Learning the Ropes…
February brings us one month closer to Houston but December and January were full of events and news too. Iridiana, HC, Megan, Theresa, Caydi and Ricki were extremely helpful in setting me up in the office.
I was fortunate to visit with a number of Brahman breeders including a group from Thailand that came by to do business.
I assisted in sending out herd inventories to all of you and a second round of director’s ballots. Iridiana taught me how to use the Digital Beef website and I can say I am impressed at the amount of data that is available to Brahman breeders.
Theresa and Megan covered the finer points of DNA submission and registrations and transfers. I met with the ABBA lawyer, CPA, and bank. I spent time evaluating the proposed changes to the constitution and by laws and the new DNA plan. We hired Caydi Blaha as the new Director of Communications and Youth Activities, and she hit the ground running. You probably have seen her work already. She has her plate full but she is also looking at all the ABBA promotional materials to see what needs revision.
At the end of December HC went to work for another breed. I retitled his position Director of Breed Improvement. The new person will be responsible for managing and improving the Brahman Herd Improvement Program, the genetic evaluation (EPD), the ABBA Brahman Bull Development Program, The EAR Program, and developing a new EPD for female fertility. One of the first projects is to collect all the data from the Bull Development and The EAR Programs to evaluate sire differences. There are years of data and many records that can be used to identify sires to improve performance. January rolled in with me in the coolers at STX Beef, the beef processor in Corpus Christi, collecting Brahman carcass data.
STX Beef is looking to buy purebred/straightbred Brahman cattle on feed, especially cattle from herds with interest and involvement in improving carcass quality. They have reached out and I hope to have more on that soon. In January I will have made a decision on a Brahman breed genetic evaluation provider.
Likely you will know which one when you read this but I can tell you it was not easy. Every provider had much to offer the Brahman breed and would have made accurate calculations, I went with the best provider from the standpoint of the Brahman breed AND its breeders.
Joe C. Paschal
