University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources S111 Animal Sciences Center Columbia Missouri 65211 TO: OWNERS AND MANAGERS OF BEEF CATTLE This sale will offer you the largest number of quality bulls in the breeds with excellent records of performance. Sire selection is the most important decesion you have to make as a cattleman. Beef cattle breeding objectives hace changed in the past few years. Several years ago mast selection was praticed for type and conformation, measured mostly by eye appraisal. Little emphasis was placed on actual measurements of performance. Today producers purchasing herd bull prospects demand records on weight for age as compared to the average of the herd from which they came, as well as frame, backfat, testicle size, and muscling mass estimated by the K40 counter. Information on these traits in used along with type and conformation to make herd bull selections. The Missouri Performance-Tested Bull Sale has taken the lead down through the years in giving information of this kind to prospective buyers. All of the performance traits mentioned are highly heritable. This means that purchasing and using the selected bulls in this sale should improve these traits in your herd at home. The more superior the bull, the more superiority one should expect in his offspring. This means progress in producing better quality, good-performing beef cattle in the state. All bulls in the sale represent superior-performing individuals from many progerssive breeding herd in the state. Here is an opportunity to purchase a top performing bull for your herd. Very few bull sales in the U.S.A. offer such top quality and top-performing bulls in such large numbers. We suggest you look at the bulls and their records in this publication and mark those that are especially superior in traits that are needed to improve the cattle in your herd. Records show that about 85 percent of the improvement in beef herds is contributed by herd bulls selected. This is why the purchase of a superior bull means so much to a commercial and purebred beef breeders.