Dr. Stacey Hamilton
Dr. Stacey Hamilton of Greenfield is the recipient of the Meritorious Service Award. He has been a state dairy specialist with MU Extension since 2009. Stacey received a Bachelor of Science degree from Iowa State University in 1987 and then earned his Master’s in 1989 and PhD in 1993 from the University of Missouri, both in Animal Science with an emphasis on reproductive physiology.
In 1993, Stacey started his career working as a technical consultant for Wayne Feeds in the Southeast U.S., supporting large commercial dairies, field research trials, and development and design of technical field guide sheets for dairy and swine. In 1995, he joined University of Missouri Extension as a regional dairy specialist in southwest Missouri, providing education and technical assistance to Southwest Missouri producers in the areas of dairy production and general agriculture, and was also associated with research and demonstration projects at the MU Southwest Research Center in Mount Vernon.
In 1999, Stacey was instrumental in the establishment of a pasture-based dairy operation at the Southwest Research Center in Mount Vernon. Impact of this program saw an increase of pasture-based dairies in Missouri from less than 5% in 1998 to nearly 25% of the dairy cows in 2008. He also taught dairy courses at MU, including the development of a pasture based dairy production course, an on-line instruction that has been a popular course among university students and was made available to non-traditional students outside the university.
Stacey was one of the primary people responsible for the development of the Missouri grazing wedge application, an on-line program has assisted numerous producers with pasture management decision making. He was also a leader in the development of PaddockTrac, a proximal data sensor that measures the height of forages and via calibration the biomass of forage in a pasture. Stacey also worked with Free Range Dairies to develop a curriculum, and train employees for a systems approach on seasonal pasture-based dairies. He developed nearly 40 video lectures, with topics including body condition scoring, managing pasture, allocation, and the utilization of pasture.
Stacey has been involved in numerous research endeavors covering a broad range of topics including forage production and management, evaluation of an accelerated milk replacer program, and evaluation of estrous synchronization protocols for dairy herds. He has been an invited speaker nationwide on pasture-based dairy production and collaborated with Dr. Scott Poock on estrous synchronization comparing different protocols on over 5,000 dairy cows. He also worked with the Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship (DGA) program and helped secure a major grant to introduce PaddockTrac to dairy producers in the upper Midwest and Northeast U.S.
Stacey and wife Lisa, have two children, Garrison and Madison.