What are breeding values? And why do you need a breeding objective? Our guest this week, Dr Jamie Courter, Mizzou Beef Genetics Extension Specialist, explains why they are so important for reaching our breeding goals.
Do you have a breeding objective? This is the first question Jamie asks every producer. “I don't care what your breeding objective is if it makes sense for you,” says Jamie, “I just hope that you have one.” With no farm being the same as another, a breeding objective needs to be personalised to the goals of each individual business.
But why are they so important? “That's how we can be profitable. We have to identify an end goal and we have to keep making consistent selection decisions that get us towards that goal. You won't see the impact of this year's bull decisions until five years down the road. If we don't have that objective in mind, we're just shooting in the dark. We're not heading towards that steady upward trajectory of the traits that really matter,” explains Jamie.
So, once you know where you want to be, how do you get there? Breeding values, be it an ASBV, EBV or EPD are the best tool we have to reach that goal.
Jamie does a great job of explaining how breeding values work and why results can vary. “I always ask producers, do you have siblings? Do you act the same, do you look the same? Light bulbs come on kind of at that point,” she shares. “In the beef cattle industry, we put pens of full sibling bulls together. It's a great way to get genetic uniformity, but it's not identical, right? They're as similar as they can be, but they're never identical.”
Keeping in mind that there are always outliers is useful. “If we have a hundred full siblings, then we would expect the average performance of those hundred calves to be the parent average, right? Most of the calf crop will have a weight right around what we expect, but we're going to have outliers on either side,” says Jamie. “It's just a result of the shuffling of the DNA. A lot of times people expect it to be perfect and unfortunately with statistics, there's always outliers one way or the other.”
Jamie points out, “We can get a good picture of the true genetic merit of those animals and which pieces of DNA they inherited from their sire or their dam. It's 50% both times, but there are 30 pairs of chromosomes and there are however many million base pairs that could have been inherited. And so we're able to get at the true genetic difference that those animals have, with genetics.”
Read more here:
https://blog.steakgenomics.org/
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited, we help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best - info@nextgenagri.com.
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand.
These companies are leaders in their respective fields and it is a privilege to have them supporting the Head Shepherd Podcast. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
What are breeding values? And why do you need a breeding objective? Our guest this week, Dr Jamie Courter, Mizzou Beef Genetics Extension Specialist, explains why they are so important for reaching our breeding goals.
Do you have a breeding objective? This is the first question Jamie asks every producer. “I don't care what your breeding objective is if it makes sense for you,” says Jamie, “I just hope that you have one.” With no farm being the same as another, a breeding objective needs to be personalised to the goals of each individual business.
But why are they so important? “That's how we can be profitable. We have to identify an end goal and we have to keep making consistent selection decisions that get us towards that goal. You won't see the impact of this year's bull decisions until five years down the road. If we don't have that objective in mind, we're just shooting in the dark. We're not heading towards that steady upward trajectory of the traits that really matter,” explains Jamie.
So, once you know where you want to be, how do you get there? Breeding values, be it an ASBV, EBV or EPD are the best tool we have to reach that goal.
Jamie does a great job of explaining how breeding values work and why results can vary. “I always ask producers, do you have siblings? Do you act the same, do you look the same? Light bulbs come on kind of at that point,” she shares. “In the beef cattle industry, we put pens of full sibling bulls together. It's a great way to get genetic uniformity, but it's not identical, right? They're as similar as they can be, but they're never identical.”
Keeping in mind that there are always outliers is useful. “If we have a hundred full siblings, then we would expect the average performance of those hundred calves to be the parent average, right? Most of the calf crop will have a weight right around what we expect, but we're going to have outliers on either side,” says Jamie. “It's just a result of the shuffling of the DNA. A lot of times people expect it to be perfect and unfortunately with statistics, there's always outliers one way or the other.”
Jamie points out, “We can get a good picture of the true genetic merit of those animals and which pieces of DNA they inherited from their sire or their dam. It's 50% both times, but there are 30 pairs of chromosomes and there are however many million base pairs that could have been inherited. And so we're able to get at the true genetic difference that those animals have, with genetics.”
Read more here:
https://blog.steakgenomics.org/
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited, we help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best - info@nextgenagri.com.
Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand.
These companies are leaders in their respective fields and it is a privilege to have them supporting the Head Shepherd Podcast. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.
