When the Western Livestock Journal was founded in 1922, it was a time of transition for the beef industry and all of agriculture. The country was in a period of relative prosperity and peace, but agriculture was lagging behind due to overproduction of agriculture commodities after World War I. In the livestock industry, it was during the era of the great stockyards, and the show ring ruled the roost in terms of cattle selection.
[inline_image file=”d6bed1245c5faf06db1135f4ccb5cac9.jpg” caption=”Dr. Sewall Wright”]
However, when two geneticists graduated with their Ph.D.s, Sewall Wright from Harvard in 1915 and Jay Lush from University of Wisconsin in 1922, a different way of selecting cattle was conceived. It is through them that our modern understanding of population genetics would be formulated, which would eventually change the industry profoundly with more scientific approaches to selection.
[inline_image file=”a51f960faf186a97dad3eae96b5794d3.jpg” caption=”Dr. Jay L. Lush, 1954″]
Show ring
In the 1920s, the show ring was the alpha and omega of cattle selection, and the International Livestock Exposition held at the Chicago Union Stock Yards was the mecca of livestock shows.
[inline_image file=”013ec7a20fded4d9e01c58c47d72d685.jpg” caption=”Chicago Union Stock Yards in 1947″]
At one time, Chicago’s stockyards processed 82 percent of the nation’s meat, and after John Spoor was hired as the president of the stockyards, he quickly greenlighted the formation of a livestock exposition as a means of promoting the use of quality pedigree sires in commercial herds. This took the form of the International Livestock Exposition (1900-1975).
[inline_image file=”99a34bc9fd98af9246b464308a8a477e.jpg” caption=”Purebred Livestock Record Building”]
Another initiative the stockyards did to promote the use of improved herdsires was constructing a pedigree livestock building to house breed associations at no cost. This strategy was so effective that the once vastly numbered Texas Longhorns were bred to near extinction by the 1920s.
[inline_image file=”c2312d0fea0b0d9abc5f3fbba2a9d690.jpg” caption=”Riding the rail, Circle M Herefords”]
The management of the Chicago Union Stock Yards made winning the market classes the highlight of the International, and it was so prestigious that winning entries came from as far away as the University of California, Davis. Although the International was the most important show of the year, many of the higher profile seedstock operations might be out showing cattle for up to eight months of the year in what became known as “riding the rail.”
This might involve a producer exhibiting from the Eastern State Exposition in Massachusetts to the Pacific National in Oregon during the fall show season.
The war brings changes
When World War II began, there was a quick downsizing of cattle, as the ability to mature quickly and produce a large amount of tallow was desired because of tallow’s value in the production of explosives. However, after the war, producers kept getting cattle smaller—even though it no longer made economic sense—in what became known as the “belt buckle” fad. They were called belt buckle cattle because it was not desirable to have an animal’s back above a person’s waist.
[inline_image file=”c12dbca3be39c9ca3ca6cecf0ae4ed25.jpg” caption=”1953 "belt buckle" ideal, champion Angus female at the International”]
Additionally, the International was postponed for the duration of the war. This show was by far the American Angus Association’s biggest promotional event of the year. With these resources freed up, the Angus Association refocused their promotional efforts on the National Western Stock Show in Denver in an effort to break into the Hereford-dominated Western market. With the major Midwest herds exhibiting, Angus would eventually be successful in this effort.
[inline_image file=”aec739bc619c25e629e26af2d747eb80.jpg” caption=”Historic National Western Stock Show Amphitheater in Denver.”]
Predictably, the belt buckle fad quickly got carried away, to the point where a female would have to be led into a slit trench to get her low enough for a belt buckle show bull to mount her, and the genetic defect dwarfism began showing up.
As the cattle feeding and packing industry moved West, these new, large commercial feedlots knew their costs and what kind of cattle made them money both in the yard and on the rail, and it was not the belt buckle cattle winning shows. Clearly, a type change was needed for larger-framed, faster-growing cattle.
[inline_image file=”6d2dfa0728cda6fcd8c66fadc548d7f6.jpg” caption=”1969 Polled Hereford national champion, Canam Investor at the Houston Livestock Show.”]
