2000 Animal Management Award

Sponsored by

Merial Limited

Thomas G. Jenkins

Thomas G. Jenkins was born in Ft. Lewis, Washington in 1947. Following four years of military service, he received a B.S. degree in Animal Science in 1972 and an M.S. degree in Animal Breeding in 1973 from the University of Arkansas; he earned a Ph.D. in Animal Breeding at Texas A&M University in 1977. In 1978, Dr. Jenkins joined the Production Systems Unit at the USDA/ARS Meat Animal Research Center, Clay Center, NE.

Dr. Jenkins’ outstanding career in beef cattle research with the USDA /ARS has been characterized by multidisciplinary research programs designed to quantify variation in energy requirements among breeds or breed crosses of beef cattle and to identify the potential impact on production efficiency. Findings from this research effort have been reported in more than 150 scientific and technical publications and at national and international symposia.

His early contributions documented breed differences in energy requirements among diverse biological types of cattle and showed that this variation is associated with differences in genetic potentials for growth and lactation. These contributions raised producers’ awareness of the impact of genotype by energy availability on life cycle production efficiency in beef cattle and have been adopted internationally into feeding standards for producing beef cows.

To improve the speed at which research results are transferred to cattle producers, Dr. Jenkins led a collaborative effort with the IRM Committee of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association to develop decision support software applicable at the enterprise level. The software package, DECI (Decision Evaluator for the Cattle Industry), provides managers from the beef industry, extension specialists, and instructors of beef management classes with a tool for evaluating the impact of strategic management decisions on financial returns and production.

Tom and his wife, Barbara, have one daughter and one son.