Check out Heiniger's product range HERE
Check out the MSD range HERE
Check out Allflex products HERE
Welcome to the Head Shepherd podcast. I'm your host, mark Ferguson, ceo at Next Gen Agri International, where we help livestock managers to get the best out of their stock. I want to take this opportunity to thank our friends at MSD Animal Health in Orflex for sponsoring Head Shepherd again this season, and I'm also excited to introduce our mates at Heinegger as brand new sponsors of the show. Msd in Orflex, or perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia, offer one of New Zealand, australia's, largest livestock product portfolios, with a comprehensive suite of animal health and management products connected through identification, traceability and monitoring solutions. Like us, they see how the wealth and breadth of information born out of this podcast can help their men and their farming clients achieve their mission of the science of healthier animals. Heinegger will need a little introduction to our audience. A market leader and one-stop shop for wool harvesting and animal fibre removal, together with an expanding range of agricultural products and inputs, the Heinegger name is synonymous with quality, reliability and precision. The Heinegger team have a deep understanding of livestock agriculture, backed by Swiss engineering and a family business dedicated to manufacturing the best. It's fantastic to have both of these sponsors supporting us and bringing Head Shepherd to you each week and now it's time to get on with this week's episode.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Head Shepherd. We had an interesting week on Head Shepherd with a bit of feedback from last week's interview with Darren Spencer, who's the WA Shearing Industry Association President over there in Western Australia. In a brief moment in that podcast he talked about the race delivery system that's been developed over recent years and there's different versions of that out and about. It's been a fair bit of feedback that people don't agree with that delivery system. I'm no shearer, I don't work in that industry, so I don't have an opinion. But obviously anything that helps shearers have a less stressful or less taxing day is a good thing. Different people have different opinions. If you have got some thoughts, we'd love to hear them on the hub. Jump on the hub and let us know your comments, your thoughts on how more efficient shearing can happen. It's not just speed. I suppose it's also having longevity of shearers. There's been plenty of feedback. But that's all healthy. Again, I guess that's not how. We don't really have an opinion. It's more about encouraging people to discuss it and finding new ways.
Speaker 1:This week we've got a person who I accused on the podcast of being a female American version of myself, which I'm not sure she took that well. But Jamie Cordo was awesome to chat with. She is the BAFE Extension Specialist at the University of Missouri. She's also an assistant professor there A really strong career in the BAFE industry and just awesome to hear her thoughts on setting a brave objective and applying all the tools to make that objective very similar to what we talk about, I guess, in here in Australia and New Zealand. That was a really interesting chat. She's now writing the Stake in Genomics blog that Jared Decker wrote for a while. We've always found that blog really interesting. I recommend jumping on there. We'll put a link in the show notes so you can find both Jamie and that blog. It's always obviously slightly different production systems and slightly different ways to talk about it, but essentially the fundamentals are the same. I'm sure you'll enjoy this podcast with Jamie Cordo. Welcome, dr Jamie Cordo, to the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Excellent. You're the BAFE Extension Specialist over there in the University of Missouri. Most of our listeners probably don't know much about what happens in Missouri, but it would be good to, before we get into that and have a good chat about the role of genomics and genetics in the BAFE cattle in the US. Just be keen to hear your I guess video across backstory how you ended up where you are today. You've been through animal science degree and I've asked this at a PhD and I'm three different universities, so you've had a good look around.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I started at NC State and made my way to the Midwest, which is cow country, here in the United States, for a master's degree and a PhD in animal breeding. South Dakota first, and then Nebraska, where I spent the first five years of my career as beef product manager for a genetics company. And then this role at Missouri popped up as the state beef genetics extension specialist. I have started here for about six months.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So, yeah, the reason I found you was the blog that I have been reading for a fair while from, I'm assuming, your boss, dr Jared Dekker, and yes, obviously a pair of you are pretty passionate about the role of genetics in beef.
Speaker 2:Yes, so Dr Jared Dekker previously had held my position here for quite a few years, but he moved into more of a predominantly research-based position. So my role I stepped in as state beef extension specialist and I'm grateful that he was willing to kind of pass that torch on to me from his steak and genomics blog that he created. So the idea is just different questions that pop up or any news that's going on in the beef industry both in the US or around the globe. We put onto that blog and you can sign up for it via email and it goes out whenever something exciting happens.
