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Showing posts from April, 2016

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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

Producers invited to participate in research to identify cows that match their environment

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Researchers to use genomics to better understand hair shedding *Update 28 June 2016: We have recruited all of the animals that we have funds to genotype. We are still happy to receive hair shedding scores, especially for animals with GE-EPDs. But, we will not be collecting any more DNA samples to genotype additional animals. It’s time to pick a new AI sire. You identify a promising sire, but then you are left with a question. Will his daughters work in your environment and the environment of your customers? A new research project lead by researchers at the University of Missouri, Texas A&M, University of Arkansas and DeltaG will use existing data to look for genetic adaptation to regional beef production environments. Much of this research will look for gene-by-environment interactions. When gene-by-environment interactions exist, some genetic variants have large effects in some environments and small effects in others. This leads to cattle that perform poorly in a certain en