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Showing posts from June, 2020

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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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Hazardous Hair Shedding

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One of the things I learned from my student Troy Rowan was that best part of breed association's junior national expos is the contests and activities.  So, when I saw the Junior National Hereford Expo Pee Wee Speech contest was online this year, we jumped at the opportunity.  Below is Jensen Decker's speech titled "Hazardous Hair Shedding".    Really excited about the growth this young man showed through this experience! Thanks for to the National Hereford Women for sponsoring the Pee Wee Speech contest.
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Three Awesome Things We Learned From Hair Shedding

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Figure 1 from Durbin et al. 2020. We recently posted a preprint (a research publication that has not yet been peer reviewed) to the bioRxiv server. You can read the article here:  https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.21.109553   *Update: Peer-reviewed, published paper is available open-access here:  https://gsejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12711-020-00584-0  "Development of a genetic evaluation for hair shedding in American Angus cattle to improve thermotolerance" This manuscript describes our work with Angus breeders and Angus Genetics Inc. to create a hair shedding EPD for the American Angus Association. We learned a lot of cool things about hair shedding in this paper. Including how hair shedding is related to other traits and how hair shedding is related to the environment. 1) Negative Relationship Between Milk and Growth Something interesting to me was to learn more about the genetic correlation between weaning weight direct and weaning weight maternal...
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EPDs and Genomics: A Conversation with the American Angus Association Board

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At the National Western Stock Show, I had a great discussion with the American Angus Association board and members. Angus Media put together a nice summary of that presentation.
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