Speaker 1:Excellent. We'll definitely put a link in the show notes to that blog and anyone that's been following along. We've put a fair few links into it. How, before, as articles have come along, I've been guilty of not stealing articles but making sure the links get pushed out there anyway into Australia, new Zealand, where we work. So, yeah, great, there's been some really good material there. The recent article I did put on the hub and I think it's one that all sheep and beef producers should read around, I guess when we think about we make two parents, we expect to get half the DNA from each.
Speaker 1:We do get half the DNA from each, but it can be quite different DNA and particularly if you go out to grandparent level and some of those they're just three random allocation of genes. Obviously Some of those, while they have the same set of grandparents, can be quite different set of genes. And that's, I guess, where genomics is really helpful at sorting out or predicting earlier than what we can, predicting what the breeding ways of those animals are going to be. Compared to what we would do Usually, we would take a long time to get progeny and all that sort of stuff. So genomics has been a bit of a game changer now in both of our industries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I completely agree. The last five years I've spent talking about genomics and the importance of genetic testing in both the seed stock and the commercial level of the industry. We expect every time we make an embryo that's the same, or we make full sibling matings, we expect those progeny to be the same. It's kind of funny. I always ask producers do you have siblings If you are the same sex, unless you're identical twins? Do you act the same? Do you look the same? It's funny how many light bulbs come on at that point.
Speaker 2:But especially in the beef cattle industry we put pins of full sibling bowls together. It's a great way to get genetic uniformity. But it's not identical. They're as similar as they can be, but they're never identical. Just kind of understanding that random shuffle of genes happens and genomics opened up the ability to just really get in early in life, as soon as that animal is born, because DNA doesn't change, we can really get a good picture of the true genetic merit of those animals and which pieces of DNA they inherited from their sire and their dam. Because, you're right, it's 50% both times. But there's 30 pairs of chromosomes and there's how many million-based pairs that could have been inherited we're really able to get at the true genetic difference that those animals have with genetics.
Speaker 1:I think I can't remember the numbers, obviously they're too hard to remember, but the literally billions of combinations you can have from one mating, in terms of how different sides of the base pairs you do pick up, is massive. We often have a discussion around all that dam was this spreading there and this one? And the sire was this how is the progeny not halfway in between? And it's obviously not because it's picked up For that particular trait all picked up different paroling genes and therefore ended up in different spots. It's interesting. That's what keeps it all interesting. We're getting much better now. It's sort of using the quantitative with genomics. Obviously that was your PhD was around genomic prediction and I guess I'm filling the gaps here, but something that we're now using single step. I'm assuming that's what your sort of PhD was based around.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that you bring up that we expect the animals most to perform a certain way based on the predictions of the sire and the dam. Right, and a lot of times people will hear that and say, well, if you're telling me that they're not, that the progeny aren't gonna perform that way, then it means that the technology doesn't work right and that's not true right. Epd stands for expected progeny difference. It's what we, how we expect that animal to perform and without any other information, it is the parent average right. So if you have a bull with high caving ease and you have a cow with caving ease and you expect to not have calving problems and 99% of the time that's gonna happen, right.
Speaker 2:But when we think about weaning weight or any of the carcass traits that we don't know until later in life how that animal performs, epds are what we expect the average of the two parents to produce. So if we have 100 full siblings not that that would ever happen, but if we did right then we would expect the average performance or the average weaning weight of those 100 calves to be the parent average right, because we're always gonna get a normal distribution of performance. Most of the calf crop will have a weight. You know right around what we expect, but we're gonna have outliers on either side. It's just a result of the sampling of the DNA or the shuffling of the DNA, and a lot of times people expect it to be perfect and unfortunately it's. You know, with statistics there's always outliers, one layer or the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really good point. I should point out that we deal in EBVs and the US deals in EPDs and EBV is double the next expected project difference. So expected product differences, obviously, how much difference you'd see in the product and the breeding value is what you'd back at the animal level. So it's EPDs are generally half the size of an EBV, but it's exactly the same analysis, same technology, same everything. Yeah, and I guess the discussion I end up in is yeah, while nothing's perfect, stats is not perfect. Our alternative is we just take a raw waning weight off of a bull and say that's the prediction of its growth potential and we take none of them or all this stuff and look at it. So really, while it's well, no, yeah, it's not perfect, it's so much better than the alternative, which is guessing.
