Board Recap: National Cattle Evaluation Improvements, Parent Protocols, the Role of Angus in Herd Rebuilding and More

A state of constant improvement — if there was a phrase to sum up the work the American Angus Association Board did this week and the updates they heard from staff, that would be it. This episode focuses on “core” updates to the National Cattle Evaluation, a discussion around parentage protocols and a rundown of the genetic tools for commercial cattlemen (and their timeline for release). There are notes from each of the entities and the National Junior Angus Association (NJAA) board and an encouraging outlook for the year ahead. 

HOSTS: Mark McCully and Miranda Reiman 

GUESTS:  

Barry Pollard, Enid, Okla., currently serves as the chairman of the American Angus Association Board of Directors. He attended Oklahoma State University (OSU), followed by medical school and serving as neurosurgeon, performing than 18,000 surgeries prior to his retirement.

In addition to other agriculture business ventures, Pollard has built his Pollard Farms registered Angus operation to 400 Angus cows, selling around 150 bulls each year. 

Jerry Theis, Leavenworth, Kan., is a second-generation Angus breeder. His parents established April Valley Farms in 1952 in the Salt Creek Valley.

Theis graduated with his veterinary degree from Kansas State University in 1991, and still practices at a local clinic while he manages his family’s diversified operation. April Valley Farms was recognized as a Historic Angus Herd by the Association in 2019. Theis and his wife are active in the Kansas Angus Association, serving two terms as advisors for the National Junior Angus Association. 

Kelli Retallick-Riley, president of Angus Genetics Inc., leads her team of research geneticists and customer service specialists to provide the best genetic and genomic tools and resources to Angus breeders and users of Angus genetics.

Related reading: Find the full letter to membership following the meetings here. 

Don't miss news in the Angus breed. Visit www.AngusJournal.net and subscribe to the AJ Daily e-newsletter and our monthly magazine, the Angus Journal.

Transcript

Miranda Reiman (00:02):
Welcome to the Angus Conversation. I'm your host Miranda Reiman with my fellow co-host, Mark McCully, CEO of the American Angus Association. And we are here in Mark's office right after the board meeting that we've just had past week,

Mark McCully (00:16):
Had a great set of board meetings. I always say that set of board meetings. There's multiple board meetings, each of the entities, and I don't know, maybe this time more than ever, I would say the committee work that was done. We do that two weeks before and do those virtual, do those via Zoom technology. And I tell you, there was a lot of ground covered, some really, really productive committee meetings. Board members did a lot of that pre-work and a couple of long evenings of committee work, but really set the stage to have a very, very productive week here that we're just wrapping up.

Miranda Reiman (00:47):
That's right. It felt a little bit intense. We went from committee meeting week to cattle industry convention and trade show right into board meetings. So we've had a lot of conversations in a two to three week period. And

Mark McCully (01:00):
Then prior to that was National Western Stock Show and Oklahoma City Cattleman's Congress, and there's been a lot, Fort Worth, there's been a lot going on.

Miranda Reiman (01:06):
Absolutely. Well, I kind of joke with you that we always start out saying there was an exciting set of board meetings and we're not going to do that today. I wanted to start somewhere else, they were, that's true, that's true. But we had, our chaplain starts out every meeting we have a prayer, we say the pledge. And the first day Charles Mogck told us a little story that I thought kind of sets the stage for what the board tries to accomplish I guess in a week.

Mark McCully (01:33):
And there was some nice references back to that story throughout. The story was, Can I tell the story?

Miranda Reiman (01:37):
Do you want to tell it ? Or not?

Mark McCully (01:38):
 You're probably a better storyteller than I'm. Well, I'd heard the story before. So when he started down there, I knew exactly where he was going and I love it. And the story was about a family that was together and the mother was cutting off the ends of a ham and the daughter,

Miranda Reiman (01:55):
They were preparing the Easter ham, four generations together gathered up in the kitchen

Mark McCully (01:59):
See, you tell the story, and the daughter asked, why mom? Why are you cutting off the ends of the ham? And says, well, my mother always has her go ask grandmother why she does. And so she went and asked, grandmother says, well, my mother always does. And so she went and asked the great grandmother, why do we cut off the ends of the ham? And the great grandmother says, well, I don't know about you, but that's the size of my ham pan. Right. And what a great sometimes reminder of how many times, well, that's just the way it's always been done and we maybe don't know why it was always done. And when you start digging into it, some of that maybe that rationale of why we did things a certain way really don't exist or don't pertain anymore. And that theme and if you will, tie it to innovation and making sure that we're always looking at what we're doing, making sure there's good sound logic behind it, and sometimes not afraid to go ahead and leave the ham intact if we've got a bigger pan.

Miranda Reiman (02:51):
Absolutely. So we've got a couple of Angus breeders here today that are going to help explain their rationale, I guess, on decisions that were made over the past week or just give us a little bit

Mark McCully (03:00):
But probably neither one will be eating ham for Easter. They're both probably doing prime rib, Jerry Theis from just down the road, Leavenworth, Kansas. Jerry serves on the board and is second term?

Jerry Theis (03:13):
Second term. First year of the second term, exactly.

Mark McCully (03:16):
FIrst year, second term, yep. And will you be having Easter ham or Easter Prime rib?

Jerry Theis (03:20):
I think we're going to pass on the ham. I think we'll have something CAB related for sure.

Mark McCully (03:24):
Beautiful. Beautiful. And Dr. Barry Pollard does joining us again of course as current chairman and president of the board and down in Oklahoma, will there be prime rib on the menu? What's Roxanne fixing? Were you guys probably be

Barry Pollard (03:39):
A medium rare ribeye, CAB product. That's what I have in mind.

