Nothing is more heartwarming than seeing a young person with a goal. Elysia Bushey, a 21-year-old entering her senior year at Missouri State University, is a young lady with a plan. Her major is ag education with a minor in animal science. Elysia said, “My goal is to ultimately be an ag teacher and to raise show cattle and registered cattle on the side. I probably want to get into raising some registered goats for my students so they can have access to some pretty good quality animals at a decent price.” Now that’s making a plan.
Elysia was born in Memphis, but when she was just 5 years old, her mom got a high school teaching job in Mountain Home, Ark. The first time Elysia saw the cow barn at Mountain Home High School, she told her mom that someday she would have a cow in that barn. In eighth grade, her dream came true.
Elysia began showing cattle when she was 14. After that it was goodbye track and field, and hello show arena. “It just hooked me,” she said. She began to focus on registered Gelbvieh, presently owning one cow and a heifer and one balancer bull, because she relies mainly on AI for breeding.
Because Elysia is away at Missouri State all week, her dad helps take care of her cattle until she comes home on the weekends. She said, “My dad is really good. He feeds and takes care of all the cattle during the week.” Her family owns 40 acres just north of Mountain Home.
Elysia doesn’t show cattle as often as she did in high school, but when she’s home, she likes to help out the show team at Mountain Home High School. She said, “The show team will call me and I’ll go and clip up their cattle for them and I’ll go to the show and help them out. There were people who were so gracious and helped me through all my years of doing it, so I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to give back to my own high school.”
Although most cattle people like to boast of large herds, that’s not Elysia’s goal. She said, “Once I’m out of college, after I’ve been teaching for a year or two and after I’m able to get acreage, I don’t plan on having an extremely large herd. My main focus is genetics. So I would rather have a small herd and be able to focus on bettering the genetics of those animals than having a big operation.” One of the steps that Elysia has taken to increase her knowledge of genetics has been to take courses in collecting bulls. She’s certified in AI and is a bull collector at Genex in Strafford, Mo.
Never too busy to advance the cause of animal agriculture, Elysia was involved in high school FFA and now is involved with collegiate FFA and Farm Bureau. Also, she is president of Missouri State’s Block and Bridle organization.
Elysia’s mom and dad have always supported her love of cattle. She also credits her middle school ag teacher Jacquie Albright and her high school ag teacher Josh Baker as being great influences in her life. One of the greatest things that could happen to Elysia in her future would be to return to Mountain Home High School and teach ag. Nothing would please her more. She said, “Ultimately, I want to end up back here.”
