Dr. John D. Sikes
Dr. John D. Sikes was born on March 31, 1930 in Mansfield, Mo. After completing his bachelor’s degree in agriculture from the University of Missouri in 1952, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and served for four years. He was assigned to the 59th Veterinary Inspection Flight. He was stationed in Seattle, Wa. and also spent 16 months in England. They inspected all food for United Kingdom mess halls, commissaries and restaurants that served U.S. troops stationed there. He was honorably discharged June 25, 1956.
Dr. Sikes obtained a master’s degree in dairy husbandry in 1957 and a doctorate in dairy husbandry in 1961 from the University of Missouri (MU). Dr. Sikes joined the faculty at MU as an instructor in 1959 and was frequently promoted throughout his tenure. In 1971, he earned the title of Professor. Another unique honor was his Visiting Professor title from the National Institute for Research in Dairying, in Reading, England, which he held in 1967.
Dr Sikes helped countless students to realize their career potential by sharing his considerable knowledge as an instructor for courses such as Dairy Cattle Judging, Advanced Dairy Cattle Judging, Bovine Breeding, and Semen and Ova Processing. Beginning in 1959, Dr. Sikes was the coach for the MU Dairy Cattle Judging Team and many of the teams he coached won team judging awards.
Beyond teaching, Dr. Sikes contributed greatly to the dairy industry in Missouri and nationally through his work in dairy cattle breeding; artificial insemination, embryo transfer and general reproductive physiology. In 1985 Clifton Murphy, DVM, and Dr. Sikes established an embryo program MU in cooperation with various herd owners and the assistance of several veterinarians. The program served to train students and be of service to the cattle industry. Embryo transfer technology offers the opportunity to produce identical twins for use in dairy-cattle research. This knowledge was also used in conjunction with the St. Louis Zoo in the Banteng, a species of wild southeast Asian cattle.
Two articles from the Chicago Tribune highlighted the importance of the research conducted at the University of Missouri under Dr. Sikes’ leadership. The articles reported on the first test-tube calf born at the University of Missouri in December 1989, an 85-pound black and white male. Dr. Sikes and graduate student, Tammie Schalue-Francis, matured and fertilized a cow’s egg in a petri dish, then nurtured the embryo seven days before transplanting it into an Angus cow. The egg was collected from the ovary of a cow in a slaughterhouse and fertilized with semen from a Holstein bull. By getting the egg to the blastocyst stage (7-day-old embryo), they were able to implant the embryo nonsurgically into a surrogate mother. Their lab was only the second in the U.S. to accomplish this procedure, the first being the University of Wisconsin in early 1989.
Dr. Sikes retired from the University of Missouri in 1995, but continued his work in embryo transfer in the private sector mainly in dairy cattle and on his farms. Through the years, Dr. Sikes has continued to have communication with former students throughout the world
At 89, Dr. Sikes still resides in Columbia with limited mobility in an assisted living facility. He is visited by former students from around the state. Dr. Sikes’ support of higher education will continue after his passing in the form of the “John D. Sikes Memorial Endowed Scholarship Fund” for the benefit of the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources (CAFNR) on the Columbia campus to provide one or more full tuition scholarships to CAFNR students, with preference for students majoring in animal science.