Friday, January 17, 2014

Manage and Market What You Measure



Representatives from BIXS (Holly Labrie), ViewTrack (Hubert Lau), BIO (Scott Bothwell), Quantum Genetics (Jim Palmer) and the Canadian Angus Association (Kajal Devani) travelled a significant length of Alberta with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development’s Beef Specialist Pat Ramsey this past week holding producer meetings with information on tools and technology available to the Canadian beef industry.

These information sessions were open to all producers and industry partners and a great opportunity for me to learn more about regional ranching and our members and their customers. It was also an opportunity for me to share with some of our members and their commercial customers information about EPDs and genomics.

Here are some comments from the audience:

  • ‘I didn’t realize that EPDs are so easy to use, they have always been there I just didn’t know how to use them so I never looked at them.’
  • ‘I’m quite excited about the possibilities genomics will bring us, I would like to have a way to select for disease resistance, fly resistance and feed efficiency.’
  • ‘Marketing has changed so much since I started ranching, this was really good information, there are a few very easy things I can do to market my calves better.’
  • ‘I think BIXS will be very good for our industry, we need to get carcass data back for our calves.’
  • ‘It’s good to learn new things, it makes me feel less old to learn something new.'

If you weren't able to attend a workshop and would like more information about EPDs, please check out our EPD 101 video on YouTube.

Posted by Kajal Devani
Feedback: kdevani@cdnangus.ca