Congratulations Kathy on being featured in August 2011 issue of Alberta Beef Magazine – Women in Agriculture:

Kathy Adams became involved with the Salers breed almost by accident when it was first getting started, shortly after the first importations from France in 1973. She was not too long out of high school and working as a fileclerk/court runner in a downtown Calgary law firm when one of the back offices was rented out to a new cattle
breed association. The Manager needed someone to type and keep books; he offered Kathy a part-time after-hours job that began her commitment to the breed.

>> read entire article

>> Mader Ranches 2011 Bull Sale
>> New Trend Salers Bull Sale
>> Best of Beef Bull Sale

• 2011 AGM was held May 21st in Carstairs AB.
• Brian Jones of Okotoks AB was re-elected to a second 3 year term on the Board and was also returned to the position of Treasurer.
• Welcome to Brad Dunn of Ogema SK, elected to his first term on the Board – also a 3 year stint.
• Many thanks to Wayne Sereda of Big Valley AB, who completed his term of office at this AGM and who had been instrumental in bringing the Optimizer proposal to SAC members for consideration.
• Also at this year’s meeting, a Committee was struck to research and evaluate various options available to the Board and Association for the provision of registry services and performance programs.
• We’ll be looking forward to hearing their report.

The 112-Day test has now been completed, with Salers bulls posting excellent results, including Top Gains at the Station across all breeds for the 3rd year running.

• Salers statistics for 2011 are ADG of 4.26, WDA of 3.41
• All breeds ADG was 3.82 and WDA was 3.35
• The top heifer was also a Salers, gaining 3.46 over the test period and with a WDA of 3.04

www.manitobabulltest.com

Have you or your customers experienced some confusion when trying to compare EPDs from different breeds? Are you, as a commercial customer, used to looking at EPDs from the Angus breed? Salers Association of Canada has recently made changes to its EPD base to make them more easily understood by the commercial industry and more comparable to Angus numbers. The base adjustment will affect the breed averages and percentile rankings for BW, WW, YW and milk but doesn’t change an animal’s relative ranking within the Salers breed.

The change goes a long way to defeating the notion that Salers EPDs and animal performance are not competitive within the industry. By making the Salers breed averages more similar to other breeds, our EPDs will be easier to use.

It is important to note that even with these changes, EPDs are still not directly comparable between breeds without using the MARC (Meat Animal Research Center) across-breed EPD tables.