Selecting Sires With Health EPDs Possible in Future

Selecting Sires With Health EPDs Possible in Future

Selecting Sires With Health EPDs Possible in Future

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report.

Today, beef producers can select herd sires with Estimated Progeny Differences (or EPDs) for traits like calving ease, milk or carcass traits to help improve their herds’ genetics. In the foreseeable future, ranchers will be able to select sires for better health traits.

Colorado State University Animal Science Dr. Mark Enns shares more about the preliminary research results whether there was genetic difference in an animal’s susceptibility to bovine respiratory disease within feedlots.

Enns: “What we found out was that there is a genetic component to whether animals get sick or not in the feedlot. We’d say the heritability of that trait is about 18 to 21 percent --which puts it on a similar level for milk production in beef cattle. What that means is that there is underlying genetic differences amongst sires in whether their progeny will get sick or not in the feedlot. So as we continue this project, we hope to develop selection tools and potential DNA markers or genomic predictions that allow us to say this bull’s progeny have a 10 percent lower chance of being treated in the feedlot for respiratory disease than another bull’s progeny. So we can finally start get to get at selecting animals that will be more healthy and lower our treatment costs associated with disease.”

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
 

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