This would happen in 1969, the year at the National Polled Hereford Show in Houston when Canam Investor was the national champion. Canam Investor was shown by Glenkirk Farm and would become a Performance Registry International (PRI) Golden Certified Meat Sire.
The trend culminated at the International that fall, when Oklahoma State University’s Dr. Robert Totusek selected the Angus bull Great Northern as champion, and Dr. Don Good picked a Charolais-Angus cross as champion market steer. This famous steer was Conoco, and at 1,250 pounds, Choice minus and yield grade 2, he represented a seismic shift.
[inline_image file=”6225e6a93b4b7a5a68aefd92e11d75a9.jpg” caption=”Dr. Robert Totusek”]
Seeds of performance testing
While the show ring was driving selection, Lush, of Iowa State University (ISU), was training an army of graduate students—124 Ph.D. and 26 M.S. students—in the new field of quantitative genetics. In his research, Lush built on University of Chicago’s Wright’s genetic theories, and when World War II ended, the quantitative geneticists Lush trained had been scattered onto land-grant university faculties across the nation.
[inline_image file=”c9848d3011ccdf60648c3815068562fa.jpg” caption=”1969 Chicago champion steer, Conoco”]
Before these new faculty members started spreading the message of objective selection, university livestock judging team coaches were considered the industry’s ultimate authority on livestock selection. However, this would be forever changed when these Lush protйgйs started the performance movement.
[inline_image file=”a5b878261b55455d83cf4a588ec5a533.jpg” caption=”Waldo Emerson Forbes”]
Other keys to making performance testing a reality included the scientists at the USDA Miles City Research Station, who determined the heritability of some of the common weight traits. At the Front Royal Research Center in Virginia, they determined rate of gain and conformation were both heritable traits and independent of the other. With this knowledge, the performance movement really got its start with producers.
When Angus invaded the National Western during the war, Waldo Forbes of Beckton Stock Farm in Wyoming became intrigued with the breed but was completely turned off by the condition and artificial environment upon which cattle were being selected.
[inline_image file=”7aa7e6e14ee3f43b9e93f6e0e7db8c5f.jpg” caption=”Dr. H.H. Stonaker”]
Visiting with former Lush student Dr. H.H. Stonaker of Colorado State University (CSU), Forbes learned of the new concept of performance testing, and he was determined to show that it would work. To be contrary, he did it with Angus’ genetic defects: the reds. When others like George Chiga grabbed onto the idea of a breed based on performance, the Red Angus Association of America was formed in 1954.
[inline_image file=”832f4bb14e9d326ca61afa274b1f2390.jpg” caption=”George Chiga keeping records”]
Performance spread quickly from there. In 1955, Virginia became the first state to incorporate a Beef Cattle Improvement Association (BCIA). Some of the other first states to have BCIAs were California, Colorado, Maine, Montana and New Mexico. Often in these programs, state or university personnel would come to an operation’s ranch with portable scales to weigh and grade calves. The grading system varied by BCIA but generally reflected the conformation scores that were a part of the USDA quality grading system until 1975.
[inline_image file=”0e1acefe51acaa720ac44d90c7c59eaf.jpg” caption=”Glenn Butts”]
Another seminal organization formed in 1955 was PRI. They developed standards like 205-day weaning weights and ran a Certified Meat Sire program. Led by Glen Butts, PRI actually kept records and printed cattle certificates from both commercial and seedstock ranches. Beyond Red Angus, other breed associations were starting performance programs, with Angus beginning to collect grades in 1958 and weaning weights in 1960.
Polled Hereford, Hereford and Shorthorn followed in 1963, 1964 and 1966, respectively. Then when the “exotic” cattle—Charolais, Simmental, Limousin, etc.—started being imported in the second half of the 1960s, they adopted performance immediately.
[inline_image file=”444b342b0472009d6ede19a0a9ba8b3d.jpg” caption=”Dr. Frank Baker”]
Between the BCIAs, rapidly expanding bull tests, PRI, breed associations and the bull studs’ progeny testing programs, performance started to become a jumbled mess of terminology with a lack of standardization. This spurred Dr. Frank Baker of the Federal Extension Service and Hereford breeder Ferry Carpenter to tackle the job of standardizing performance practices. In January 1967, Carpenter and Baker held a meeting to bring all the performance organizations together to discuss how to solve the problem.
