Santa Gertrudis Source February 2025

FROM THE FRONT OFFICE • Chris McClure • (361) 592-9357 • chris@santagertrudis.com Something New and Something Old T his world of instant gratifica tion with a focus on always having the newest, latest, greatest or whatever is cur eryone sets a few very specific goals for their breeding program for the coming year.

true conception rate, a true weaning percentage and real calving intervals. If a bull is breeding 30 cows in a year but we only record data on the calves from 10 of those cows, does it give us a true picture of what that bull is producing? We might see an average weaning weight of 650 pounds in the selected group and 450 pounds in the other group. How is that bull’s EPD for weaning weight impacted from the bi ased reporting of data on his progeny? How can you make truly informed breeding decisions when you only see part of the relevant data? When we sell an animal to another breeder or to a commercial producer,

If we are doing our job well, the goals we set as seedstock suppliers will allow us to produce breeding stock that will meet the needs of the commercial cow calf sector. The trick is knowing what their needs will be a couple of years before they do. That lends credibil ity to the concept of always looking for something new. The problem with that thinking is that we often move on to whatever is “next” before completing the execution of what used to be “next.” We chase fads instead of thoughtfully executing a long-term plan.

rent sometimes causes us to lose sight of the important. I am going to take a somewhat circuitous route as I discuss this, but I plan to come back to this word important . From the time I started in this role as executive director, I have been en couraged to come up with something new and exciting that we can all work toward. Many hours, phone calls and conversations have been invested in doing just that – finding something that no one else is doing so we can be the first to roll it out. A lot of fortunes have been made on such thinking, and I believe it holds merit in the context of growing our breed. Always coming up with something new, however, is not as easy as it might sound. While searching for the elusive crea ture called “new,” it is wise to remain vigilant in our execution of the basics. What I mean is that if we are constantly chasing fads, we forget to do the things that are most basic such as capturing quality data on our animals. As I look through the measurements, we have collected on animals recorded within our system, I find there are many with missing data. In fact, a large number of animals in the registry have only the basics necessary to obtain a registra tion number. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. As seedstock producers, we must constantly be improving the animals we offer for sale or incorporate back into our breeding programs. Improve ment requires goals which, in turn, implies direction. We need to know where we want to go and how to get there in order to improve. I hope ev

If we are doing our job well, the goals we set as seedstock suppliers will allow us to produce breeding stock that will meet the needs of the commercial cow-calf sector. The trick is in knowing what their needs will be a couple of years before they do.

The board approved but has not implemented whole-herd reporting. We tend to enter only our best animals into the system. That’s understandable from a couple of perspectives: 1) we don’t want to pay for registering non performing animals; and 2) we don’t want people to think we own non performing or less-than-fabulous animals. That’s one of the reasons we offer “Performance Only” registra tion in the system at no cost. It is a way to track what is happening with those animals that may not be our “best.” When we begin to track perfor mance on all animals within the herd, we may begin to see a different pic ture than what occurs only in the se lect few of our best. We need to see a

we also are selling our reputation. If the animals perform as advertised, the buyer will be back the next time he needs another animal. If we sell an animal with a Birth Weight EPD indicating he would be a good heifer bull yet he consistently throws large calves that create calving difficulty, do you think that buyer will be back for more? Probably not. It is important (there’s that word I said I would get back to) that our cattle perform as expected. That means our EPDs must be accurate. That accuracy is dependent on lots of data – all of the data and not just the bits and pieces that make us look good. We need to make certain that we are doing the ba sics well before we move on to the next fad. It’s important.

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SANTA GERTRUDIS SOURCE

FEBRUARY 2025