Mark McCully (03:43):
There we go.

Miranda Reiman (03:44):
Mind. And then we have another special guest here, and Kelli I think got added to the roster, right? It was a surprise addition. So welcome Kelli. Thanks for saying yes on short notice.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (03:55):
Yeah, no problem. Miranda. I like surprises, so we should be okay.

Miranda Reiman (03:58):
Kelli Retallick-Riley, of course. We covered a lot of things in both the AGI board meeting and also as we talk about breed improvement and thought it would be good to have your perspective today.

Mark McCully (04:08):
Absolutely.

Miranda Reiman (04:09):
So I think we're just going to jump right in. I guess let's start with member services. Mark. There were several things

Mark McCully (04:15):
Jerry and that committee met of course a couple of weeks ago and then does a report. You guys covered a lot of things. Maybe some of the highlights from your standpoint.

Jerry Theis (04:23):
Exactly right. I mean, we did meet via Zoom there a week ago and we did have a lot of discussion around kind of three key topics, I guess. One was the parentage protocol that we have that involves potential AI sire or AI sires. And we've addressed this issue in the past and we didn't really change anything, but we really discussed it. We felt like the changes we made a year ago that included requiring the genetic defect bundle was kind of that extra layer of insulation or protection as far as the parentage goes. So we still think that we're probably in a pretty good spot, always looking for improvement. But I think right now we're in a pretty good spot with that. And we're going to go ahead and continue the educational component of that and make sure everybody's aware of that. And we'll encourage everybody to update some of those older genomics or older DNA samples for high influential animals in their herd, whether that be donors or AI sires. We also looked at some membership changes that involved non, non-life term memberships, I believe as far as transferring those in the event of a strictly more of a name change that involved either as a result of marriage or divorce or an adoption to where those transfers would be allowed with a one time transfer with no fee, no fee involved.

Mark McCully (05:51):
I should have probably stated that the member services committee really oversees all the rules and policies. So anything that deals with rules and policies around registrations, around memberships, around transfers, and this parentage, I know this parentage topic has been one that has been a frequent topic of discussion. And I know there's some breeders that have said, well, why not just require parentage maybe on AI sires or donor dams or some would say everything, right? And I think some of the challenge you guys talk about, not, there may not be parentage markers on file for a particular, maybe a breeder that has a bull that gets popular and goes into stud and that donor dam or that dam, natural service, whatever, she never had parentage markers on file. So requiring that today might be a little bit...

Jerry Theis (06:40):
The challenge would be if that animal is no longer in existence. So if there is a potential AI sire that has a young dam that no DNA was collected from that died at an early age, we would be closing the door on some elite genetics because of that. Yeah,

Kelli Retallick-Riley (06:57):
Some potentially really good genetics. The AGI team, whenever we hear dead donor dam, those are the worst words that we hear throughout the day and that still happens today.

Mark McCully (07:08):
As we get more and more and more of our registered cattle that do have a genotype and we know that's growing, that percentage is growing every year. Maybe some of these things around, I know the board's always really sensitive when it comes down to requiring when people say we should require. I know this board and past boards have been really careful with that of not trying to require what needs to be required but then not try to set up too many rules and policies that really tie the hands potentially or put undue cost or restrictions on our breeders.

Jerry Theis (07:40):
The other thing we also talked about was it was a rule 410 that involved, you tried to put something in there to protect the association from many liabilities involving intellectual properties and that sort of thing as things going forward. And then we also kind of took another look at all our gene editing policies and no big changes there. Just kind of some tweaks and verbiage changes that we're always just trying to stay proactive and out in front end.

Miranda Reiman (08:08):
Every time you think you have the language, just write a new hypothetical scenario comes up. Right.

Jerry Theis (08:13):
I'll be honest, this is a fourth year on that committee and we know it is a work in progress. We look at it, work at it every meeting, and a lot of that credit goes to Mr. Cassady or Jerry Cassady that spends a lot of time, a lot doing that.

Mark McCully (08:29):
You guys also talked about just some things from a member service standpoint around auto dues renewal.

Miranda Reiman (08:39):
It's been a long week too.

Mark McCully (08:40):
You're going to tell that we don't edit, ...something we would edit out. And then also things around just paperless billing, just some things talking about efficiency and member service and also cost savings.

Jerry Theis (08:51):
Right, exactly. And I'm with the auto news, auto dues renewing got me tongue tied as well. It's actually kind of on the uptake. It's new, but when you do renew online, there's an option that you can automatically have that renewal done every year where it's going to use the credit card on file and it's probably going to save a lot of people, including myself, a little bit of grief that kind of forgets to renew that junior member in your family and you get the little notice, you can't register the calf because you're not an active member. So it's all good. It's all good.

Miranda Reiman (09:22):
So member services kind of transitions naturally into I would say breed improvement is really a member service. And also we talk about service to our commercial cattlemen as well. So we had quite a few topics in that. That umbrella, I guess.

