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Show-Me-Select Heifer Expansion Starts Dec. 16 At First Meeting In Trenton, Mo.
COLUMBIA, MO.
A new sale for Show-Me-Select heifers can start in northwestern Missouri. But first, area cow-calf farmers must join to produce and sell the quality beef replacements.
Jenna Monnig, University of Missouri Extension livestock specialist, Princeton, Mo., leads the effort. A first step will be a meeting Dec. 16 at Trenton, Mo.
With help from MU beef reproduction specialists from Columbia, she will explain the Show-Me-Select Replacement Heifer Program and its added value. "We'll jump-start the program in this region and ask new producers to join," she says.
The attention-getting parts of the educational and marketing program are spring and fall heifer sales. The most value returns to enrolled herds of consignors. However, buyers gain replacements to improve quality in a herd.
“Show-Me-Select provides high-quality beef heifers of sound body and high genetics,” Monnig says. Those who join learn both genomics and heifer development.
Big advances are made in calving ease, which lowers death losses. At the same time, new DNA in a herd fills needs in offspring. Those can be maternal or carcass traits.
Both heifers and steers in enrolled herds gain value.
Six sales for spring calving heifers are underway around the state this fall.
“Show-Me-Select has been here for over 20 years,” Monnig says. “But it never caught on in northwest Missouri.”
Monnig, charged with changing that lack, set the Trenton meeting to start.
The free meeting, and free supper, will be 6 p.m. Monday, Dec. 16, at the Barton Farm Campus of North Central Missouri College. The site is at 96 SE Eighth Ave., Trenton.
Long before the new sale, area producers must join and raise heifers for sale.
An RSVP for a meal count is needed now. Call the MU Extension Center in Mercer County at 660-748-3315 or send email to monnigjm@missouri.edu. The meal sponsor is Vit-A-Zine.
The heifer program is based on research from the beef herd at nearby MU Thompson Farm, Spickard, Mo. Researchers who worked at the MU farm will talk at the meeting.
The MU Extension educational program provides a marketing outlet for quality beef heifers. The steermates sell well to feedlots or packing plants.
Only farmers enrolled in SMS sell in the trademarked sales. Increasingly, buyers from other states come to Missouri to buy bred heifers. Those heifers carry unique black-and-gold ear tags.
The program has added millions of dollars to the state's farm economy.
The teaching comes from MU Extension. The sales are run by a group of heifer producers. Farmers set the rules. ∆
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