Speaker 2:I always ask people would you rather your kids show up to the test and forget he had a test that day, or would you rather he study for the test, right, and so having all of that other information and the ability to know more about the animal always makes the prediction more accurate, right? You're a kid who studies is gonna do better on the test than one that doesn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good analogy, might still that In terms of, I guess, structure of the industry over there, the general people you'll be working with will be commercial producers or seed stock producers or a bit of a combination.
Speaker 2:It's a bit of a combination If you don't know a lot about the United States. Last I checked it could have shuffled a little bit but Missouri is pretty well known for being the number one cow-calf state in the country, so a lot of cattle here. The average herd size, though I mean most of them are around 20 to 30 head. But there's a large seed stock stamp here in the state as well. So the beauty is that you get to work with all aspects of the industry. We're not a very big feedlot space, so confinement, feeding of cattle for beef consumption most of those cattle get. Most of the calves that are born here go to Nebraska, iowa and those surrounding states that have a little more corn and a little more availability of feedstuffs.
Speaker 1:So you're a 20 or 30 head beef producer, they are working off farm as well, obviously, is that how that looks?
Speaker 2:Yes, here in this state it is. I mean, we do have your large seed stock, large commercial guys. That is their sole income, but, yes, the most of them, it's the afternoon, the nights, the weekends that they're working on the cows back home.
Speaker 1:And so for them they're buying like one bull every few years. Is that sort of how that looks?
Speaker 2:So I would say here in the state of Missouri, or at least the university where I am now, there's been a large push for artificial insemination in cattle here. We have a really great group of professors and extension agents here around the idea of beef cattle reproduction and so I would say there's probably a large adoption of that technology here within the state. But yeah, I mean, at those herd sizes, if you AI, you know one round and then you throw in a cover bull, you're pretty well covered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so your discussion with them is around selecting semen size predominantly and then using genomic tools to work out which happens to retain. Is that part of your extension?
Speaker 2:And we're still too at the infancy of how do you use EBVs. So I misspoke last time. But how do you use EBVs to even select bulls right, Because that's important too. Just because they are an AI sire doesn't mean that the traits or the genetic merit that got them that stamp is what you really need on your operation. And so it's kind of almost this feedback loop of how do you use the genetic predictions to select the AI bulls, how do you use them to select a cover bull that matches right At least to the extent that he can. You have those cattle, those calves, hit the ground. And then how do you use the technology to not only select the heifers that you're going to keep versus the ones you're going to sell, but also what traits are lacking in those heifers. So next time you go to buy semen or a bull, that also informs what kind of genetic merit you need in those males to help really match your breeding objectives on your operation.
Speaker 1:Excellent. What would one of the targets of your average producer out there which is no such thing as an average producer, but is there? What would a breeding objective be Like? What is the combination of traits that people would be looking for in a semen?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so do you want in the state of Missouri or do you want just like general in the US?
Speaker 1:I can give me both. I feel like it would be.
Speaker 2:It's really tricky when you ask kind of what an average breeding objective is, because there's many different bulls as there are in the industry or probably as many different breeding objectives that exist. But if we talk about kind of my history and my background, you know overall the things that I think people are concerned about or at least from a commercial standpoint should be how they make money. So if you sell calves at weaning time then you should focus on weaning weight. If you have in the spring which here in the spring it's sometimes blizzarding, normally really cold, you know you're having a check cat heifers especially every two to four hours. It's very intensive. Then you want calving ease and low birth weight right, because you want to make sure you're not causing any calving issues, especially in younger females. Some people here work cattle with children, so docile, it is important to them and so it's really how do you balance all those traits at once? And here in the US, and I'm sure in Australia as well, there's some really great indexes that producers can use if they're kind of getting their head wrapped around this idea of using the genetic predictions to help them rank bulls that match kind of what they want. But if, on the flip side, if you're a producer who retains ownership, maybe you background cattle on grass.
Speaker 2:Here in the US we're a large, predominantly feedlot entity, so we background on grass and then we put them in a higher energy diet of corn, soybeans, things like that, in a dry lot setting and if you can make money based off of the carcass value of the animal, then you would be interested in carcass weight marbling, fat, things like that that indicate how an animal will grade and how you could get paid for that endpoint.