Mark McCully (09:37):
Yeah, there were. And I think always topics that I think breed improvement and AGI, I always say that's a hand in glove relationship. And Kelli, you always say it so well, AGI is the genetic service provider for the American Angus Association. And I always say our innovation and research and development arm and that need and is always communicated back and forth through the breed improvement committee. Maybe some of the things that were talked about in there we're always talking about, one being this ongoing discussion around giving credit to the data collectors. Maybe talk a little bit about what maybe some of those discussions were. And ultimately a decision around a couple years ago we started listing the phenotypic traits that were submitted on that animal, but there's been some question around which traits are actually going into the national cattle evaluation and which ones aren't. Is there a way to differentiate those? So maybe give us a little background on that one.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (10:38):
Yeah, I mean we always want to elevate our data collectors and what they do for our National Cattle Evaluation. And the good news is, Barry, we have a lot of data collectors in your Association that make that national cattle evaluation really great. And so Dr. Esther Tarpoff actually leads that breed improvement committee as the staff liaison, and she's done some good work to try and identify ways really to be able to say, Hey, these are the people who are inputting actual phenotypes into our database. And so one of the moves that that committee had taken a couple years ago now was basically to list the individual phenotypes on the online pedigree lookup that allows them to say, hey, I do have a birth weight submitted to the organization. I have a weaning weight, I carcass data, et cetera. And what we found is it's created a few questions because as soon, I'm sure members have noticed as soon as you send in your birth weight the next day, that birth weight shows up on the bottom of that pedigree.

(11:33):
But we know we don't run that national cattle evaluation, the genetic evaluation, but weekly. So we had some questions as to, okay, well was my data point in there, was it not? And then we also know we have some really good data collectors who may be in a position where they're doing ET programs or embryo transfer programs and as a genetic evaluation, we know that growth data from commercial recips on ET calves, we don't use that in the evaluation. And so that's really not actually adding any value to that EPD, but we still want to make sure that we say, Hey, these people are doing the right thing and they're trying to get their data in to us. And so what Dr. Tarpoff is working towards is actually identifying what traits are being submitted that's already done, check that one. And then the second one is what traits are actually being input into the national cattle evaluation? And there's a multitude of reasons why a data point wouldn't enter that national cattle evaluation.

Mark McCully (12:32):
So I think the direction and maybe the wishes of the committee there was to look at it and say, well, you can still have the list of those traits, but we might maybe in bold or in asterisk, those traits that are actually in the National Cattle Evaluation. It'll prompt some questions and some education and learning opportunities for all of us I suppose, but that was the wishes of that committee and I think makes a lot of sense. Barry, I know you get into a lot of discussions just in this topic and collecting phenotypes and

Barry Pollard (13:03):
Oh yeah

Mark McCully (13:03):
It's a pretty popular one.

Barry Pollard (13:05):
Yeah, it is. It's so important that we all continue to collect as much data as we can and report it. People would like to think that maybe the genomic evaluation would replace all of that, but it does not. Every piece of data that we can collect makes that genomic data more accurate. And so it's really important on all of our parts, in all of our ranches to collect and submit all of the data that we can to help verify and make more accuracy of all the genomic predictions that come out of that. So we encourage all the producers to be enrolled in that and do as much as they can. It adds value to our system

Kelli Retallick-Riley (13:41):
Across the board for sure.

Miranda Reiman (13:42):
If I have my notes correctly here, they're a little bit messy to read, but I think that it said that inventory reporting is up 30% over last year at this time, and I think if you see individual data points go down, some of those are in line with cow numbers.

Barry Pollard (14:00):
That's incredibly important. In particular, the disposal codes I think are so important because we need to know why an animal leaves your herd because it helps us develop procedures to look at what needs to be improved in the breed itself. So everything about MaternalPlus or whole herd reporting is extremely valuable and I encourage everyone to get on board with that because it will make us stronger.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (14:28):
And that particularly goes to your heifer pregnancy data, your disposal code data. We're trying to work on new traits like functional longevity. Those data sets are really important to us. And then across the board, there's obviously a lot of things that we capture that maybe are not check marks to your inventory reporting procedure, but are definitely really important for whole herd reporting if we want to think about it that way. How many data points can I collect on my individual herd and make accurate predictions

Mark McCully (14:54):
In this realm of data collection? Also, we talked about the structured sire evaluation program, and here just fairly recently in the last year or so, we've allowed an opportunity to nominate sires for that structured sire evaluation. Really the genesis of that program is back to getting specifically carcass data. We know there's opportunities to get, it ties into your heart health initiative and research and some other areas, but really largely around carcass data and making sure we are specifically finding some of those animals maybe that aren't as characterized in the database today. So that's been a proactive effort of the Association for a long time. The positive is we're seeing more breeders that have expressed interest in nominating, I say a young sire, I don't know if they're all necessarily young sires, but some sires that we don't have a lot of carcass data on, a barrier at this point is finding cooperator herds. So that's been kind of a, you're going to hear more from us on that of maybe putting a call out there for a few more commercial herds that are willing to help us in that initiative.

Miranda Reiman (16:00):
And I think the hard part Mark is, that it's a pretty specific, I mean, they probably should already be doing AI. They should probably be large enough numbers to have ...

Mark McCully (16:11):
Nice, big contemporary groups

Miranda Reiman (16:11):
But I wrote that down too. The handicap to the program is finding good test herds, not that there's not a lot of good producers out there, it's just that it's a really specific set

Jerry Theis (16:20):
For sure. And we could use a lot of our bigger purebred or registered guys, seedstock producers that have those connections with their bull customers. If they would be willing to reach out to those more progressive commercial guys that are doing those things, we would welcome any of that input

Miranda Reiman (16:37):
And that are getting carcass data. I should add that that's the other hurdle or have access to get carcass data. Sometimes we've got a lot of good people in mind and then that's the last thing that's like, ah, we also need that. Right?

