Aug. 6, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information contact:
Miranda Reiman, industry information assistant
director for
Certified Angus Beef LLC, at (308)
784-2294 or MReiman@certifiedangusbeef.com.
Who’s your daddy?
Solving sire mysteries
Give or take a week or more, gestation
varies enough to make cattlemen wonder: Is this an AI (artificial insemination)
calf or a natural service? Multi-sire pastures raise even more questions.
“There are some unique things you can do
if you know which bull sired which calf,” says Tonya Amen, with Angus Genetics
Inc. (AGI). From bull behavior to replacement heifer selection, the
possibilities are both interesting and applicable.
Commercial Angus producers now have that
ability. In July, GeneMaxTM (GMX), a DNA test to
measure gain and grade potential, added a function without adding cost: sire
match. If bulls that could have bred a cow have been Pfizer-50K tested, the $17
commercial test can reveal her calf’s sire.
Barb Downey, a registered and commercial
Angus producer near Wamego, Kan., says knowing complete parentage would give
her another layer of information for selection.
“We use performance data, the 205-day
weights and the frame sizes. Then we look at history of the dam,” she says.
“We’ll kick out some of the extremes on both ends.”
After
visual appraisal, they’re either sent to the feedyard, developed for retention
in the Downey Ranch herd or sold as bred heifers.
“Having a little bit more information
for your buyer is always good,” she says.
After
an aggressive AI season, Downey turns out females with as many as 22 cleanup
bulls in the same pasture.
“We are going more and more to
rotational grazing,” she says. “With my commercial cows, we have one large
group and swing them through pastures. That makes managing my grazing better
and easier.
“After AI, we wait a couple days before
we turn out bulls, but with natural differences in gestation length, there is
always a big question as to who is the sire of that calf.”
With numerous bulls, Downey says, “There
is a wide variety of sires and genotypes and phenotypes in there.”
Adding a DNA test could help sort that
out.
“Anything I can do to get those cows up
in the front of the season—and those are generally your AI calves with more
highly accurate, proven genetics—serves me and my customers well in the long
run,” she says.
GMX adds genetic predictions for
performance and carcass measures in the form of a percentile ranking.
“If she’s got everything else going for
her and you can tell me that she’s got stellar grading genetics, then maybe I
could use that for a high-end sort,” Downey says, looking to future
applications.
Widespread AI breeding to a relatively
few prominent bloodlines causes a challenge for Patsy Houghton, of Heartland
Cattle Co., at McCook, Neb. As her staff makes mating decisions for commercial
heifers, knowing the sire could help avoid pitfalls.
“The relatively narrow pool of popular
sires used can easily lead to accidental line breeding, and even inbreeding,”
she says. “In turn, that can result in decreased fertility, longevity, immune
response and growth. The DNA technology provides an opportunity to solve this
problem.”
Not everyone is interested in sire
assignment purely from an AI standpoint.
“In multi-sire pasture situations, it’s
pretty valuable to be able to identify the bulls that are getting the job done
for you and those that aren’t,” Amen says. “That’s based not only on quality of
calves, but also quantity of calves.”
Downey says finding out more about the
bulls is as intriguing as the heifer information.
“I do know there are real differences in
how well bulls manage themselves in terms of getting cows covered, how
aggressively they breed and how smart they are in their breeding behavior,” she
says.
The sire match function could be added
to GMX test results without charging more because it draws on information
already in the system.
“The markers we use for GeneMax are a subset of the 54,000 markers that are used on
the Pfizer high-density test [50K],” Amen says. “When we have calves that we’ve
tested for that reduced set, and bulls that have been tested for all of them,
we then go back and see which markers might have been inherited from which
sire.”
The test will return results ranging
from the “most likely” to “not likely” candidates.
“The one that comes back ‘most likely’
is probably the sire,” Amen says. “If it lists, ‘other possible’—those are
bulls that meet some of the criteria, but it’s still most likely the first one.”
Bulls with similar pedigrees may show up as “other possible”, for example.
Commercial cattlemen can order 50K tests
on registered and transferred Angus bulls, or work with their seedstock
suppliers to order them as an aid in analyzing subsequent calf crops.
“You can chose to request the sire match
feature up front when you order the test, or you can go back and request it
after you receive GMX results,” she says.
Anyone
who has already run a GMX test may request this new layer of information in
retrospect if they have the sire information.
“You may like the looks of a set of
cattle, but it can pay to know more than that,” Amen says. “GMX results are one
tool that can help you keep the right candidates in your herd, and guide
strategic mating decisions if you discover strengths or weaknesses in the
individuals.”
GeneMax
was introduced in February 2012 by CAB and AGI in cooperation with Pfizer
Animal Genetics for use on high-percentage Angus cattle. It is not intended for
use on registered animals. For more information visit: www.CABpartners.com/genemax.
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