December 2020 E-newsletter

A quick search button has been added to the My Buyer History screen to make it easier to find individual buyers. On your main online page, go to Tools / NEW! Buyer History / Quick Search at the top right hand side of screen.
Gestation length has been added to AI and embryo animals in your online account. You will find it located under the individual animal / Performance / Gest (to the right of Ease).

TOTAL HERD ENROLLMENT (THE) DEADLINE FOR BEST RATE IS DECEMBER 15, 2020

To prevent late enrollment and incurring any late fees, 2021 Total Herd Enrollment (THE) must be submitted by December 15, 2020. All active females in your herd will need to be enrolled.

THE herds enrolled by this date pay $22.00 per female. Online Simmental.com users benefit by saving $2/head when enrolling online by December 15th.

Members enrolling their herds by December 15, 2020 will be invoiced in two equal installments: the first on April 1st, 2021 and the second October 1st, 2021.

Enrollments received between December 16th, 2020 and February 15th, 2021 will be charged a $27.00/head enrollment fee, payable in full April 1st, 2021.

Enrollments received after February 15th, 2021 will be charged $38.00/head, payable in full on April 1st or at time of submission. Applicable taxes will be added to all prices.

Fees are not refundable, except for 1st calf heifers, providing complete performance and disposal information and written request for refund is submitted. For all other females that are disposed of between installment billings, the second installment is due and payable by the member who enrolled the female.

ENROLLING PARTNERSHIP-OWNED AND RECENTLY PURCHASED FEMALES

Partnership-owned females do not print on the Pre-printed Female Enrollment forms, nor included under the "My Pre-Post Inventory 2021" listing for our online participants. Please contact the office with the animal ID prior to the December 15th deadline so we may manually enroll these partnership-owned female(s) for your herd.

Recently purchased females that do not show up on your inventory will be automatically enrolled into THE herds at time of transfer. The new owner will not be penalized late or reactivation fees, but will be invoiced for the full THE amount when the female is transferred into their name.

2021 TOTAL HERD ENROLLMENT (THE) INSTRUCTIONS FOR ONLINE www.simmental.com

Step 1 - Disposing/Culling Females

Go into My Herd | My Inventory
Change the Display Year to 2021 click the "Change" button
This will display a My Inventory - Pre-Post listing that displays five columns that are to be completed prior to posting your inventory.
Season (S/F) - refers to whether the dam will calve in either Spring or Fall (Default: S)
Brd Code - 100 (Bred AI or Natural), 109 - Bred commercial. See Data Entry Codes link at the bottom of the online entry-screen.
Preg (Y/N) - Preg Tested - Yes, or No
Disp Code & Disp Date - allows you to cull females no longer active. See Data Entry Codes link at the bottom of the online entry-screen.

Step 2 - Enrolling the Active Females in your herd

Once you have entered your data and disposed of any cows that are no longer active in your herd, click the "SAVE" button at the bottom of the last page. (You will notice the page numbers are shown at the bottom of each listing. Advancing to the next page forces a "Save" of the data that has been entered.)
Once you have saved your work, please review that it is correct and double check your work. You can then proceed to click the "POST INVENTORY" button.
This process will enroll the active females and display the My Posted Inventory list.

Step 3 - Entering Breeding

You can now enter the individual 2020 breeding dates for each enrolled female as you will now see the word "Edit" displayed to the right of each female on the My Posted Inventory listing.
To speed up the entry process you can also use the My Breeding entry screen. Go to My Herd | My Breeding. This allows you to update multiple exposures all at one time for a selected group of enrolled females.

CSA FALL BOARD MEETING RECAP

The Canadian Simmental Association (CSA) Board of Directors and its committees met November 15th to 17th for the CSA Fall Board Meetings. Due to travel and COVID-19 restrictions, some of the board and committee members who were unable to participate in person joined the discussions via video conferencing. A summary of the discussions and outcomes is available here.

BREED IMPROVEMENT

Weaning Season and Complete Data

As we are weaning calves it is important to remember the value of reporting weights and measures on all calves (not just the good ones).

Reporting on all calves ensures that the calves are ranked correctly and more importantly, it ensures that their deviation from group average (where EPD are calculated from) are correct.

An example of the impact of incomplete reporting is shown below. In the incomplete example, the breeder chose to only submit those calves with above average weaning weights. You can see how this hurt their deviation from group average, and will thus drive down their EPD.

		Deviation From Group
Calf	205D Weight	Complete Reporting	Incomplete Reporting
A	650	-42.5	X
B	675	-17.5	X
C	625	-67.5	X
D	700	7.5	-21
E	705	12.5	-16
F	725	32.5	4
G	750	57.5	29
H	725	32.5	4
I	690	-2.5	X
J	680	-12.5	X
Avg	692.5	692.5	721

Heifer Pregnancy

Please ensure that if you are completing heifer pregnancy data during enrolment that you report on all females exposed. You are not required to enrol open females, however the data on open females helps us to determine overall fertility rates and performance, relative to all contemporaries.

NEOGEN HOLIDAY SCHEDULE

* All time are in Mountain Standard Time

Our electric system will remain operational during the holiday closure to allow for electronic requests, revivifies and revisions to be processed automatically. However, there will not be any service coverage during the holiday closure. Any electronic request system errors that arise during the closure period will not be handled until January 4^th.
Sample processing turnaround time will pause for the period of December 24^th to January 3^rd. Please account for up to 11 calendar days of additional turnaround time for any samples received at the lab after December 14^th.
Samples will not be delivered to our facility during the closure and will be held by the couriers and Canada Post. Samples will be logged as soon as we re-open on the 4^thof January 2021.

DNA Testing At A Reduced Price!

TAG THEM BLUE!

YOUNG CANADIAN SIMMENTAL ASSOCIATION

YCSA FACEBOOK AUCTION

The YCSA Facebook Auction closes December 4^th so get your bids in quick! Items included exclusive semen packages, home décor, wild rags, food items, beauty products, clothing, gift cards and MORE!

Click here for the link

https://m.facebook.com/youngcanadiansimmentalassociation/?ref=bookmarks

The mail in ballots for the ownership rule change have been received and an email will be sent out shortly to all YCSA members with the results.