Mark McCully (16:48):
Yeah, that perfect scenario is those that are retaining ownership and that way you don't have to worry about the ownership exchange and maintaining the identity of those cattle and getting the data back. But yeah, so you'll hear more from us, but again, as you said Jerry, if we've got folks that have some ideas of some of those producers that would be interested in learning more, we do have a financial, we don't ask 'em to just do this for free. We understand there's costs associated and we will help 'em with that because we know that that's an important investment the Association makes to make sure we're continuing to get that really, really important data.

Barry Pollard (17:25):
Well, as we discussed that, it's a good segue into the AngusLink program because that is key and very important in our business right now. We can speak to how that program is starting to really grow legs and take off, be more recognized by people and starting to grow on popularity and the validation of its ability to predict carcass genetics is well known now and we continue to see more people getting more and more interested in that. It's a real driver for Angus Bull sales and it is a real driver then for our customer base, for our membership, and all of our members need to know about AngusLink. They all need to understand it, they all need to be supporting it, and they all need to be talking to their commercial breeders about it because it is a huge opportunity for us. I see it as an opportunity similar to CAB in the future as we go forward. And I think everybody needs to know about it and be talking about it and promoting it.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (18:22):
Yeah.

Mark McCully (18:23):
We saw some, we really celebrated a really, January celebrated a year in our collaboration, our partnership with IMI Global, and I think as we look back on that year, we went from prior to that enrolling close to 60,000 head to last year in a 12 month period doing 210,000 head. And it's really, as you said Doc, it feels like it's getting a real foothold. We're getting more cattle feeders that are starting to see this program in scale and be able to start asking questions about how can they use those scores. And you had some interesting insight and conversations, Kelli you had with cattle feeders. It's not so much that I just want the highest scoring cattle

Miranda Reiman (19:06):
Just want to know what they have.

Mark McCully (19:07):
I just want to know what those cattle are, if they're average, that's great. I can maximize my profit to, if I know what those cattle are or if I know they're a higher potential, I'll manage 'em accordingly. So I think sometimes we've even lost sight of the value. Well, the value is only on the very top end. The value is in characterizing those genetics and allowing that information to be passed through the chain.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (19:28):
We know those cattle feeders, they have their risk aversion models, they have that baked in from a feeding standpoint, from a management standpoint. And so this is one more data point, Mark, that maybe they could fit in. And yeah, I thought that was an interesting perspective for me. Because I probably hadn't heard that perspective before, but I mean, this was a big feeder. That group controls a lot of cattle, and for him it was like the hundreds or the industry average cattle are good for me to know too because if I can manage 'em, I can make money on 'em.

Jerry Theis (19:56):
But we would be remiss to mention though that they also are willing to pay premiums for the good ones. Absolutely. Yeah. So I mean the system is working and they are willing to pay those premiums.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (20:07):
There's value all the way across.

Barry Pollard (20:09):
I look at AngusLink as part of the evolution of the feeding industry. I think as we grow, our recognition of Angus Link and its reliability and predicting carcass genetics, that it will be part of the evolutionary process of feeding cattle properly. And I think it's got a big role to play in that.

Mark McCully (20:27):
I think some of the best comments we've heard from cattle feeders is, I really like those cattle. I can't afford 'em, which we kind of like that, but it also does speak to, and as we talk about the growth of the program and our opportunity to grow, some of that speaks to the fact that a lot of our program enrollments thus far have been also tied to NHTC, NE3. They're the full blown program cattle with all the bells and whistles. And I think where we've got a huge opportunity is folks that are just, I say just, but they don't want to participate in those programs necessarily, but are willing to do age and source and get their cattle enrolled. And maybe they're not interested in the scorecard. Maybe they just want to do Angus Verified and say, these cattle are out of registered Angus bulls. And we've talked about maybe even separating given those particular producers and breeders, if that's what their customer more, giving them some promotional tools that are just specifically talking about the value of Angus Verified too. So really customizing it and allowing us to really scale that program long term.

Barry Pollard (21:28):
Really gives those commercial producers out there an opportunity to maximize the profit that they can make on their animals. It's a great opportunity for them.

Miranda Reiman (21:37):
So one of my favorite parts about the AngusLink program is that it of course, I mean there's that selfishly it drives demand for registered Angus genetics. That's a good thing, but it's also a tool for our commercial cattlemen. And we spent a lot of time talking about tools for our commercial cattlemen and ways that we can help them make genetic progress in their own herds and those would've fallen in sort of that AGI

Kelli Retallick-Riley (21:59):
Kind of a hybrid, right between AGI and in the commercial programs team, obviously AGI sees herself as kind of the intelligence or the engine, right?

Miranda Reiman (22:12):
Did you say you're smarter than Troy? I think that's what I heard.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (22:13):
That's not what I said.

Mark McCully (22:16):
Well, who's going to debate that point? Oh, I wish Troy was here.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (22:18):
But we do have that ability to create genetic predictions and to create genetic value out of those marks that we have inside of our database. And a couple of the things that we've been tasked with working alongside Troy have been not only to enhance the value of the current Genetic Merit Scorecard by making sure everything is as up to date as possible, which we do on a yearly basis anyways, but also adding a maternal score component to that scorecard. And while AngusLink is a feeder calf marketing program, we also know that there's places where people may want to market a group of replacement females, and I don't know if I was in search of Mark, a mark or group of replacement females, I'd rather have a high scoring group rather than a low scoring group. So that's kind of the approach we're taking. This is a group score for the AngusLink program that then could be used to market a set of replacement heifers in that marketplace.