Speaker 2:In Nebraska there's not a lot of grass, so at least in the majority of the state so they focus a lot on feed efficiency. We try and keep our cows a more moderate size. 1,100 to 1,200 pound mature weights would be something that they would look at, as well as that calving ease, because some cows have in the middle of a pasture and you just don't really check on them. Here in Missouri there's more grass, so you're more likely to focus on less on size, mature size. Feed efficiency is still important because you want cows to eat less. It's compared to others, just for the bottom line. But really focus on weaning weight because that's when the producers here are most likely to sell. There's some backgrounding but due to the FESQ here in the state and grass availability, we really try and avoid putting cows on grass during the heat of the summer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it. Yeah, very well put in terms of the variation in your enterprise and therefore your breeding objective should be and I think that's why it's what makes our job interesting is because there is lots of different jobs. There's the same breed of cattle, so it's no breed, no one breeder or anything. It's always individual bulls will be best suited to or, for the year, best suited for the objective.
Speaker 2:That makes and I tell people all the time, the number one thing is I don't care what your breeding objective is, if it makes sense for you, I just hope that you have one right, because that's how we can be profitable is we have to identify an end goal and we have to keep making consistent selection decisions that get us towards that goal.
Speaker 2:Because with the generation interval of cattle, as long as it takes to really make that genetic progress every year matters. But you will see the impact of this year's bull decisions until five years down the road, right, and maybe even longer than that. As long as it takes, though, his heifer progeny to stay in the herd and start having progeny, that impact your bottom line. And so we really, if we don't kind of have that objective in mind, we tend to kind of select one thing one year and one thing the next. Then we're not, we're kind of just shooting in the dark, we're not heading towards that steady upward trajectory of the traits that really matter. And so that's how I start. Any conversation with a producer who's interested is okay, what's your breeding objective? And if you don't know, how can we help you kind of get to one.
Speaker 1:Excellent. I feel like this is like a female US version of myself.
Speaker 2:I'll take that as a compliment.
Speaker 1:This is wow. I don't know, some people might not think so, but yeah, yeah, 100% agree. The yeah, I think we spent a long time. I don't know about the US, it's been Australia and New Zealand. We spent a lot of time arguing about the objective, as in this is the right type of sheep you have, this is the right type of cattle to have?
Speaker 1:When that's a very personal decision and as long as it's made with some rigour, it's like you pretty much can't be wrong on that, as long as you've gone through the process and you're focused on your breeding objective. It's about, and so that's 100% agree. That's not the point. You need to have a breeding objective, I don't care what it is. And then it's about how can we help you use the tools to best meet that objective and that's. And so we can argue all day long about the tools because there is sort of there is best practice in that case, whereas in a breeding objective, there is no real argument because it's an individual one, and even people not sure they're over here, even people living next door, with slightly different country or slightly different production system or different balance of crop versus livestock, your objective will be different, even if you're living next door to each other.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely. I agree with that.
Speaker 1:A quick look at your CV and it looked like you did your or part of your PhD. He was with Temple Grandiners. I don't think there's anyone in the livestock industry in New Zealand who doesn't know that name. That'd be quite cool to work with that wonderful woman. And that was all around Ocelity and I think we I sort of have this quote that if you can dream it, you can breed it. I think things like Ocelity are like that where we would have thought, well, that breed of cattle are crazy, or well, that's just a crazy cow or whatever. But now we know that we can like everything we can select for for Ocelity and that it's really, really impactful on how those cattle handle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly right. So my PhD project, temple Grandin, was on my committee and she was an instrumental part in kind of contributing ideas and have you thought about this or that angle? As far as it went to my research, she's actually responsible for one of my papers I got I'm working on my fifth paper out of that project, but one of them was just her idea and we ran with it and it turned out to be pretty, pretty exciting, but really it was. It wasn't a traditional, you know, animal breeder PhD. It was around because I did a very statistical based, you know, single step, all those types of things for my masters and I always had a passion for teaching, and so my PhD project was around.
