Eliza Walton was looking for the right farm for her four Angus cows. She found it, and much more, at Egg Hill Farm, where Chris Ishler was growing row crops.
Ten years later, the crop fields are pastures, and Walton and Ishler are managing a herd of 40 registered Angus.
âWe joke, it was a match made in farmer heaven,â Walton said.
At first, the couple just sold calves from the cow-calf herd, but before long they were looking to improve productivity and expand the markets for their business, Sinking Creek Meats.
They found the help they needed in Penn State Extension.
Beef producers have long strived to achieve top genetics in their herds, and for decades they relied solely on herd bulls to give them desirable traits such as feed efficiency, carcass merit and faster growth rates.
Today, the reliance on herd bulls is still the dominant choice in the beef industry, but producers are utilizing another option â artificial insemination â to fine-tune genetic quality.
The practice is becoming more common, and its popularity was hastened by the dairy industry.
According to Brian Boyer, a technician supervisor for Premier Select Sires in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, the use of beef semen in AI has increased significantly, in large part due to dairy farmers crossbreeding their cows with beef. As the value of Holstein heifers declined, more milk producers began using beef semen on their cows, producing crossbred calves with beef traits that command a higher price. Inadvertently, the change forced beef producers to take a hard look at the genetic
I-29 Dairy Beef Short Course March 23 farmprogress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from farmprogress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The I-29 Moo University Collaborationâs 7th annual Dairy Beef Short Course will held on March 23. Due to COVID-19 it will be offered as a webinar. There will be a morning session from 10:00 a.m. to noon followed by the afternoon session from 1:00 p.m. till 3:00 p.m (US Central Standard Time).
The Dairy Beef Short Course is one of the premiere dairy beef events in North America and normally held as a pre-educational event at the Central Plains Dairy Expo.
The presenters at this yearâs Dairy Beef Short Course are industry leaders who will provide insight into factors influencing dairy beef performance along with looking at the future of dairy beef production from a consumer and economic perspective,â said Tracey Erickson, South Dakota State University.