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Cattle Breeders Evaluate Multiple TraitsBy Alfredo
Flores April 24, 2003Beef cattle producers keep track of
characteristics of their animals to selectively breed them and improve specific
traits. But breeding for one trait can cause potential problems with others.
Now Agricultural Research Servicescientists and their cooperators have helped producers set up a program that
evaluates and ranks animals based on multiple traits. This evaluation selects
animals that have the potential to produce the most profitable offspring,
according to ARS geneticist Michael MacNeil of the agency's
Fort Keogh Livestock and Range
Research Laboratory in Miles City, Mont., and industry collaborator William
Herring. In the past, producers have had to subjectively trade off differences among
traits to get the type of cattle they wanted. For example, they were asked
whether growth rate was more important than marbling, or whether yield grade
was more important than weaning weight. But MacNeil has designed software that
estimates the relative economic value of each trait in a typical production
system. This information helps estimate an animal's overall genetic profit
potential. Since 1996, Herring has worked with the Angus Sire Alliance and Circle A
Angus Ranches in Missouri to rank sires nominated by Angus breeders throughout
the United States by their genetic profit potential, using relative economic
values that he and MacNeil calculated. MacNeil and Herring have found that
among the 352 sires tested on three Circle A ranch locations in Missouri, there
exists a range in profitability of $41.65. This means that if the highest- and
lowest-ranking bulls were used in a production system similar to the one
described in the economic simulation, a difference in profitability of more
than $40 per progeny would be expected. Based on the results of this research, MacNeil believes that wide
differences exist in the profit potential of cattle. Producers should be
encouraged to use a more comprehensive and objective approach than single-trait
selection in choosing how to breed their animals. Bulls with a desirable
balance of traits may, in the end, be much more profitable than those that
excel in just one or two traits. Read more about this research in the
April issue of
Agricultural Research magazine. ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific research agency. U.S. Department of Agriculture |