Speaker 2:How do we currently quantify Ocelity or temperament on an operation, and is that a reliable and consistent way in which to do it? Because, you know, if we think about all of the ways to quantify it, most of them are are subjective, right. They're based on the opinion of the person taking the score at the time, and so, in my opinion, whether the method shoots score, which is how the animal behaves while they're restrained in the shoot, or an exit score, how do they exit the shoot? Between those two I typically prefer a shoot score. One of the ones I found most interesting that is, my paper that I'm working on right now was an individual pin score and so it's not very producer friendly. It requires that the producer be with the heifer or whoever you're quantifying the temperament score on in a pen by themselves, and so that's a lot of work and a lot of time. But it's been really interesting to me because if the animal is not restrained so if we think about an animal in a shoot, they've got something around their neck we say not to close the sides of the shoot in, but some people do that You're really restricting the amount of movement or really the amount of variability in temperament that that animal can show you. And so if that animal is loose in a pen, you really get a full idea of is she fight or flight, what is the size of her flight zone, and really understand more about how temperamental that heifer or that cow is. But overall, I mean I found in the paper that I was talking about with Dr Grandin we found that both shoot and exit score, whether a person is experienced or inexperienced with the method of scoring. So the one to five or the one to six scale. They're consistent and the measurements are reliable and so really anybody can do it right.
Speaker 2:The ethograms do a really good job of ranking heifers in my study, ranking heifers consistently and the same over time.
Speaker 2:The other interesting thing that we found was that cattle acclimate to handling.
Speaker 2:So when I say that I mean there's a certain point to which if a cow has unacceptable behavior, they have unacceptable behavior towards the top end of the ethogram, whether that be like a four or a five. But there's this sweet spot in there where if the heifer if you like the way the heifer looks, if she's out of a sigh, are you like if her EBVs are that that you would consider keeping her, her temperaments just a little bit more excitable than what you would prefer. If she's handled consistently in a calm manner, then she will actually acclimate to that situation and become more calm, in my case in working facilities. So we saw those chutes scores kind of decrease with the number of times a heifer was worked. But still I put that caveat on the end. The ones that were kind of up there on the scale, they stayed up there. So for those who kind of do the oscillities selection on farm, I would say, you know maybe some interesting things to consider or look at when it comes to kind of that PhD research.
Speaker 1:So of those, I mean, I think the one that the industry is moving towards is the Penn one, and I've sort of won for the opinion that if you're breeding seed stock, then you don't have the option to not take the time to do things well. So it doesn't worry me how long it takes, because that's the job if you're gonna breed seed stock. But so that Penn process is that if you had a preference, would that be the one that you would use?
Speaker 2:Yes, if it were me, that's the one I would use. Yeah, If I had the time and the ability and the space. But I mean for the commercial guy, if you don't shoot score, shoot score works well and they're correlated too. The shoot score and Penn score were correlated. They weren't perfect, but one was typically indicative of the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean it's very obvious that there's a combination of I guess it's the old nature versus nurture. There are, I mean, I have a one bullsail that I've attended in the last few years. One year they were. From one year to next. It was very obvious that they were. The temperament had changed, but that was because they would be handed a lot more, because they'd been the way they'd been, went to different or was different previous year, so they'd been around humans a lot more.
Speaker 1:And so the whole Penn had calmed down. But there's still the variation in there. There's still the ones with the head up looking at you versus those that were just cruising around. And I think it was obviously with this whole breeds that have been imported from Europe that had been handled a lot by humans traditionally, and they've, so there was no real selection on the facility. And then they go into a more extensive environment and all of a sudden you work out. They went that day so well and that's been. That's the limit and breed we'd be able to do a bit of work with. And that's what happened when they were imported to Australia. They weren't used to not well when there wasn't that human contact. Then their true facility showed up and then so that's, I think, a great success story in the facility. How that breed has completely changed back to back now through the on table genetics is a very different temperament than it was when they first got imported.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the limousine breed in the US was actually the first breed association to come out with a docility EPD. For that reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and out of smash now it's yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2:But I will say too, you know, if we think about genetics in general, right, there are traits, phenotypic performance.