Mark McCully (23:13):
And it ties into then maybe also the work in Gene Max. He really spent a lot of time, and I started my report at the very front end really looking at the outlook of where our industry's at. We're all aware of, we're looking at historically low inventories and this herd rebuilding hasn't quite taken off maybe like we were predicting it would've a year or two years ago, and largely related to mother nature and such. And we know that one, that has an impact on our registrations and a lot of our core business. We talked about that. But I think the opportunity as we look of when the herd does rebuild, making sure that Angus is positioned as the solution. And I think putting some of these tools in the hands of our commercial cattlemen is key. And maybe speak to where we're at with Gene Max Advantage, a product that's been around a long time, but here just last June, the board decided to add, make the addition of dollar value indexes. So research is underway to make that happen.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (24:14):
So obviously we've had GeneMax advantage around since 2014, 2012 era, but we really took a pivotal step last fall when the board said, Hey, let's try to create a common currency between our registered Angus seedstock and those commercial Angus females that are basically a result of buying those registered Angus bulls. And so we've moved forward with this decision to add the Angus dollar values to the Gene Max to the Gene Max commercial test, and it's a pretty big project. So we tried to lay it out and give some perspective to the board. I sure wish there was a quick switch to turn it on overnight. Unfortunately there's not. We've got a good team of people in here that are going to make it happen, but basically laid out that timeline hoping by the end of this year we're able to actually start to deliver some of those dollar values into the commercial cattle industry that would obviously be able to help people who have previously tested with Gene Max advantage as well, get those values placed on their cattle as well.

(25:14):
Because as we're talking about common currency, Jerry, we don't want to create two currencies right on the same herd. And so really trying to transition those things. And so honestly, as our seedstock breeders are going out and having conversations with their commercial breeders and what bulls should I buy and what should I look at? They have a common language to speak our seedstock breeders, they know their dollar values, they know exactly how to talk about them with their commercial cattle customers. If you try to pull 'em into a different currency, all of a sudden we're talking about GeneMax Advantage and that's a whole other language they would have to speak.

Miranda Reiman (25:45):
Will that make it easier for you guys as breeders and those making recommendations maybe when you're commercial customers? Oh,

Barry Pollard (25:51):
Absolutely. Because those that are used to looking our dollar values now, they'd be comparable across the board. And I think we've seen in previous natural disasters of drought over the last 10 or 15 years that whenever people rebuild their herd, they're rebuilding with better genetics and maybe didn't use all the tools available at that time. Now is the perfect opportunity. I mean, people will start rebuilding the herd and they have these tools available. So whenever you can use the tools to evaluate and select that commercial cow that you want to put in your herd that will produce a calf that's worth two or three or four, $500 more than a regular average cow, then why not take that opportunity? So it's really an opportunity for them to come back and replace that herd with better cattle and make potentially more profit.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (26:44):
And we've seen the uptake of Gene Max here in the last couple of months probably because we're going through those herd rebuilding efforts, so taking advantage of the tools that are already available and then this is just going to be a cherry on top of the cake. I really think just to really drive the value of profitable genetics down into the commercial industry.

Jerry Theis (26:59):
And to echo what Barry said, I mean it's just another tool for those progressive commercial guys that are wanting to know more before they rebuild. It just gives them one more tool to lean on with what we consider very good, high-accuracy information.

Barry Pollard (27:17):
When you combine the opportunity for that GeneMax Advantage with the opportunity then to buy more good Angus Bulls to get into the AngusLink program, it's a home run for people to take advantage of that.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (27:28):
I like to call that the genetic game plan, right? I'm kind of a nerd though. So that's what that is.

Miranda Reiman (27:32):
She's got a whole, it's

Mark McCully (27:35):
It's a Wisconsin Badger game plan.

Miranda Reiman (27:36):
I think she's got five columns in the Angus Beef Bulletin. You can go reference if you want.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (27:42):
Yeah, exactly.

Mark McCully (27:43):
You talk about tools and making tools better and so much of the discussion in breed improvement committee and then later in AGI was around that and maybe I want to speak to a couple, or have you speak Kelli, or others,

Kelli Retallick-Riley (27:57):
Only if you want to

Mark McCully (27:58):
To a couple of the things earlier you mentioned the weekly evaluation and Dr. Andre gave some insight into the time it takes to run and crunch all these data by traits and by runs and some of the challenges that are occurring as again, it's a great thing. We're getting more data, we're getting more genotypes, but those things take longer to run. So people have maybe heard of the core update that was done back in 21, but maybe give a little update of what the plans are as we look at keeping this evaluation humming and getting it done on a weekly turnaround.

Miranda Reiman (28:37):
I think Dr. Pollard wanted to give that update. Right, Dr. Pollard?

Barry Pollard (28:41):
No, Kelli, go ahead. I'll follow up on anything you miss.

Jerry Theis (28:45):
We'll help. We'll help you if you need help.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (28:48):
So I mean that genetic evaluation, we all know it runs from a Friday to Friday genetic evaluation and as we add more data, right there is a computational cost, right? Because we're solving millions of equations every single week throughout our 14 different models that we run in order to get those really good predictions outside out the other end. And so when we think about something like a core update and to remind people a core update is basically a part of our single step genetic evaluation that allows us to be able to, now we're going to get a little technical, so Jerry, help me out with this, to invert a really large matrix, think about a matrix that includes 20 million animals in a pedigree with 1.8 million of them being genotyped and basically putting that into a big Excel spreadsheet and hitting the invert formula, it's kind of difficult.

Miranda Reiman (29:35):
That's a lot of math to math in a week. That's what we're trying to say.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (29:38):
It's very hard.

