A Steak in Genomics™

Research highlights the need for cattle genetic tests that can look for the presence of specific adaptations, such as heat resistance. Read the research article at  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1009652 . Written by Austin Fitzgerald As a fourth-generation cattle farmer, Jared Decker knows that cattle suffer from health and productivity issues when they are taken from one environment--which the herd has spent generations adapting to--to a place with a different climate, a different elevation or even different grass. But as a researcher at the University of Missouri, Decker also sees an opportunity to use science to solve this problem, both to improve the welfare of cattle and to plug a leak in a nearly $50 billion industry in the U.S. “When I joined MU in 2013, I moved cattle from a family farm in New Mexico to my farm here in Missouri,” said Decker, an associate professor and Wurdack Chair in Animal Genomics at the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. “New Me...

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.

Use Information Extracted from Data to Breed a Better Calf Crop and Cow Herd Here is a fun conversation starter on your next visit to the coffee shop or diner. What is the most important trait in cattle production? What trait do you think is most important? Another way to ask this question, how do you define a "good" cow? In a typical group of cattle producers, you will get a lot of different answers. One person will say weaning weight and another will say marbling. A third may say calving ease, "Gotta have a live calf." A fourth may say fertility. But, why are these different traits important? Because they affect the profitability of beef operations! Profit is the most important trait in beef production. The profitability of a bull's or cow's calves should be our number one criterion when selecting breeding stock.  How many beef producers go to a bull sale to buy a load of soil or a bag of feed? In other words, do we go to a bull sale to buy the environmen...

Darrh Bullock University of Kentucky Precision agriculture has come to various industries. Luckily, there are already tools to do precision breeding in beef cattle. Let's talk about farm/ranch goals. For example, our goals may be to Support two families Keep workers safe Effectively use the resources we have Breeding objectives are genetically influenced objectives to help achieve farm and ranch goals. In Darrh's opinion, breeding objectives should impact the quality of life of the farm and ranch owners and workers. These objectives should improve economic, social, welfare and convenience factors of a farm. Certain traits in our breeding objective will allow us to be more efficient and have a smaller environmental impact. Other traits will be in our breeding objective simply because they make our life more convenient. Darrh pointed out that production efficiency is the key. The beef industry needs to reduce the amount of mature size and milk so that cows are mor...

The Red Angus Association of America is seeking feedback on their economic selection indexes. Producers can provide feedback at this link: https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5183855/RedAngusAssociation?fbclid=IwAR3qskT1DJ6UMbSIS2R3ul316FQ6L_k-Gt_DYDq8wB8omLQOgkG1yCuAGbM To be frank, I am conflicted by this process. On one hand, I think it is important to have translational research be a collaborative process. Further, users are more likely to trust and use a technology if they were involved in its creation. However, often times, optimal selection decisions are counterintuitive  (need to write a blog post on this). I feel strongly that selection decisions are best made when driven by data, and that includes design of selection tools. American Angus Association went through a similar process, and it is my understanding they used the survey data to weight economic importance of traits that are hard to pin down, such as claw set and docility. Traits that are economically important,...

For more information, see " The Random Shuffle of Genes: Putting the E in EPD ".

Jared Decker, PhD University of Missouri One point must be clear from the very beginning: EPDs work . When we select parents based on EPDs the genetic merit for that trait increases in our herd. When we select the parents using EPDs the performance of the next generation improves. EPDs Defined EPD stands for Expected Progeny Difference. These three words are loaded with meaning, thus the need to define them here. The most loaded word is Expected. Here we use Expected the way a statistician would use the word. Expected means we are making a prediction of a future value. But, in this context, Expected also means we are describing the average of a group. What is the group for which we are predicting the average? We are predicting the average performance of the Progeny or calves out of an animal. An animal’s own performance and its EPD can be quite different, because that is not the purpose of an EPD. The EPD is predicting the average performance of that animal’s calf crop. Final...

Fourth, final webinar in series focuses on bull selection DENVER, CO (April 12, 2018) – This year’s edition of the NCBA Cattlemen’s Genetics Webinar Series comes to a close April 19, with a special presentation that puts a focus on honing bull selection.  The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association teamed up with six genetics specialists from across the country to offer this series, which kicked off Jan. 18. The Genetics Webinar Series was designed for producers who would benefit from genetics knowledge, from the experienced seedstock breeder to someone who might be new to the cattle industry and needs to better understand genetics. It is being coordinated by the NCBA producer education team. Earlier webinars were “The 4 S’s of Crossbreeding: Simple, Structured, Successful and...

Moderator: Tommy Perkins, International Brangus Breeders Association Panelists:   Kelley Sullivan, Santa Rosa Ranch Donnell Brown, RA Brown Ranch What DNA tests do you require when you buy a bull? Parentage? Genetic Defects? Polled? Coat Color? What trait is most important in bull selection? Does genomic testing provide value? Donnell Brown currently markets 4 different breeds (Angus, Red Angus, SimAngus and a 4-breed composite called Hotlander ™ ). Brown has been involved with 17 different breeds. They DNA parentage test every animal born on their place. Five to ten percent of animals have the wrong parentage assigned. Cows swap calves. The wrong straw gets pulled out of the tank. A bull comes over from two pastures over and then goes home before we ever knew he was out. Would we prefer to use a bull with one calf crop or a bull with no calves? Most producers prefer the bull with more data. Genomic-enhanced EPDs provide the same amount of information as the first calf cr...

