A Steak in Genomics™

 Every year, beef producers make decisions about which heifers to keep and which ones to market. Those decisions have long-term implications for the cow herd, influencing everything from genetic progress and reproductive performance to development costs and future profitability. But selecting replacement heifers isn't as simple as keeping the biggest, best-looking heifers or retaining a certain percentage of the calf crop. The goal is to identify females that have the genetic potential, reproductive ability and functional characteristics to become productive, profitable cows in your operation. And that process starts well before a heifer ever becomes a replacement. One of the most important things to remember is that a heifer developed for breeding is not automatically a replacement. She is a replacement candidate. Some candidates will be screened out during development, some will fail to become pregnant, and others may not be the best investment to retain even if they do conceive....

 Back in May 2025,  Steak in Genomics  asked you to participate in a national survey about bull selection as part of a larger U.S. based research project. At the time, our goal was to better understand how beef producers make bull selection decisions, what information they use, and which traits receive the most emphasis. We wanted to know whether the genetic tools and information available to producers were being used in ways that align with the economic goals of their operations. Now, we get to bring that conversation full circle and share what we learned. The eBEEF group received responses from 721 producers across 43 states. That is a lot of valuable input from people making bull selection decisions every year, and we appreciate everyone who took the time to participate. The results provide an interesting look at how producers approach bull selection and, perhaps more importantly, where there may be opportunities to improve how we use genetic information. One of the en...

For many spring-calving herds, weaning is either here or just around the corner. For fall-calving herds, calving may be underway or potentially coming to a close. Either way, there are calves on the farm that will soon be going through the chute—and that makes this a good time to think about genomic testing. If you're considering genomic testing your calves, the sooner you collect the sample, the sooner you can have the information back to use. Genomic information is most useful when you have it in time to make a decision. For a commercial operation, that might mean deciding which heifers to retain, identifying calves that fit a particular breeding objective, or adding another source of information to the selection process. If the DNA sample isn't collected until after you've made the decision, you've missed part of the opportunity. That's why I like to think about genomic testing as part of the management process rather than something we do after the fact. If you...

When we talk about improving beef cattle genetics, it's easy to get caught up in the numbers. We want heavier calves, better growth, improved carcass merit and more productive cows. But there's another question we need to ask: Are we selecting cattle that fit the environment we're asking them to perform in? Genetic potential is only part of the equation. An animal's phenotype, or how they perform, is a combination of their genotype and environment in which they are raised. Therefore, environment and management influence how that potential is expressed, and genetics that work well in one production system may not be the best fit for another. In my conversations with producers, I tend to come back to three traits that deserve more attention when matching cows to their environment: mature cow size, hair shedding and calving ease. Each addresses a different challenge, but all three provide opportunities to make more intentional selection decisions. Mature cow size: Bigger ...

It’s bull sale season, which means sale catalogs are starting to show up. If you’re like me, there’s something fun about getting a new catalog and flipping through the pages of bulls, pedigrees, performance information, EPDs, accuracies and selection indexes. But after a few pages, all those numbers can start to look a little overwhelming. And that’s where I think we sometimes make bull selection harder than it needs to be. When I open a sale catalog, I don't want to start by looking for the bull with the biggest number. I want to start by asking a much simpler question: What do I need this bull to do? The answer is going to be different for every operation. Maybe you’re buying a bull to breed heifers and need to put a strong emphasis on calving ease. Maybe you’re producing calves to sell at weaning and want to emphasize growth. Maybe you’re retaining ownership through harvest, or maybe you're building a cow herd and need to think about the traits that will influence the daught...

  How genetics, reproduction, nutrition and economics came together to rethink replacement female selection The U.S. beef cow herd has been getting smaller, and rebuilding it isn't as simple as deciding to keep more heifers. For many producers, the decision at weaning comes down to a familiar choice: Do I sell this heifer, or do I keep her as a replacement?  But what if those aren't the only two choices? That question was one of the drivers behind Retain with Intention: Building a Better Missouri Cow Herd , an MU Extension program developed to take a different look at replacement heifer selection and development. When a heifer comes through the chute, we're often quick to think of her as either a replacement or a sale animal. But retaining a heifer is an investment. Once that decision is made, there are additional costs associated with developing her, getting her bred, carrying her through her first pregnancy and ultimately getting her into the mature cow herd. That mean...

 What does the “E” in EPD actually mean? Expected Progeny Difference. That word expected matters. A calf gets about half of its DNA from its sire and half from its dam—but it doesn’t get a perfectly predictable half. The genes passed from each parent are a random sample, which means full siblings can be genetically different from one another. That random shuffle of genes is one of the reasons EPDs are predictions of average progeny performance , not guarantees of what every individual calf will do. It’s also part of the reason genomic information can be useful. By giving us additional information about the genes an animal actually inherited, genomics can help improve our prediction of that animal’s genetic merit. I recently updated the MU Extension publication “The Random Shuffle of Genes: Putting the E in EPD” to help explain the science behind one of the most commonly used tools in beef cattle genetic selection. If you've ever wondered why an EPD is an expectation rather than...