A Steak in Genomics™

 It’s an exciting time for Angus breeders across the United States. On Wednesday, October 25 th Angus Genetics Incorporated (AGI), part of the American Angus Association (AAA), will launch the first research expected progeny difference (EPD) for Functional Longevity. The Angus breed and its Board of Directors have placed developing genetic predictions of maternal function and longevity as a strategic priority for several years. As a result of that enterprise, programs like Angus Herd Improvement Records (AHIR) and Maternal Plus have been created, leading to substantial data reporting and genotyping by breeders on their cow herds. This initiative, combined with extensive work and due diligence by AGI have resulted in the launch of a research version of the Functional Longevity EPD.     While some breeders may look at this trait and its description and compare it to a traditional ‘Stayability’ EPD, I would caution that interpretation. Traditional Stayability EPDs are reported as the

 On December 3rd, Harly Durbin, a PhD student in my group, successfully defended her PhD dissertation. You can watch a video of her public seminar, in which she discusses hair shedding and genotype-by-environment interactions for growth.  Congratulations Harly!

Figure 1 from Durbin et al. 2020. We recently posted a preprint (a research publication that has not yet been peer reviewed) to the bioRxiv server. You can read the article here:  https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.21.109553   *Update: Peer-reviewed, published paper is available open-access here:  https://gsejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12711-020-00584-0  "Development of a genetic evaluation for hair shedding in American Angus cattle to improve thermotolerance" This manuscript describes our work with Angus breeders and Angus Genetics Inc. to create a hair shedding EPD for the American Angus Association. We learned a lot of cool things about hair shedding in this paper. Including how hair shedding is related to other traits and how hair shedding is related to the environment. 1) Negative Relationship Between Milk and Growth Something interesting to me was to learn more about the genetic correlation between weaning weight direct and weaning weight maternal. Most pr

At the National Western Stock Show, I had a great discussion with the American Angus Association board and members. Angus Media put together a nice summary of that presentation.

We will have a scientific article describing the hair shedding research soon. Work was completed by Harly Durbin during her time at Angus Genetics Inc. as an intern.

Head over to the January 2020 issue of the ANGUS BEEF BULLETIN to read a new article written by my graduate student Harly Durbin and me. Harly was an intern at Angus Genetics Inc. the summer of 2019, and through her work AGI will be releasing a Hair Shedding EPD in 2020. Article Available Here .

Join the AGI team for an informative webinar on the upcoming $Value changes What: Tune into the “$Value Changes” webinar hosted by Dr. Dan Moser, Dr. Stephen Miller and Kelli Retallick as they walk through the upcoming changes to the $Values. When: Mark your calendar for 6 – 8 p.m. CDT on Monday, May 20, 2019. Where:  Click below to register for the webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. Don't forget, www.Angus.org/Index serves as an educational resource for all $Value update information. Register Today!

Steve Miller Angus Genetics Inc. Details of genetic evaluation are published in their Sire Evaluation Report. angus.org/nce  The first four papers of the report contains the details of the evaluation. Miller states that it actually functions as a nice animal breeding textbook. Angus Genetics, Inc. does evaluations for 6 clients, ranging from weekly to annual evaluations. The weekly evaluation of Angus is a bit like Groundhog Day, same thing week after week. The Angus Association uses an unweighted single-step approach, and the development of this method is the result of lots of research that has been peer-reviewed and published. When they switched to single-step they asked the question if the new evaluation was actually better. They compared to the independent evaluation done by USDA-MARC. The new evaluation performed better. Because the single-step model allowed them to fit more traits in the same model, they improved the carcass trait model. By adding in weaning weight, t

In January, Angus Genetics, Inc. (AGI) announced the release of research Claw Set and Foot Angle EPDs. The development of a research EPD is the second step towards a production EPD. This followed research presented in the summer of 2017 which found heritabilities of 0.34 for foot angle and 0.21 for claw set. Estimating heritability (portion of the trait influenced by genetics) is the first step towards a production EPD. This research also found a genetic correlation of 0.22 between the two traits, indicating that both traits need to be reported and analyzed. Stephen Miller, AGI Director of Genetic Research stated, "“Angus breeders have completed a tremendous amount of data reporting in such a short period of time; this is truly a testament to their commitment toward genetic progress. We are absolutely thrilled to begin the process of rolling this breakthrough out to the membership.” Kelli Retallick, AGI Director of Genetic Services cautioned, “Though we are getting closer

