Allflex's nextGen Tissue Sampling

Allflex's nextGen Tissue Sampling

While attending the Cattle Industry Convention last week, I had the opportunity to visit with some tradeshow exhibitors while there. Today we’ll visit with North American Marketing Manager at Allflex USA Scott Holt about their nextGen Tissue Sampling which provides genomic information for beef and dairy producers.
Holt: “Producer can take a DNA sample of a day-old calf. They can send that to a lab and have it evaluated for a series of traits. Some of very simple and some are very sophisticated but a an example, on the beef side one of the things we have is marbling markers. So people will collect DNA on a very young steer and determine whether that steer should be fed for a high-end Ruth Chris type market or fed for a hamburger-type market to go to McDonalds or that sort of market. So you can make choices and save feed costs and save management time by using that as a tool as part of your decision making process. Even before that we are seeing people use it for their seedstock to start with. So the seedstock is using it more and more so that is filtering into the commercial sector. So we like to think of it as use your bull that is verifed-DNA and then when that calf hits the ground: double check that the sire is right and that there is some information there long-term that will help you in managing your herd better. But at the end of the day, it is a whole another set of tools that make our livestock better and make us better managers of those livestock.”
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