Mark McCully (29:38):
But if you saw Kelly's hands, they went shifted this way from that way that you can obviously see on the podcast.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (29:44):
And so one of the things that we have to do is we have to have a core set of animals that basically helps us approximate those relationships and that core set of animals needs to be current and new. So it describes the current genetic population of the genomic tested population. And the last time we did this in 2021, we had about 1 million, 1.1 million genotypes. Today, Barry, we have about 1.5, 1.8 in the genetic evaluations that we run with Angus Australia. And so a lot more genotypes. So it's time to update again. And this update does two things. It keeps us current and accurate, but it also helps us speed up our times. And so we're running about a hundred hours right now for what would predict out our breeders' carcass weight ribeye area in fat evaluation. I don't know if we do that quick mental math.

(30:36):
That's quite a long time. We start on,

Miranda Reiman (30:38):
I think it said it was up 270% or something. One of those traits was, is that right?

Kelli Retallick-Riley (30:42):
And it would be that big weight rib model. And part of that is there's so many traits that are inside of there. You guys can think about all the ultrasound data you collect, the actual carcass data, the growth records that are in there, the genotypes, the pedigree, there's just a lot of data in there. So the cost of that computationally will grow as we add more and more phenotypes and genotypes, which again is a good problem to have, but we need to continue to keep that core current for those two reasons, and we're going to go through that process and aim for an update coming out in our annual updates that we do to your genetic evaluation on a yearly basis this May.

Mark McCully (31:20):
To me, those are things that again, for a board spending time on and understanding, we had discussion around what else can we do from a hardware standpoint, what else can we do from a software standpoint? Can we add days to the week? That discussion didn't go very far, but I'd say most breeders probably don't think about that, right? They know on Friday morning that new evaluation will have run. What they maybe didn't understand is that took, I used to think there was just a button back there you pushed and it ran and kicked out new EPDs. The reality is you hit the button and maybe four days later on a particular, you come back and there might be, and then there's all sorts of reports to run and things that the team does such a great job of taking care of this evaluation every week, but it is a real thing that we have to make sure we stay, it's kind of down in the weeds here, but I think important that breeders understand all the care that goes into this and some of these other considerations that we have to think about and strategize around to make sure that that evaluation can run every week.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (32:21):
And I think the thing about core and our breeders will remember the last time that we did this, right? We had really high correlations across the board and that's what we would expect. We always have a few outliers and the reason for those outliers is because they're newer upcoming genetics that weren't well represented in that core maybe two years ago, right, in 2021, and we may see those ones shift a little bit more, but at the end of the day, it's a more accurate evaluation that's going to run efficiently and quite frankly, we're going to make sure that your genetic currency of your EPDs and your dollar values are going to be out there and ready for you guys to utilize and make decisions on.

Barry Pollard (32:57):
Another important part of that discussion was the recognition of, our membership relies on that data. Absolutely. And we don't want to sacrifice in any way their opportunity to have all of that data available. And so recognizing the needs now that we might have in the future helps us plan how we will approach that and have the resources available to continue to provide that data to the membership.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (33:23):
Yeah, absolutely. We talked about, Mark, you called us the innovation and research arm of the organization, and sometimes we get into some of these down the weeds topics that are honestly a bit more routine for us. This is what we handle on the daily, but they're just as important as maybe some of the new traits we're developing or some of these other things. People like Barry and Jerry who are on this podcast, you've become reliant on those EPD predictions coming every single week, and we're going to do everything that we can to ensure that they are, and we're going to be fine for a really long time, but it just means that we have to continue to update this and keep it as efficient as possible.

Miranda Reiman (33:58):
In addition, when you talk about the projects that you have on your plate and you're doing that as regular day-to-day work, we also got some research updates on some other areas, but I also want to note that Kelli's team is fully staffed, and so we got to hear from a variety of different folks, new geneticists in our office, and we're happy to have them on the team to carry forward some of this work that maybe we've been talking about. And it's great to have that staff on to...

Mark McCully (34:25):
No one more thankful around this table than Kelli.

Barry Pollard (34:28):
If anybody could see the smile on her face now, you'd understand

Kelli Retallick-Riley (34:31):
I am grinning. Yeah, no, they're amazing. We have a great, we've been able to increase our team, especially on the research and development side by a large scale. And obviously we work really closely with the information systems team here too, to execute some of the production pipelines and the research. But we got to hear from four different research geneticists that we have here on staff. They're all highly qualified, a couple not too far out of their PhD programs, a couple that have a bit more tenure and obviously Andre Garcia has been with us for a handful of years now. And so it's just really neat to watch that team come and grow. And because of that, Miranda, we've been able to probably bring back or pick up some projects that honestly got a little put on the back burner for a bit because we were taking care of the day-to-day stuff and the things that we knew needed to be pushed forward in the last year and a half.

(35:19):
And so Dr. Larissa Novo kind of updated about some of her fertility haplotype work. So you heard us talk about fertility help types a lot, right? Mark for a while there, the board spent a lot of time on it, policy protocol, those sorts of things. But this time we have a lot more genotypes. We have a lot more data that we can access. And so Larissa has basically kind of revamped that research started with a different data set quite frankly, because we have more records now and she's doing a really great job of getting her hands around that data. Now, don't expect any updates or fertility haplotypes or any haplotypes for that matter to get presented out to the membership within the next six months. This is a long-term project, we know that. But we have a pretty highly skilled individual working on that project now.

Miranda Reiman (36:08):
And then we also got updates on some other heifer pregnancy, trying to remember, there was a lot of research that they...