Speaker 2:However we want to say it, there's the genetics aspect of it and it's the environment.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, this acclimation to handling really does show that there's genetic propensity for a trait. But then there's the environment, how that animal's handled, their personal life experiences, that can alter how they phenotypically show that trait. And in this case we're talking about a facility. Right, if handled correctly, if given all of the the right opportunities in the right environment, then we can kind of calm those cattle down that have the genetic propensity or the ability to kind of be a little bit higher in that temperament score. It's interesting, though, that you say that down there you guys are moving towards collecting those pen scores, because I hadn't heard that. I mean today, here in the US, most of the from the breed association side they require you to collect I think they still call it a shoot score, but it's really kind of a combination of a formal what I call shoot score and exit score. So how the animal behaves in the shoot and how they behave as they're exiting the shoot is what the breed associations here, for the majority put into their dustily EPD calculation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right on, yeah, I think so. If you breed. We've worked with moving towards a pen situation and I'll have to check and put in a note so it's exactly what the recommendation from the breed societies are. But yeah, I think that only scoring that I've been around in beef had I do most of my work in sheep is the pen scoring. I've only done the PhD students do the shoot scoring stuff and had someone who was doing honors in which way the swirl on the head went and whether that was related to temperament or something.
Speaker 2:That was more of Timberl Grandin's work.
Speaker 1:But yeah, does that prove to be correct or?
Speaker 2:So I didn't analyze that. They took hair whirls on all of the heifers that were in my study. But I did not analyze that data. It had previously been done for an undergraduate research project and I'm not sure on the conclusion of that. If memory serves it did not hold up for that study.
Speaker 2:But I think again, environment matters right. So we always wondered at that point did the environment the heifers were in impact kind of the relationship between hair whirl and temperament? Most of Timberl Grandin's work here in the US when she looks at that is in range cows, so much more they're brought in for weaning and they're thrown back and bulls are thrown out and whatever comes back comes back and so it's a less hands-on type environment. For those cattle where you're probably really seeing the genetic. There has been less environmental impact.
Speaker 2:And now that goes back to this idea and I agree that temperament is not I need as docile as possible because I can tell you that those animals are impossible to work through a handling facility because they don't respond to anything.
Speaker 2:You try and get them to do there in my opinion is too docile and too temperamental.
Speaker 2:It really should almost be seen as an intermediate, optimum trait, almost like milk right when we want that cow to produce milk, to grow that calf up to weaning to a point that we can market them at a higher weight.
Speaker 2:But we don't want her to be producing too much milk that now she's eating us out of house at home. And so for me, temperament like here in Missouri, having a more docile animal isn't necessarily a bad thing because there aren't as many predators at least from my experience, the most that they have to deal with is a coyote or two, whereas in Western Nebraska, in Colorado, utah and things like that, where you have, you know, 20 acres per pair, 50 acres per pair per year, they're dealing with wolves, they're, you know, up in Montana they're dealing with bears. And so we're getting to a point where that mama cow has to be able to protect her baby and she has to have kind of a more of that aggression or a higher docileity score, because we don't handle her on a day-to-day basis and she's dealing with more of an environmental threat than cows down here elsewhere that there's less land and less predators.
Speaker 1:So that's a really good point, and I heard it relatively recently. Someone's like yeah, we have to actually put some fire back into these cattle because we can't get them to move.
Speaker 2:Exactly Right.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I'll point out to, while we're talking about docileity, is that a lot of the literature shows that temperament and maternal defensive aggression are different traits.
Speaker 2:So like temperament being how an animal responds, kind of to a human or to working, you know, through a shoot or a working facility, and then there's maternal defensive aggression, which is really how hard she goes to defend that calf and that, will you know, in most cows, due to the hormones and all that stuff, that really shows itself kind of in that first 24 to 48 hours. But it's not just those two days, right, it's through, you know, all the predators that'll try to get after the calf and things like that throughout that calf's life until it's big enough to fend for itself. But some of the literature here in the US shows that those are two different traits. And I think it's important because you say you know we're breeding our cows so that they're, you know, too hard to handle. But are we also, are they correlated? And we're breeding too much of that maternal defensive aggression also out of our cows as a result of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's interesting In places like New Zealand the biggest mammal is a bat about the size less than your hand. So there's no, there's nothing going to touch a calf. But in the north of the scale is obviously thing as that have been responsible for calf death. So there is a large part of Australian Southern beef and all of New Zealand wouldn't need any any predation.
Speaker 1:But that's again a really good point of why a breeding objective for an individual enterprise is important, because different traits and I guess, as we, things like maternal ability or defensiveness and temperament all these things are probably on the scale of things are relatively new traits and so they're learning all the time about how we would, what's correlated with what and how we would optimize each of those traits. And I think that's the exciting stuff. That is sort of there is never, there's never an end. We're always thinking of different ways to combine genes to have the optimum care for optimum sheep or whatever for enterprise, and we learn new things. We're using different traits and we and we learn new things about correlations, which is the joy of the job as best.
