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Dr. Jamie Courter is your Mizzou Beef Genetics Extension Specialist

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By Jared E. Decker Many of you have probably noticed that things have been a lot less active on the A Steak in Genomics™   blog, but you probably haven't known why. In January 2021, I was named the Wurdack Chair in Animal Genomics at Mizzou, and I now focus on research, with a little bit of teaching. I no longer have an extension appointment. But, with exciting news, the blog is about to become a lot more active! Jamie Courter began as the new MU Extension state beef genetics specialist in the Division of Animal Sciences on September 1, 2023. I have known Jamie for several years, meeting her at BIF when she was a Masters student. I have been impressed by Jamie in my interactions with her since that time.  Dr. Courter and I have been working closely together the last 6 weeks, and I am excited to work together to serve the beef industry for years to come! Jamie holds a bachelor’s degree in animal science from North Carolina State University and earned a master's degree in animal...
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Things that Annoy Thallman About National Cattle Evaluation

Mark Thallman
Mark Thallman recently attended a bull sale with his farther-in-law to help him buy a bull. He was annoyed to find out the embryo transfer calves only had parent average EPDs. This annoyed Thallman because his masters thesis had been focused on calculating EPDs using data from embryo transfer calves.
Thallman also speculates that herds using within herd genetic evaluations are due to frustrations with the genetic evaluations published by breed associations.
Thallman also points out that we need better fertility EPDs. Stayability EPDs were a good first step, but we can do better. He suggests implementing fitting Days to Calving and Pregnant/Open as separate traits. He also envisions fitting each parity as separate pairs of traits in a 6-trait model. Thallman also sees a "build it and the data will come" strategy working best.
We have also failed to implement and use visual scores such as structural soundness, udder soundness, and sheath scores.
Should we score breeders on how biased their submitted data is? We could then regress their EPDs back to the breed average based on the quality of their data.
We also need better decision support software. Unfortunately, as funding for national cattle evaluation research dried up, the development of decision support software lost steam.






Location: Lincoln, NE, USA

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