Mark McCully (36:14):
This was a topic, and again, we're kind of in the weeds a little bit, but I think it's good for listeners to kind of know what, I mean the board gets in the weeds, has to get in the weeds on some of these things. And

Miranda Reiman (36:25):
Feel free just to list these out, Mark if you want.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (36:28):
Anytime Kelli's on the podcast, I get in the weeds. So I think I'm the problem.

Mark McCully (36:32):
That's why you're here. We wanted to, but there was a fair amount of discussion around contemporary grouping and breeder submitted contemporary groups versus maybe looking at some defined contemporary groups in the data. And so looked through that and some of the research and some of what you're finding and suggesting that maybe the breeder submitted contemporary groups are pretty messy.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (36:57):
And that's specific to our heifer pregnancy evaluation. We should make that clear. This is for one trait. This isn't something that's happening across the board from that standpoint, but specifically for our heifer pregnancy contemporary groups, we were seeing some patterns in the data that we looked at and said, well, that's not correct. And so we've been able to go in and a lot of those contemporary groups remain intact exactly the same way as their breeders submit them, but we're looking at adding some things in that contemporary group definition around, for instance, heifer birth season. So when that female actually was born, because obviously she was grown and developed and she was born in the spring, Jerry, she was grown and developed in much different conditions if she was born in the fall. And obviously that's not a genetic component, but if you don't account for it, it looks like a genetic component in that model.

(37:46):
And so we've done a lot of number crunching. We actually got a lot of comments and feedback from our board of directors when we had that presentation, which is good. That's what we present these items to because we do listen. And so we went back and before we left last night, Andre and Pedro were huddled up in his office and they were going over other things to make sure that we got that thing as well oiled as possible. But I think at the end of the day, the cool thing was is that by making slight tweaks to that contemporary group definition, we increased the accuracy of that genetic prediction model across the board by about 4%. So that may not sound like a huge amount, but when you look at how important something like fertility and heifer pregnancy is, we want to make sure we're doing the best job possible in order to give you guys accurate predictions.

Mark McCully (38:33):
So accuracy like 0.3 to 0.34, is that?

Kelli Retallick-Riley (38:36):
Yeah, exactly. And decreasing our bias in that evaluation a little bit. And so those are things that those are day jobs, right day jobs that we continue to do. It's not all about the new, right? We do look at new traits as comments come from our board of directors and as you guys task this with research, but at the end of the day, we got to make sure the current tools are the best they can be.

Jerry Theis (38:59):
I think it's important to add that in those contemporary groupings. I don't think anybody was doing anything knowingly. Oh, absolutely not. It was just a matter of, and as breeders, we're all guilty of it. If you have a spring and you have a short breeding season, it's not necessarily always a heifer's fault, but if you're tightening up those breeding seasons and that spring born heifer gets rolled to your fall group, that's when the confusion kind of came into play. So we're just trying to clear that up as far as that heifer's older, she should have cycled sooner. It's not an equal playing field. So I think it's important to realize that that's not a shot at the membership.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (39:32):
Absolutely not.

Jerry Theis (39:33):
 I mean, everybody was doing a good job. It's just some things that we've noticed.

Kelli Retallick-Riley (39:38):
Yeah, a few anomalies. We know that when we expose her the first time in March, then she shows up again exposed in September. Something probably happened in between there.

Jerry Theis (39:46):
Because the last thing we want to do is discourage anybody from submitting their breeding data. That's not the message

Kelli Retallick-Riley (39:51):
Absolutely.

Miranda Reiman (39:52):
For sure. So that room that we were in got a little bit warm that morning and we were in a lot of heavy topics, so I am not going to say that it was a welcome interruption, but kind of, we had a presentation from National Junior Angus Association board member Jack Dameron, got on the phone with us and talked over some of their goals for the year and some of that. So anybody want to recap that conversation?

Barry Pollard (40:16):
Well, it's just a great opportunity to hear from some of the juniors, and he represents the junior board very, very well and outlined their objectives and things that they're doing, and the overall program is just fantastic for developing young people and leadership skills and the knowledge they learn, and it's a wonderful program all the way around, and he did a very nice job of representing the board and representing the juniors. Very nice.

Jerry Theis (40:43):
For sure. And I think he, one little neat thing is when he mentioned the community service project involving the Ronald McDonald House and how the board was going to get there a few days early to do some specific things there, I think people need to realize the junior association or the junior organization is a key component of what we do and why we do it.

Mark McCully (41:02):
And modeling. I think that's a great example of modeling what leadership looks like, and these are young folks that are held on a bit of a pedestal and admired and looked to by so many of our youth, and it's not just what they get to do out in a show ring or help at these leadership conferences, it's at community service and some of those other things that they're a part of that are pretty incredible role models.

Barry Pollard (41:29):
I was just going to say, it's not all about just showing either. I mean, the junior has speech contest, cooking contests. There's a lot of other things that is involved in the junior program and we want to encourage all of that.

Miranda Reiman (41:43):
One thing that struck me, he listed their top five objectives for the year and they were very similar lined up next to some of our American Angus Association objectives. I mean things like opportunities for a diverse membership to be involved in preserving their Angus legacy. And I just think it's nice to know.

Mark McCully (42:01):
Nicely aligned.

Miranda Reiman (42:01):
Yeah, nicely aligned. That's exactly right. Now where?

Barry Pollard (42:07):
You're the lead, you're driving this bus, Miranda.

Mark McCully (42:10):
Well, we come to this podcast that we've got, I don't know how long, I don't even know how long we've been talking or how long you've been listening.

Miranda Reiman (42:18):
Megan's face says a long time over there behind the microphone.

