Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Summary of Annual Meeting:

SERA41 Annual meeting was held on February 3, 2018, in Fort Worth, TX during the Southern Section-American Society of Animal Science annual meeting. 
Introductions.  President Ryon Walker called the meeting to order and introduced the officers:  Ryon Walker, (Noble Research Institute) President; Shane Gadberry, (Univ. AR) President-Elect; Daniel Rivera (Miss. State Univ.) Secretary;  and Jason Banta (Texas A&M) Past President.  Introductions of participants in attendance were conducted (Appendix A).  Following the introductions, the 2017 minutes were reviewed.  Following review, with no discussion, a motion was made for approving the minutes (Banta, TAMU) and seconded by Rivera (MSU). 
Administrative update.  Neither Dr. McCann nor Dr. Elzer were in attendance, however Dr. Neal Schrick (U. TN) was in attendance and was very positive regarding the group’s activities and the impact the group is having.  Ryon noted that some issues were noted at the NIMMS Site and the website was not updating. 
SERA041 Recap/Annual Report.  Shane Gadberry gave a recap regarding the SERA041 Symposium (Round Bale Haylage and Impacts).  There were 65 in attendance during the symposia.  Possibly seek a method to get publications from the symposium.  Ryon Walker, who is Southern Director of ARPAS, stated that ARPAS likes the idea of publishing papers from Symposia. The annual report will be submitted by Daniel Rivera so try and have all activities by March 1.
Officer Election.  The idea of making a rule that stated to be elected into an office, a person must attend a fixed number of meetings to be nominated for office was discussed.  It was determined that rather than have a fixed rule the membership would govern themselves with regards to nominations.  This year’s nomination would have an Extension Emphasis (since previous year had a Research Emphasis), and Kim Mullenix (Auburn) was nominated by Matt Hersom (Univ. FL).  After nominations were closed, Kim was elected Secretary. 
Kunkle Symposium.  Jason Banta gave an overview of the Kunkle symposia that would occur the following day.  There were some changes to the order of the presenters that Jason made everyone aware of.
Future Topics/Ideas.  Ryon opened the floor to potential future topics for both Kunkle and SERA041 symposia. 
Monte Roquette (Texas A&M) discussed the idea of transition from a grazing environment to a feedlot environment as one topic, Stacy Gunter (USDA-ARS) commented that ARPAS editors are wanting more Health/management papers which might tie into Monte’s suggestion.  Robert Wells (Noble Research Institute) suggested topics involving sustainability of grazing cattle, Matt Poore (NC State) added that hay feeding and losses topic might fit into Robert’s topic idea.  Further discussion was whether or not to have the transition cattle idea fit into Kunkle and possibly the sustainability idea fit into SERA041.
Expiration SERA041.  The expiration for the working group occurs on Sept. 30, 2019.  Volunteers were requested to form a committee to put together topics for renewing the group.  Matt Hersom (Univ. FL), Lawton Stewart (Univ. GA) and Stacy Gunter (USDA-ARS) volunteered to be in the group and will present ideas next year (Feb 2019). 
Updates.  Ryon Walker is in a new role with Noble Research Institute.  March 7, 2018 is the Midsouth Stocker conference.  July 13, is Deep South Stocker Conference in GA.  In 2019, the Southern ASAS meetings will be in Oklahoma City, and membership will need to make a decision whether to continue alone or go back to SAAS.  Lawton Stewart moved to adjourn motion was 2^nd by Paul Beck, and meeting adjourned. 

Mullenix, M.K, J.D. Rhinehart, J.M.B. Vendramini^, M.S. Gadberry.  2018.  SAS Southern Section Regional Webinar Series for Extension Agent Training.  J. of Anim. Sci. 96 Suppl 1: 8-9.