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Showing posts from July, 2012

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Hereford and Red Angus Heifers Recruited for Genomics Research

The University of Missouri is recruiting 2,500 Hereford heifers and 2,500 Red Angus heifers to participate in a heifer puberty and fertility genomic research project. Heifers should be registered Hereford, registered Red Angus, or commercial Hereford or Red Angus. Hereford x Red Angus crossbred heifers targeted for the Premium Red Baldy Program would also be a good fit for the research project. Producers must be willing to work with a trained veterinarian to collect the following data: ReproductiveTract Scores collected at a pre-breeding exam 30 to 45 days prior to the start of the breeding season. PelvicMeasurements (height and width) collected at the same pre-breeding exam 30 to 45 days prior to the start of the breeding season. Pregnancy Determination Using Ultrasound reporting fetal age in days. Ultrasound will need to occur no later than 90 days after the start of the breeding season. In addition, heifers must have known birth dates and have weights recorded eithe

Manuscript submitted

I submitted a manuscript to  BMC Genomics  this morning.  I can't wait till the manuscript has made it through the peer review process and is published so I can tell you all about it!

Accuracy improvement from Genomic-Enhanced EPDs expressed as progeny equivalents

There is a great article in the  Drovers CattleNetwork  expressing the improved accuracy from genomic-enhanced EPDs in the number of progeny required to see the same increase in accuracy.  The big gain is in yearling weight, where genomic information provided as much information as 20 progeny.  As the article states, most dams will never have this many progeny in a lifetime, and now producers can have that same level of accuracy at birth . These results are for Pfizer's 50 K product.  I would be interested in seeing the results for Igenity's product as well.  I'll talk more about the differences between the two products in a future post.

Better breeding through cow genetics

Welcome to A Steak in Genomics! A few weeks ago I was fortunate to be featured in a story on KBIA,  Better breeding through cow genetics , by  Sarah Redohl .  The story began by describing how I became interested in animal genomics.  It continued by explaining the Animal Genomics Group's  genomic selection research.  It concluded with a somewhat skeptical assessment of genomic markers by an Angus breeder. So, I decided to write this blog to inform farmers, ranchers, and scientists about the use of genomic technologies in animal breeding.