Big things are coming to our small farm!
Guess what!?
We are excited to announce that we will be participating in The Stars of Texas Female Sale held in conjunction with the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo in January. This is huge for us! Not only is it our first Registered Angus sale, it’s one of the biggest Angus Association sales in our area. So what does all this entail? Great question - and something we have learned a lot about along the way.
First - The Selection Process
Applications are submitted a few months before the sale. All heifers applying to be in the sale must be registered through the American Angus Association. This means, when they are born, a tissue sample is submitted along with the bull and momma cow’s information. With this data, they compile a list of specific genetic characteristics that are important when raising cattle and for future breeding purposes called Expected Progeny Difference or EPD. This is a percentage of how each animal is expected to perform relative to other animals listed in the database. There are EPDs specific to beef such as marbling (Marb) and ribeye area (RE) which our heifer ranks in the tops 10% and 15% in. Another important factor is $Value index which is an estimate of how future progeny are expected to perform on average taking into account economic factors in the cattle industry. This can get pretty complicated. EPDs directly affect $Value. Our heifer ranks top 3% in $B, or beef value which basically translates into the biggest “bang for your buck” for postweaning performance.
One interesting EPD that I learned about was PAP or pulmonary arterial pressure EPD. If you didn’t already know, I am a pulmonary nurse practitioner so when I saw this value my eyes lit up. A PAP score is an indicator of susceptibility to high altitude disease commonly experienced at elevations greater than 5,500 feet. This mainly pertains to herds living in mountain areas. This is interesting because I work and manage a lot of patients with high “PAP scores” or pulmonary hypertension and it’s interesting that there can be similar etiology in cattle! Anyways, I’m done nerding out.
All of the above EPDs (and many, many more that I will spare you) and $Values are taken into account when selecting heifers for this sale. So it is an extreme honor that ours was selected!
Interested in learning more about EPDs? Visit the American Angus Association's website here.
Second - The Prepping Steps
Once our heifer was selected, we had to submit pictures for the sale book. We were only given a couple of days to get this submitted, so we unfortunately did not have time to hire a professional photographer. To prep the cows and get them looking picture-perfect, we hired a groomer to come out to our farm. Honestly, this heifer got PAMPERED! It was a very interesting process to watch. Shortly after he was done, we walked her back out into the pasture and took a few pictures. We edited them that night and submitted!
One of our last tasks in preparation for our sale will be getting a banner for our stall at the FWSSR. I will design it similar to the one that we use at the local farmer’s markets and get this submitted to a local sign company here in North Texas. After this, we should be ready for our big day!
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