2005
Missouri Beef Tour
Graham and Maryville, Nodaway County, Missouri
2005 Beef Tour featured a variety of operations…
Contributed by: Dick Lee, Communications Director, MU Commercial Agriculture Program
"The Galaxy Beef goal is to develop a top-of-line Angus herd," Steve Miller, beef operation manager, told the 100-plus participants in the 2005 Missouri Beef Tour held in Nodaway County August 27.
"Balanced expected progeny differences, strong performance figures, and exceptional conformation are criteria used in our selection of quality females," Miller said.
Galaxy Beef maintains a herd of 225 cows located on the home farm near Graham and in Montana. Seventy-five are registered Angus and the remaining are largely used as recipient cows in the farm’s embryo transfer program.
"Earlier this year our recipient cows had 110 calves," Miller said. "One of our best Angus cows had 31 calves during the spring calving season and 26 more are expected by the end of our fall calving season for a total of 57 calves during 2005."
Dean Pierson and his wife Cheryl Womack, Kansas City, are partners in the Nodaway County operation.
The annual tour is sponsored by the Commercial Agriculture program at the University of Missouri.
Members of the Commercial Agriculture beef focus team, including KC Olson, nutritionist; Bob Larson, veterinarian; and Vern Pierce, economist; worked with Amie Schleicher, MU regional extension livestock specialist for Nodaway, Atchison and Holt counties, to carry out the beef tour.
From the Galaxy farm near Graham in southern Nodaway County the remaining four stops were located near Maryville.
The second stop featured a cattle feeding operation maintained by veterinarian David Frueh, owner and operator of the Maryville Veterinary Clinic, and Alan Stiens who, along with his father and brother, has a crop and beef operation.
For the past nine years Frueh and Stiens have commingled their calves and fed them to harvest at Stiens’ feed yard that has a 900-head capacity.
The feedlot ration for the 450 head in the Steins feedlot this year included corn, wet distillers grain, silage, and alfalfa. All of the feed is produced locally as the wet distillers grain comes from the ethanol plant at nearby Craig and the corn, silage, and alfalfa comes from the Stiens’ cropping operation.
Frueh, who has operated the Maryville Veterinary Clinic since 1982, has 150 Salers cows, a herd he has maintained over a number of years. "I sell most of my Salers to local producers and, if possible, buy back many of the calves from buyers of my bulls," Frueh said.
Stiens also consigns calves from the family herd.
For several years the two sold their cattle under contract with a Nebraska feedlot. More recently they have sold to the highest bidder. The cattle are sold on the grid and they get carcass information on individual animals.
Through the years 65 to 70 % of the animals have graded choice or better.
Two tour stops were held at the Northwest Missouri State University farm. Roger Vest, of Maryville, has a herd of 250 predominately Angus cows and this year tried an idea of feeding out cull cows from his herd. Currently he has four spring-calving herds and is in the process of developing a fall-calving herd.
In April, Vest sold young calves from 27 cows plus others from his herd slated to be culled. The culls were sent to Bentley Feedlot in Iowa in May of this year as part of an Iowa State University extension program in which cows were fed for the premium white fat market. They were harvested in August.
Darrell Busby, Iowa State University Extension livestock field specialist, coordinated the cull cow program. He was scheduled to speak with Vest but was unable to attend because of a family emergency.
This left Vest to explain the operation without complete data on the results of the feeding trial.
"I do know that nearly everything that could go wrong with the feeding trial did occur," Vest said. "The announcement of a BSE case, extremely hot and humid weather, and other factors complicated the cull cow feeding effort and affected the price received."
Despite the handicaps Vest said both he and Busby thought the trial of feeding cull cows had merit and would likely try it again and hope for more favorable conditions.
Jim Husz, farm manager, was the host at the Northwest Missouri State University stop, along with Andy Van Aernam, beef herdsman.
"Our primary responsibility is to provide a teaching environment for the 80 to 100 students who are on the farm each semester completing course work for an agricultural degree," Husz said.
"To do this we maintain a range of livestock—beef and dairy cows, swine, and sheep—for instructional purposes, to teach livestock judging, host contests, and for other events requiring farm livestock," he noted.
"We have 140 beef cows made up of registered Angus and Charolais," He said. "Our bulls are finished and, for the most part, are sold locally as herd bulls. Most heifers are kept as herd replacements and cull steers and heifers are fed out and sold."
The dairy herd includes 65 lactating cows made up of Holsteins, Brown Swiss, and Jerseys. The swine operation is an 80-sow farrow-to-finish operation and 20 to 30 sheep are also part of the University’s livestock enterprise.
The final tour stop was a complimentary beef dinner served at the Nodaway County Community Building. The dinner speaker was John Travlos, administrator of the MU Agricultural Electronic Bulletin Board (AgEBB) who described the information available for the service.
Travlos concentrated on pointing out information relating to beef production. He noted that in August when dry weather had taken a heavy toll on pastures that AgEBB’s hay market listing maintained by the Missouri Department of Agriculture and MU Extension was heavily used.
Farmers who needed hay accessed the hay listing service while farmers with hay for sale entered hay sale listings.
Currently, AgEBB lists 34 titles that include such topics as animal science, agricultural weather, farm management, farm marketing, agricultural law, and other farm related listings.
AgEBB is available on the internet at http://agebb.missouri.edu/.
Beef Tour sponsors included University Extension and Commercial Agriculture; Missouri Cattlemen’s Association; Missouri Beef Industry Council; Bank Midwest; Citizens Bank and Trust; Nodaway County Farm Bureau; Farm Credit Services; Maryville Feed Company; Nodaway County Economic Development; Nodaway County Extension Council; Nodaway Valley Bank; US Bank; and local beef organizations, agribusinesses and individuals.
