Matsushima releases his eighth book at 101
April 4, 2022
Fort Collins, CO, September 12, 2022 — It was over breakfast in Nebraska one morning that Dr. John Matsushima was struck with an idea that changed cattle feeding. Dining with Warren Monfort, Louis Dinklage, and Earl Brookover, the men ordered cereal rather than the usual warm ham and eggs.
“While we were having cereal, I though by gosh, we ought to feed a hot meal to cattle, and that when I got the idea of steam flaked corn,” Matsushima said. “That became one of the highlights of the cattle feeding industry. It made the cost of feeding 10% cheaper and more efficient.”
Monfort, he said, was also intrigued by the research Matsushima was conducting including the use of beef tallow in rations, the use of Aureomycin to prevent liver abcess in feedlot cattle, the value of dehydrated alfalfa, silage, bonemeal, and limestone in feedlot rations, and the carcass similarities between beef steers and dairy steers. After Matsushima’s feeding trials at Colorado State University outgrew the concrete mixer he had been using to mix ration additives, he approached Harsh Manufacturing. The company delivered a prototype to Matsushima that was run off a PTO and eventually replaced with the truck-mounted unit common today.
Other research findings over the course of Matsushima’s career at Colorado State University include ideal roughage to concentrate rations on a dry matter basis, the estrogenic effects of alfalfa when used with diethylstilbesterol (DES), DES implants in bulls, grub control via pour-on, feedlot gains through the use of an estradiol (Synovex), feed efficiency in single versus double implanted cattle, liquid protein concentrate from sugar beet processing, feeding Melengesterol Asetate (MGA) to heifers in a feedlot, added feed efficiency as a result of feeding monensin-containing Rumensin, daily gain increases through the use of dry distillers grains, and the ideal timing of implantation in feedlot calves.
At the age of 101, Matsushima has made another contribution to the cattle feeding industry with his just-released eighth book, Beef Cattle Feedlot Industry.
The book brings Matsushima’s research findings and knowledge about the cattle feeding industry together with basic information about cattle, feeding, and the industry, and rounding out with timelines, profiles of the legendary cattle feeders Matsushima worked with over his career, and stories of his time studying Kobe beef abroad.
Matsushima designed the book to be a resource for students and those involved in the production or feeding of beef cattle. In the book, he includes a quote by Dr. William E. Morgan, president, Colorado A&M College, 1949 to 1969.
“If it isn’t recorded and classified in a way that it is readily available for each generation that comes along, then that knowledge is lost. And some of the lost generations of people we read about are where there was no record…there was no repository of accumulated knowledge. Computers videotapes, all of theses educational items are a marvelous thing, but there is no adequate substitute, as a teaching aid, that equals a written book – something you can take off by yourself. Here, bound up in a package you can hold in your hand, is information on whatever subject is of interest to you.”
With Dr. Matsushima accumulating knowledge over ten decades about agriculture and the cattle feeding industry, his new book serves as a reference and a historical record about one of the world’s most important industries.
Source: Rachel Gabel, The Fence Post Magazine