Reverend Bayes via Wikimedia Commons You are asking yourself, who is Reverend Bayes and what does he have to do with cattle? The answer to this question will answer a major misconception in cattle genetics. Reverend Bayes was an 18th century Presbyterian minister. He was also trained in logic. Due to Bayes’ work on probabilities, an approach to statistics called Bayesian statistics is named after him. In Bayesian statistics, we start with a prior belief (prior probability). As more information and data are gathered, we update this prior belief. We call this new update a posterior belief. We continue this process as we collect additional data. Further, a key tenant of Bayesian statistics is evaluating the methods (i.e. models) used in our analysis. Statisticians and scientists did not frequently use this system of statistics in the early 20th century. But, with increased computing power, Bayesian statistics has become very popular in the 21st century. By Lutz Koch CC BY-NC-ND

Allen Moczygemba, CEO of American Angus Association announced in a memo  Monday August 14, 2017 that the price for Neogen GGP-LD and Zoetis i50K tests would be reduced to $37, effective immediately. The motivation for this price reduction is even more notable. In November of 2017 Angus Genetics Inc. (AGI) and Neogen will launch a new genomic test (SNP panel) called AngusGS™. This test will use 50,000 (50K) DNA variants, designed specifically for Angus cattle. DNA variants are included based on their frequency in the Angus breed, rather than across many breeds like most DNA panels currently used in the industry. Further, AGI has increased the number of DNA markers in stretches of DNA believed to be involved in fertility, feed efficiency and tenderness. The more detailed genotyping of these chromosome segments will enable more refined research of these important traits. For example, AGI could include increased markers in regions believed to harbor embryonic lethal DNA variants. An

Angus Genetics Inc will switch to single-step genomic prediction on July 7th. Since 2010 they have been using multi-step genomic prediction. In multi-step, genomic predictions are treated as correlated traits to produce GE-EPDs. In single-step, all genomic, pedigree, and performance data is analyzed in one model. The key to calculating EPDs is measuring genetic similarity. Traditional EPDs used pedigree data to estimate genetic similarity. In single-step, genomic data more accurately measures relatedness, i.e. genetic similarity. The pedigree and genomic relationship measures are combined. Since November, AGI has evaluated multi-step vs single-step. They have seen very similar accuracies between the two methods. But, single-step tends to have slightly higher accuracies. Further, there are several advantages to single-step. These advantages include removing the need to recalibrate and using all of the data simultaneously. Watch for further information from Angus about the switch t

Genomic-enhanced selection tools to undergo scheduled upgrade American Angus Association® and Angus Genetics Inc. (AGI), the organization’s genetic services subsidiary, will soon release newly calibrated genomic-enhanced expected progeny differences (GE-EPDs). On March 21, AGI announced plans to release the latest calibration of its genomic-enhanced selection tools in mid-April. The process is the fifth of its kind since introducing GE-EPDs in 2010, and further refines how DNA test results are incorporated with pedigree, performance measures and progeny data into the selection tools released through the Association’s weekly National Cattle Evaluation (NCE). AGI President Dan Moser says the extensive process of calibrating GE-EPDs results in further accuracy on more animals in the Association’s growing database, but with generally less incremental change with each consecutive calibration. “This latest calibration represents a fine-tuning of the genomic-enhanced EPDs provide

During the 2015 Angus Convention, there was a producer panel discussing the American Angus Association's MaternalPlus program. Matt Perrier of Dalebanks Angus and Richard Tokach of Tokach Angus discussed a producer's perspective on the program. In this post I share some of their thoughts on the program. (Unfortunately, I didn't have the names of the panelists prior to taking notes, so I can't assign quotes to individual panelists.) Fertility is the number one driver of profitability. No matter how well they grow, how well they grade, if she can't reproducer herself, she can't be profitable. We could have both animals that are great in terms of performance and carcass quality, as well as fertility. MaternalPlus provides us an opportunity to record reproductive data and to produce estimates of fertility. The graphs through the program are also very helpful. MaternalPlus is a tool the association gives you. You can choose to use it or not. But, MaternalPlu

Based on input and requests from breeders, we’ve been working on some updates to the information displayed on the Animal Search feature on Angus.org. These new features went live this morning [10 November 2015] , and I want to take a minute to highlight and explain these enhancements. Genomic Progeny  EPD percentile ranks Progeny  For complete post, please visit Angus Genetics Inc blog , and read the post by Dr. Tonya Amen. Decker's Take Home: I always love to see breed associations changing and innovating. I think these changes will allow producers to more quickly evaluate an animal's genetic merit. Plus, I'm sure breeders appreciate AGI responding to requests. Loading...