[inline_image file=”d0c55f8e5dd349a8a519c892bae98865.jpg” caption=”Dr. Ferry Carpenter”]
An ad hoc committee was formed with Baker in charge, and after a well-timed open letter in August 1967 from Sally Forbes promoting a federation, another meeting was held in January 1968 to form the Beef Improvement Federation (BIF). This would forever change the complexion of the performance movement, and the BIF Guidelines would become the final word on performance methodology.
[inline_image file=”8d8389e47d7b3348af4bf574369bf493.jpg” caption=”Early BIF presidents: (front) Dave Nichols, Martin Jorgensen, Bob Dickinson, Bill Borrer; (back) Henry Gardiner, Raymond Meyer, Harvey Lemon, Steve Radakovich.”]
One of the keys to spreading the performance message was the livestock media, and none has been more widely recognized for this than Western Livestock Journal. WLJ’s Dick Crow and Forrest Bassford were early promotors of the technology, sometimes at the risk of the financial well-being of their paper. BIF’s Ambassador Award to livestock journalists has been bestowed on WLJ’s Bassford, Dick and Pete Crow, and Dr. Bob Hough.
[inline_image file=”dbde131f5b837414488b29c414ecd463.jpg” caption=”Western Livestock Journal’s Nelson, Dick and Pete Crow.”]
Meanwhile at Cornell, Dr. Charles Henderson developed the statistical theory of the best linear unbiased predictions (BLUP) and later, the animal model, upon which beef cattle genetic predictions would be based. Using BLUP, Simmental would come out with the first Sire Summary in 1971 based on field data, and Dr. Richard Willham of ISU would pioneer the calculation of EPDs from progeny test data.
Show ring’s last hurrah
The late 1970s and ’80s were the heyday of investors in purebred cattle. The glamour of shows appealed to investors, and simplistic selection criteria like height were easy for them to understand. This drove the “frame race” fad, and it was not uncommon for frame score 10 cattle to win shows during the ’80s. However, these extreme cattle were totally impractical in a commercial setting.
[inline_image file=”3fda62ee3d738baab5d163e22b6beba2.jpg” caption=”High frame score bull”]
Programs like Michigan State University and CSU’s Beef Cattle Efficiency Forum quantified this reality, and along with tax law changes that no longer favored these investors, the value of the frame race cattle collapsed, as did the prestige of the show ring as a mainstream selection tool.
Objective selection becomes the norm
In the mid-1980s, the second generation of Lush students was coming into their prime. Utilizing the models first theorized by Henderson and the newfound computer power needed to solve these massive mathematical equations, this generation of geneticists produced herdbook-wide genetic predictions from field data. Early on, there were many problems being solved—mating bias, correlated traits, genetic trend, etc.—that if left unaccounted for, biased the genetic predictions.
The universities also tended to line up with one primary breed and were highly competitive among each other. Cornell’s Drs. Dick Quass and John Pollak aligned with Simmental, CSU’s Drs. Bruce Golden and Rick Bourdan primarily worked with Red Angus, ISU’s Dr. Doyle Wilson with Angus, and University of Georgia’s (UGA) Drs. John Benishek and Keith Bertrand with Hereford and Angus.
[inline_image file=”42a867fe42b4f453ea2abe3e3289bc5c.jpg” caption=”Ultrasounding”]
They were all solving problems and striving to make their analysis the most robust. ISU and Angus centered on “supplying the brand,” putting a huge effort into perfecting the ultrasound. Cornell worked to solve the problems of heterogeneous variance needed to eventually produce multibreed EPDs. CSU worked on describing cow herd reproduction and the concept of economically relevant traits. UGA specialized in managing large data sets efficiently.
Other research being done by the USDA included Dr. Larry Cundiff and the team at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center quantifying various germplasm and working with across-breed adjustments. Dr. Michael MacNeil would work with simulation models that would be critical for the development of indexes, which are now common.
Challenges of the new millennium
In the early 2000s, the industry was facing a crisis. Universities were turning away from activities they deemed a “service,” such as running National Cattle Evaluations, and key geneticists were approaching retirement age and were not expected to be replaced. In response, the National Beef Cattle Evaluation Consortium was founded. Its mission was to coordinate the research between the dwindling faculty working in the field and to facilitate privatization of the various National Cattle Evaluations. The system worked, and today, virtually all genetic analysis is done out of the public domain.
