I spent some time in Arizona recently trying to gain a little knowledge at the Arizona Cattle Industry Research and Education Foundation symposium. This was the third symposium the group has hosted to teach ranchers about herd improvement and bull selection. In other words, how to turn rocks into greenbacks.
Chuck Backus was the organizer. Chuck has retired from ranching and turned the ranch over to his daughter, Amy, and son-in-law, Mike Doyle; they have traveled on our WLJ Livestock Tours. Chuck is a real student of the cattle industry and has proved that genetics will make you more money at the end of the day.
His ranch is near Globe, AZ, and comprises steep valleys, gorges and rocks with intermittent vegetation and water. Through genetic selection, he has produced cattle over the years that grade 100 percent Choice or better—actually, 50 percent Prime grade off the Arizona desert. He retains ownership of his calves through the feedlot. Chuck also has a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and worked for the space power industry before he joined the faculty at Arizona State University.
It was remarkable for him to assemble this group of top-tier speakers to talk and teach us about genetic selection and how the technology has advanced through DNA gene mapping and the added value they give EPD data that cattlemen have been collecting over the past 70 years. I even feel like I’ve been standing still for the past several years—I don’t know about you all, but I can get a serious case of technology overload.
Sometimes it seems redundant to talk about herd improvement; of course everyone wants a better cow herd. The question was asked a hundred times: “What do you want to improve?” You pick one way to go, and it’s antagonistic with another place you want to go. I like the idea of getting a live calf, then weaning him sounds pretty good, but there is more.
Herd longevity was discussed as one of your economically relevant traits. A cow that produces 10 calves is better than one that produces three. Ironically, the Red Angus Association is the only breed that provides a stayability score. One might think that you should expect less from an Arizona cow that has to do a lot of extra work to get feed and water. But that would be a false assumption.
But you can crossbreed to fix that. Bob Weaber of Kansas State University said simply crossing a Bos taurus with a Bos indicus can add years to the productive life of that cow; how about getting 15 calves out of one cow? Careful crossbreeding can make the herd more profitable in ways you may have not thought about. The crossbreeding during the 1980s was an unmitigated mess. Today’s genetic predictions are many times more accurate and easy to use.
Then the topic of mature cow size came up. I’ve been wanting to say this for years: You select bulls with more growth every year, so what did you expect would happen? Mature cows weighing 1,450 pounds are what happened. It’s almost like we have broken the growth curve. Carcass weights, on average, have gained 5 lbs. a year.
Nearly every breed association has started indexing the indexes to try and smooth out the bull selection process. They are either a growth and feeding index or a maternal type index using calving ease, milk or other economically relevant traits. For most commercial cattlemen, this may be the easiest thing to select with.
The future holds a lot of excitement in genetics. Alison Van Eenennaam from the University of California, Davis spoke about gene splicing. Apparently, she and other genomic scientists are learning how to spot genetic defects or unwanted traits in the genomic sequence and replace them with a desirable trait. This stuff is truly over my head, but it’s fascinating. We’ve been doing a similar process with genetically modified crops for years.
She said they are having disagreements between USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on bringing this technology to market. FDA considers the process a drug that should be regulated as such. USDA considers it a process that is harmless. Other beef producing countries like Brazil and Australia have already approved the process and are open for business.
This is the avenue cattlemen want to go down; just imagine if we could find and replace the chromosome for bovine respiratory disease or brisket disease. It sounds like this will be another political episode, not science. Meanwhile, let’s figure out how to make more rain. — PETE CROW
