentage verification. The GenServe company plans to offer several of the Merial’s panel tests using the SNIP technology and these could be incorporated into our DNA tests now done for parentage verification. GenServe will be dealing with each association on an individual basis in the future and Dale left a draft agreement for the CHA to review. The manager is to continue negotiations with the GenServe Lab, including costs for multi sire testing.

Chad Nicholas summarized the recommendations resulting from the HBI meeting and the recommendations were all accepted by the board.

Randy Radeau, chairman of the Pedigree committee gave his report and asked that the board accept the revised Genetic Abnormality Policy which now provided a description of the defects listed in the policy.  The Board did review the policy at their meeting in August and had asked that the wording in the last clause be improved if possible.  Gordon indicated he used the exact same wording for this particular clause as the American Hereford Association. We also passed a motion allowing for the staff to place a link from our web site to the list of identified carrier animals listed on the American, Australian and New Zealand sites.

Both Wally Pugh, Chairman of the Marketing committee and Garth Charlton, Chairman of the Show Committee, gave reports of conference calls held by their committees but no recommendations were made to the board other than the request to confirm all the nominated MOE show for 2008.

At the end of the day Don Richardson made the motion that the board supports the concept of discontinuing mandatory issues of registration papers for every animal registered in the Canadian Hereford Herdbook.  “I ask that the staff, in conjunction with the Pedigree Committee, to review this issue and bring to the board all the steps required to make this happen, including any constitutional changes.  I also asked the staff to outline a timetable to make this happen and a plan to sell it to our membership.  It is my belief that this change would allow members with internet access to print Registration Certificates at home as well as support electronic transfers.  For those members who do not have internet access or who feel they require certificates printed at the CHA office, this service would continue.  I made this motion with the belief that it would both increase the service to members as well as decrease the cost to our association as we move forward to take full advantage of the electronic opportunities available today.” This motion for the to CHA investigate the possibility of moving to a no paper registry system was passed and we look forward to the answers this summer at Medicine Hat when we again meet at Hereford Week in Canada 2008.

submitted by Don Richardson, CHA Director for BC