[inline_image file=”799039643ceaec5fb77f0f0fba2569a2.jpg” caption=”53 – Angus Genetics Inc. no caption needed.jpg”]
In 2006, the American Simmental Association was the first to bring their analysis in-house. Angus Genetics Inc. (AGI), which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Angus Association, was next to privatize their analysis. John Genho’s company, Livestock Genetic Services, would take over the analysis of the American (Bos indicus) breeds. In 2010, the Simmental and Red Angus associations formed International Genetic Solutions (IGS), which now calculates genetic predictions for 14 North American breed associations.
[inline_image file=”08ab7839cd559fa1ce61ddb076567038.jpg” caption=”54 – IGS (International Genetic Solutions).jpg”]
This means all the participating IGS partners’ genetic predictions are on the same base and scale, which makes the EPDs between breeds directly comparable. This allows commercial producers to make best use of breed complementarity and heterosis when designing crossbreeding systems.
The promise of genomics realized
Another industry goal was to enhance the accuracy of genetic predictions with genomics. At first, it was too computationally intensive to incorporate the genomic markers straight into the analysis, so the industry used a stopgap, multistep system in which molecular breeding values (MBV) would be calculated from genomics and then combined with the traditionally calculated EPDs. However, new purpose-built models that could directly incorporate the genomic markers into the analysis were needed, along with the hardware to run it on.
[inline_image file=”87d8fdab3f0a0551a3be3d08868e6c8d.jpg” caption=”Graphic processing units”]
The first to do this in the beef industry was Genho, with the “eared” breeds, utilizing the relationship model developed by UGA. AGI would also adopt the Georgia model. Meanwhile, IGS contracted with Drs. Golden and Dorian Garrick and their company, Theta Solutions, to develop single-step software for their multibreed analysis of what would become a markers effect model.
The Georgia relationship model uses the entire marker panel to better estimate the relationship between animals. So, in the most simplistic terms, instead of taking half of the sire’s and half of the dam’s EPD for a certain trait as a starting point, the relationship model would work to estimate the actual random genetic contribution from both the sire and dam.
In contrast, a markers effect model discards most of the markers, retaining only those most closely associated with a causative gene. This helps prevent double counting a gene’s impact on the prediction. Both approaches from Georgia and Theta Solutions have proven to be valid solutions to the problem of calculating single-step genomically enhanced EPDs.
[inline_image file=”2a44ee7b1370a467d7929180add0b702.jpg” caption=”63 – BIF Guideline for marker effects model.jpg”]
Today’s challenges, opportunities
The beef industry has been calculating basic weight trait genetic predictions for approximately 40 years and carcass traits for 30 years. These are well understood. However, the future of genetic analysis will lie with harder-to-measure traits, which are often more economically relevant. Chief among these is reproduction, and even though Red Angus published the first stayability EPD 27 years ago, many breeds still do not have the prediction.
[inline_image file=”51b4d7a773a611c5c44d176d100bacfd.jpg” caption=”Genomic sample cards”]
Fitness traits that have to do with health, soundness and trouble-free cattle also must be tackled, and one of the biggest drivers of profitability, feed efficiency, is still just in the early stages of being described. These are the challenges for the current crop of geneticists, who are now in their prime, and range from the third through the fifth generation down from Lush.
Although objective genetic predictions have been proven to be the best indication of an animal’s genetic merit for the traits they are calculated for, the complexity of the math used to calculate them has become more challenging to understand. This has led a segment of producers to reject the science of objective selection. Therefore, it appears while the bulk of the industry will base their breeding systems off the latest science, there are others reverting back to simple visual appraisal.
[inline_image file=”69f14b77aee36c3f9274ea843773b8a3.jpg” caption=”Dr. Jay L. Lush’s National Medal of Science”]
Although the latter tends to encompass more lifestyle breeders, it is an interesting dichotomy that in many senses mirrors our larger society. Ultimately, the science of objective selection is helping the industry breed better cattle than ever before: cattle that produce more beef, from fewer head, on less land, using less water.
