Beef producers have a number of things they look at when making genetic selections to improve their herds, but perhaps there are other things they should look at—the traits not considered.
That was the message from Dorian Garrick, Ph.D., an animal geneticist and professor at New Zealand’s Massey University at the 2018 Beef Improvement Federation’s (BIF’s) annual meeting in Loveland, CO.
Garrick noted that producers typically collect and use data in the form of expected progeny differences (EPDs). These are what he called “tangible” or easy to measure traits focused on calving ease, birth weights, and weaning weights, for example. But the traits not considered are harder to measure, and may include reproduction and longevity, disease resistance, income over feed costs, eating quality, and environmental impact.
His accompanying written presentation noted that bull breeders and buyers tend to focus on attributes they can easily measure, as identified by EPDs. “Further, they tend to focus more on traits with moderate to high rather than low heritability, and those measured early rather than late in life, as they can easily validate the effects of their selection choices within their own production systems.”
He went on to say, “Sadly, the current status of most national and international beef cattle evaluation systems reflects a narrow data-driven approach to choosing traits on which to focus selection.”
He told attendees the logical approach is to design a breeding program with “genes that fit.” The goal, he said, is to identify the traits needed to achieve that design objective.
The traits not measured, and thus not widely considered, may be difficult or more expensive to measure, according to Garrick. As mentioned, current data collection is often based on traits that are evident early in an animal’s life. He noted, “Traits can vary in their number of expressions over the lifetime of the animal, and in the timing of those expressions, and these factors should be considered to determine the economic values.”
Some considerations in the logical design of a breeding program might include:
• The design of a breeding scheme, such as determining whether selection candidates
should be individually measured or progeny tested, and how many times they should measured;
• The design of a dissemination system, determining what should be done with the selected individuals, such as distributing them by natural mating or by artificial insemination
or embryo transfer, or perhaps cloning;
• The mating plan, determining the manner in which mates of selected individuals are chosen, including alternative plans such as inbreeding or outcrossing; and
• A full economic analysis of the costs and benefits of the entire improvement system.
The economic analysis, Garrick said, is the most critical aspect, and it needs to be reevaluated as often as there are significant changes to production circumstances, costs or prices, and to measurement technologies, as well as other factors.
Making changes often comes down to costs and who pays or absorbs the expense of collecting and disseminating the data. Garrick noted that bull breeders can often expect to see financial rewards when selling bulls. He added, “However, increasing their investment in recording, such as taking additional effort to record traits not previously considered, is often not rewarded by an increase in sale revenue. Bull buyers can easily see the effects of bulls that are superior for growth rate, or for calving ease, but cannot easily see differences in lifetime fertility, feed intake,
eating quality and many other traits that are currently inadequately considered.”
He said in his accompanying written presentation that the United States lags behind other countries such as Australia and Canada largely because of the lack of subsidies to fund research. Those subsidies, he noted, could come from cattle industry organizations or consumers via government investment from tax revenues.
“The most efficient way is to use economic indices and not individual EPDs,” stated Garrick.
Garrick noted that the BIF was celebrating its 50th anniversary at this year’s convention, saying, “Ultimately it is innovative bull breeders such as those that were involved in the foundation of the Beef Improvement Federation that drive adoption of new traits.” — Rae Price, WLJ editor
