  BeefTalk:
Ogeechee – Brighter from the East, Record Keeping Continues to Progress
By Kris Ringwall, Extension Beef Specialist,
NDSU Extension Service
The sun rises from the east. Every day is a new day, and as the Cherokee would
say, Ogeechee, a word that means brighter from the East. In 1993, three
individuals, Richard Willham, Roy Wallace and the late Frank Baker, compiled 25
years of history surrounding the improvement of the beef cattle industry through
genetics and record keeping by publishing "Ideas Into Action."
This book, dedicated to the next 25 years, records the efforts of dedicated
individuals that helped found and permanently anchor the beef cattle industry in
performance. Perhaps, the industry is still in the glow of a new day. As noted
in "Ideas Into Action," the first written record of beef cattle
performance was in Lascaux, France around 15,000 B.C. Granted, the bull was
sketched rather than described because ear tags, pen and paper weren’t readily
available, but the thought was still there. A picture is still worth a thousand
words, but in today’s fast-paced industry the glow of the morning sun must
give way to a meaningful and constructive day.
Fundamentally, the beef cattle industry and the producers within the industry
are driven by economic indicators--what makes money draws attention. Producers
within the cow calf segment of the industry have depended on others to provide
those economic indicators, and subsequently may not have connected their own
individual animal data with those economic indicators. The end result was, and
still is, an industry with significant individual herd record sets with a
variety of meanings. As with the bull on the cave wall, individual animal data
is still often quite descriptive in nature and difficult to interpret.
There are as many reasons producers keep herd records as there are producers.
The individual purpose and meaning of each record must first have relevance to
the producer. For each producer color of tag, letter of the alphabet, Arabic
number or symbol represents a different image or meaning as did the bull in the
cave over 17,000 years ago.
Then, as now, when cattle producers gather these images come to life as a
flow of information, congeniality and friendships that ultimately make up the
cattle industry. Is it any surprise that individual herd records are still
relatively unstandardized and not prone to large industry trend analysis? Maybe
the image of the beef animal and the associated industry resides in the heart as
well as in the mind, and reducing a cow to a simple electronic identification
with numbers one can calculate misses the whole point.
But, as the sun sets on each day, we still all need to survive. And as was
noted in "Ideas Into Action," why not learn from the Frank Bakers of
the world? What was developed in the past is true now -- the principal features
of effective record programs involve individual identification and description
followed by the systematic recording of traits of economic value.
At minimum, these descriptive traits include date of birth, sex, and the
mother’s identification. The traits of economic value generally involve the
recording of body weight around weaning time, perhaps again at a year of age and
then at harvest. Some indication of body makeup (fat versus muscle, and frame
size) are desirable at each weigh day as well as carcass weight, quality grade
and yield grade at the time of harvest. Sounds simple, but the bull in the cave
had none of these recorded, and the perceived image versus data reality is still
adrift in the cattle industry.
May you find all your ear tags.
Your comments are always welcome at www.BeefTalk.com
For more information, contact the North Dakota Beef Cattle Improvement
Association, 1133 State Avenue, Dickinson, ND 58601 or go to www.CHAPS2000.COM
on the Internet. In correspondence about this column, refer to BT0050.
###
Source: Kris Ringwall, (701) 483-2427, kringwal@ndsuext.nodak.edu
Editor: Tom Jirik, (701) 231-9629, tjirik@ndsuext.nodak.edu
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