Speaker 2:That's why I have a job, so I'll never complain about it. It's time.
Speaker 1:Well, I've got to count me. I'll count me for a little bit. Excellent, that's been a fascinating chat and really enjoyed learning about the US. Katelyn she hasn't been around over there much at all, and particularly not anywhere where there's any any car carp operations. So that's it certainly on the bucket list, but I'm really appreciate your time today, jamie. It's been great to have a chat and appreciate all you're doing. Looking forward to seeing some great blogs coming out and looking forward to being able to promote them across the Spare New Zealand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you're ever in the area, just let me know, I'll take you around to some. But the other thing I was going to tell you to here at Mizzou, dr Decker has done a lot with hair coat shedding. I don't know how much you've seen or read about that, but essentially and he's kind of bringing that study to a close and starting kind of a new, I think he's kind of going at it from a new angle, but you're really going to see a big push on the blog from me and the Angus Association here in the US has created a hair coat shedding EPD that will kind of gauge it kind of like a shoot score, but the idea being that the earlier a cow can shed her winter coat which would apply to some places in Australia then the less stress she's in during her life, so she just performs better. She's more likely to stay in the herd. It's linked kind of to longevity and in some cases fertility.
Speaker 2:But what I think it would be relevant is and what not a lot of people are understanding, is this most recent paper from Dr Decker shows that it's their genes that show up for hair coat shedding, that are like also show up for length of day like daylight, and it's almost like it's not just heat stress because they have a thick coat. It's not really just indicative of that, it's also indicative of a cow's ability to adapt to her environment. And so you're really going to kind of see a push, hopefully from me and Dr Decker here about we really need to start hair coat Like there's a subjective scoring system, just like shoot score. We really need to start doing that in our cows and it's highly heritable, like at point four. I mean, it's something high with little temperament or permanent environmental impact, and so if this is something even producers can go out and just walk through their herd and do at the time point that we recommend that they do it like, you'll see large gains over a short period of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, Interesting stuff. So it's basically their response with them, or seasonal. I suppose these animals are more so they're responding to the white stimulus or the change in melatonin or lace than others.
Speaker 2:So there's less heat stress. They're just more. You know, a lot of times they just perform better in all areas throughout their life. They're just more able to, or more likely to, adapt to the environment in which they're, in which you know. If you're in kind of places like Missouri where you have cold winters and hot summers, that's important. But you know, if you're in states like Washington or in the northern part of the US, I feel like people aren't paying as much attention to it because they don't have such a drastic temperature change or climate. But what we're seeing is that it still matters. It doesn't matter for the traditional, like heat stress, or it still matters but not as much for the traditional like heat stress, and you know we have Fescue down here, so Fescue toxicosis but it's still. If it means, if it's indicative that a heifer or a cow is more easily ready to adapt to her environment, that's important, no matter what environment you're in.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so what is the recommended term of shimmings of early spring? At some is that dyes from the shortest day or something.
Speaker 2:I'd have to look it up to get the official. I'm still catching myself up to speed on it but, like it's one of my, I'm giving a talk at BIF with Dr Decker on it this summer and need to have some extension materials put together for that, and so that's kind of what I'm going to work on here leading up to this summer. But yeah, it's normally early, like as it's shifting from. It's a certain point in time when it shifts from like winter to spring, when that temperature is kind of increasing. Because you want you want a lot of very the most variability. You want the ones that have shed early, you want the ones that are in the middle of shedding and you want the ones that are having a hard time and then at the same time, I think you can do it in like fall to winter to see how quickly they put it back on. But that most important, it's sometime in that spring where they're starting to shed. You're seeing your herd start to shed that coat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know Interesting stuff. Yeah, so still plenty to learn, which is good and obviously, as that sort of stuff is getting a lot more interesting. As we just said, you're at 80 Fahrenheit today, which is on season, and we're seeing all sorts of things happening climate wise. So, yeah, there's obviously heat stresses is something that most livestock industries are grappling with. But, yeah, thanks again, it's been been awesome to meet you and good to have a chat and, yeah, actually does sound like myself talking. It's amazing, but you know it's in terms of what it's a lot of the same as you. That's what gets me out of bed every day is if you go and help those producers do better.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
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