Farm Manager:
Cody Sankey (517) 355-7452

Faculty Coordinator
Kenneth Geuns

Location
3207 Bennett Road
East Lansing, MI 48824

The MSU Purebred Beef Cow-Calf Teaching and Research Center operates on 340 acres of land with the main barn located on the corner of Bennett and Beaumont Roads.

The facility maintains a separate web site with information about cattle sales and herd pedigrees at www.msupurebred.com.

Visitor Information
Visitors are welcome daily between 8 am and 5 pm or by appointment with the farm manager. There are trails and informational signs marked for self-guided tours. Tours should be arranged in advance with the Farm Manager.

Mission
Beef cattle are bred and raised at Michigan State University to provide students with work experience in breeding, feeding, management and merchandizing of quality beef cattle as well as to furnish examples of high performance modern type cattle for selection and evaluation courses. Each year over 700 students are enrolled in classes utilizing cattle from this unit.

Facility Description
The main barn was moved to its present location from the main MSU campus in 1954. It contains a small classroom plus pens and feed storage for the cattle that are housed here.

Animal Inventory and Production
Approximately 125 cows and their calves are maintained on the main location. The cows calve in January, February, March and April and calves are weaned in September, October and November.

Two purebred herds, Angus and Polled Hereford, are maintained with approximately 40 breeding age females in each herd.

Angus	Polled Hereford

In addition to the purebred cows, a herd of approximately 50 commercial cows are maintained as recipients for embryos collected from the best of the Angus and Polled Hereford cows. The herd is managed to provide breeding animals for sale to other beef cattle producers. The commercial cows used as embryo recipients are Simmental crossbreds, Angus or Hereford crossbreds. They must be healthy and reproductively sound but do not have the same value as the registered breeding cattle.

The goal of the herd is to wean a 90 - 95 % calf crop from the cows exposed to breeding. Artificial insemination is used extensively for a 60-day breeding season and then bulls are turned out to service females that did not conceive to A.I. service. Most of the heifer calves are retained for classroom instruction. The bull calves produced in the herd are castrated if they do not possess acceptable performance or conformation desirable for a breeding animal. The remaining bull calves are sold privately, through consignment sales or through bull test stations. Performance records are collected and submitted to the respective breed associations for inclusion in the national sire evaluation programs of the respective breeds.

Each year a few of the cattle produced in this herd are fitted for exhibition and/or sale by the MSU student employees. Cattle from this herd have received the following honors:

• Grand Champion Polled Hereford Female, 2005 National Western Stock Show
• Reserve Grand Champion Polled Hereford Female, 2004 North American International Livestock Expo
• Grand Champion Polled Hereford Bull 2002,
• National Polled Hereford Show Premier Exhibitor 2002,
• National Polled Hereford Show Grand Champion Polled Hereford Bull 2001,
• National Polled Hereford Show Reserve Grand Champion Polled Hereford Bull 2001, and
• North American Show Grand Champion Polled Hereford Female 2000 North American International.

Semen produced by some of the MSU Angus and Polled Hereford bulls has been in high demand from cattle breeders throughout the world. MSU bulls have been leased for semen production by Select Sires Inc. in Ohio and by American Breeders Service in Wisconsin. A Polled Hereford bull owned and developed by MSU, "Knight Ryder" has sold semen to Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay.

Featured Consignments to Fall 2007 Angus Connection Sale

MSU Elba 711
Sold for $6,000.00
Purchased by: Austin Betzold, Nakomis, Illinois

MSU Elba 707
Sold for $7,750.00
Purchased by: Mitchell Goheen, Deckerville, Michigan

MSU also sold MSU Elba 732 for $8,000.00 to the Will Harsh, Radnor, Ohio.

The MSU Purebred Beef Unit consignments to the Angus Connection Sale included 6 lots that averaged $5,550.00 per lot.

Sincere appreciation is expressed to the Beef Barn student employees for their expert preparation and presentation of cattle in these recent events.

Animal Nutrition
The cattle are maintained in pastures most of the year using natural woodlots for windbreaks. These pastures are seeded with bluegrass, white clover, orchardgrass and bromegrass. They vary in size from 10 to 50 acres and are grazed on a rotational basis with the cattle being moved every 30 days. All of the hay and silage used to provide the winter-feed supply is grown on the MSU farms. Approximately 2.5 tons of hay is required to feed each cow during the winter. The hay fields are seeded to alfalfa plus orchardgrass or bromegrass and are sometimes grazed after one cutting of hay is removed. Hay is stored in sheds for winter-feeding while corn silage is stored in horizontal silos at the MSU Beef Cattle Research Center. Minerals are provided free choice for the cow herd throughout the year.