By Troy Rowan and Jared Decker, PhD, University of Missouri Reprinted with permission of the ASA SimTalk magazine , from the Late Fall 2017 issue . The United States is home to diverse climates and geographies. Over the past 150 years, beef cattle have found their way into nearly every one of these unique environments. Some cattle thrive in particular environments, while others struggle. Animals well-suited to an environment performed well and are selected to stay in herds. Poorly-suited animals are culled. As a result, selection occurred on traits that improved cattle performance in different environments. Now, resulting from this selection, there may be a significant amount of region-specific genetic diversity, even within the same breed. In a USDA-funded research project, we are looking to find the DNA variants responsible for this environmental adaption. We will then use these variants to create geographic region-specific genomic predictions. Local Adaptation Animals that ar...

What is the most important trait in beef cattle selection? Watch Jared Decker's presentation from the Thompson Research Center Field Day to find out. Loading...

Economically relevant traits (ERTs) are those that are directly associated with either a cost or a source of revenue.  Not all Expected Progeny Differences (EPDs) represent traits that are ERTs, and instead represent indicator traits. It is important for producers to know the difference between ERTs and indicator traits when making selection decisions. For more information, see the eBEEF.org factsheet " Economically Relevant Traits ."

Heifer selection is an important aspect of commercial beef operations, but unlike bull selection must be done without the aid of Expected Progeny Differences. This factsheet discusses considerations when making heifer selections, including available genomics tools and the importance of sire selection when replacement heifers are to be retained. For more information, see the eBEEF.org factsheet .

Tom Short Zoetis Can genetic information from a simple DNA sample allow us to reasonable accuracy of the females lifetime performance? We know that our national cow herd inventory decreased to a very low level in 2014. When we rebuilt the cow herd did we keep low quality heifers that should have never been cows? What type of genomic prediction should we be using to select commercial heifers? GeneMax Advantage was produced by a collaboration of Angus Genetics Inc, Certified Angus Beef, and Zoetis. It is applicable to beef females that are at least 75% Black Angus. These predictions are based on the Zoetis HD50K product for Angus. The correlations between the genomic predictions and the breeding value are all quite good, around 75%. The individual traits are combined into three indexes. These are a Cow Advantage Score, Feeder Advantage Score, and Total Advantage Score. The correlation between Total Advantage and the Cow and Feeder indexes are about 70%, but the correlation b...

Breeding objectives indicate value of genomics for beef cattle Dr. Mike MacNeil DeltaG Is genomic testing a good value to seedstock producers? The answer to this question requires several different lines of thought. To answer this we need a system based approach. What makes up a genetic prediction? Information from relatives Molecular breeding value Correlated phenotypes Phenotype No individual animal in a genetic prediction ever has an accuracy of prediction of zero. The information from the calf's relatives brings in substantial amount of information. What are the advantageous of genomic prediction? 1) Increase accuracy of evaluation 2) More exciting is the opportunity to incorporate additional traits costly or difficult to measure measured late in life (after the time of selection decisions) sex-limited 3) Avoid prolonged generation intervals. For many selection decisions in beef cattle, we make many selection decisions around a year of age. 4)...

Dr. Matt Spangler University of Nebraska-Lincoln A seedstock producer's goal should be faster genetic progress ( breeders equation ). But, we need to balance this by the cost of the genetic progress. Although some of these traits are interesting to us as biologist (what Spangler termed "biological intrigue"), what really matters at the end of the day is improving cattle. What is the difference between an indicator trait and economically relevant traits? Economically relevant traits are traits that directly impact profit by either influencing revenues or expenses. Indicator traits are traits that are recorded because they allow us to more reliably predict economically relevant traits. An example of this would be calving ease direct and birth weight. No one gets paid for or has costs associated with birth weights. But, birth weight is a great indicator of calving ease, because calving ease can have economic impacts through labor, dead calves, cows that don't rebr...

My group is currently recruiting people to fill two graduate student positions. We will also be recruiting a researcher to fill a postdoctoral position in the coming year. We are looking for candidates who are passionate about genetics, genomics, and research. Ideal candidates are creative, hard working (while maintaining a work/life balance), and self starters. Our group is strictly computational, so candidates should enjoy working on computers and analyzing data. Candidates should be willing to learn programming (typically in R or Python), or already have some programming experience. We will soon have access to over 200,000 genotyped beef cattle with phenotypes and breeding values. We also have access to whole genome sequencing data from over 2,000 cattle. So, if you like working with lots of data, come join us! Our group uses population genomics to better understand the  history of cattle breeds and to inform future selection decisions. We are interested in local genetic ada...

Bill Bowman and Sally Northcutt Method Genetics LLC Bowman and Northcutt discussed several new EPDs either in development or released by AHA, including: Dry Matter Intake Sustained Cow Fertility Heifer Calving Rate Udder Quality (Teat Size and Udder Suspension) Heifer Calving Rate , Sustained Cow Fertility , and Dry Matter Intake are currently released as prototype evaluations and can be accessed as a downloadable Excel file. "One of the things you all have going for you is the foresight to begin a TPR program ," said Bowman. Heifer Calving Rate Heifer Calving Rate (HCR) is a categorical trait, they either calved or they didn't. Method Genetics reports a heritability of 15% for Heifer Calving Rate. They analyzed 98,000 records, of which 73% had calved by 800 days of age, 27% had not calved. Contemporary grouping for heifers is based upon their herd, yearling weigh date, calf birth year and season. "This EPD goes beyond a traditional heifer pregna...