Mark McCully (42:21):
We're really trying to encapsulate four days of meetings and a whole week of Zoom calls, so I always encourage folks, we really work hard at, and I know it's the heart of this board to be very transparent in terms of communicating what's being talked about, open to ideas. We've got the information ahead of the meeting, we'll have, will have information out on the website that will have a letter that walks through a lot of those topics, and then of course, look to your Angus Journal for the agenda highlights. Of course, the reason we're doing this special edition podcast is always to try to not just report, but for you all to hear again from different board members of what different discussions and kind of the thought process. And honestly, a lot of times the wrestle and the deliberation, these aren't a lot of easy decisions. We got into some things in Angus Media.

Miranda Reiman (43:17):
I was just going to say before we sign off, we better talk about the entity, the other entity.

Mark McCully (43:20):
Yeah, that's true. I mean, gosh, we got, I mentioned Angus Media, Miranda as

Miranda Reiman (43:27):
First off. We're thanking Kenny Miller for stepping in right now as a fearless leader for us. Well, the search continues for our next fearless leader.

Mark McCully (43:37):
Yeah, we were sad that we lost Clay Zwilling. Clay was doing a great job and not been here a real long time. Just had an opportunity that he needed to pursue with his family and what was best interest their family. Of course, we always respect that. We hate that, but we've got such an incredible team in Angus Media and we'll continue to charge forward. And so we gave a little update of just all the great things going on there. One topic that was, you talk about, an interesting one to think about is around this editing of photos and we talk about today, I'm not naive that photo editing has occurred in the past, but there's some pretty new technologies out there around artificial intelligence that makes what I'll call photo integrity a little bit, maybe more of a challenge. And so we looked at a couple examples. We've talked about just kind of how do we, as Angus Media, it's hard for us to police all of these things, but it is a really important discussion that we just needed to put a little air around.

Jerry Theis (44:44):
Very politically correct, and well-put, Mark. It is a concern and it's not a new concern I don't think. It's just something that I think we're all aware of and I think we need to just realize that people are aware of what is happening and what's going on, and we're kind of always considering what we do or, or if or how we should be involved in that monitoring of that, I guess.

Barry Pollard (45:13):
Yeah, it's a difficult one to handle because we can't police everyone and do everything, but just a word of caution for everyone that, take note.

Miranda Reiman (45:23):
We didn't, I mean, the board didn't develop any specific policy around it. We do rely on the Livestock Publications Council policy as it relates to, I mean, what's an acceptable edit? You can change lighting, things,

Mark McCully (45:35):
You take some mud, take a little background out, take a halter off versus reconstruct an animal.

Miranda Reiman (45:40):
Absolutely.

Barry Pollard (45:42):
One thing I'd comment on is we've got, for our membership's knowledge, we've got a very diverse membership and we have a very diversified board, and the board does a real good job of letting everyone have their opinion, voice their opinion in a meeting format and represent the membership well. All segments of our membership are represented well, and I take a lot of pride in that in seeing that that's how we function and it's important, very important and I think want to make that clear

Kelli Retallick-Riley (46:16):
Worth noting for sure.

Mark McCully (46:17):
Yeah, and I think what makes us unique, and candidly, I think that diversity we talk about all the time, that diversity of opinion and perspective is a huge strength. I think other things, just as we, gosh, the other, which had so many successful things going on with the Foundation in the last couple months, Jacqueline Boester kind of highlighted some of those big, gosh, we had just this outpouring of support for the Foundation through Oklahoma City at the Cattleman's Congress and then at National Western and some of the year end activities. That was just great to hear things going on at Certified Angus Beef, demand continues to be incredibly strong for our end product. They continue to innovate on how we deliver that brand and speak to that consumer and connect with that consumer. Also heard a little bit from the team there around some of their leadership efforts around this red meat yield task force and some things on instrument grading that maybe our listeners have kind of heard about some of this new remote grading, things that CAB has been a part of some pilots on. So just a handful of the topics that come to mind that I think might be of interest and were fun to hear some updates, exciting to think about where they're going to go in the future.

Barry Pollard (47:32):
And sales have been great. I mean, Angus is strong right now, very strong, get better all the time? But the bull sale in Oklahoma City was outstanding. You look at the bull sales and the cattle sales across the country, things are looking great, and I think a lot of that's due to the data that we've collected through the years and everything that we've done to build a database and Angus Genetics and everything that we stand for.

Miranda Reiman (47:57):
Makes for a pretty optimistic board meeting, which is fun.

Barry Pollard (48:01):
It was. And it kind of gives us the information and we discuss things and then we set the tone for what's going to happen in the next year or longer. And always trying to look forward to where do we need to be? What do we need to be doing? What changes do we need to make? Why did that ham fit in that box? Is there a reason for that? So we are progressive and will continue to be that way.

Miranda Reiman (48:28):
Excellent. Did we cover everything everybody wanted to talk about?

Kelli Retallick-Riley (48:32):
I believe so. Yeah. Shaking heads all the way around.

Mark McCully (48:36):
We would point folks out to angus.org where we post the letter and again, look for the highlights and the Angus Journal and also on the website. And so many of these topics we talked about, a lot of this is covered in more detail in articles in the Journal and always point folks there. It's always a wealth of information. If you want to dig deeper and dive deeper into some of these topics, we work hard to make that available to you.

Miranda Reiman (49:03):
Well thanks everybody.

Barry Pollard (49:04):
Thank you.

Miranda Reiman (49:04):
Safe, safe travels home. Thanks guys. That was a good recap of the week. To keep up on Angus news in between issues, sign up for the AJ daily@angusjournal.net. This has been the Angus Conversation, an Angus Journal podcast.