Contents
Cowboys Use High Tech To Round em
Up
An exemplary Line 1 Hereford bull. Soon, scientist will supplement established
methods of predicting an animal's genetic meritthat is, its own
performance and that of its offspringwith DNA and profitability
information.
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When Jack Cooper grew up on his family's Montana
ranch in the early 1900s, cowboys on horseback managed the cattle herds. In
today's not-so-wild West, pickup trucks round up the animals.
"Some of our men don't even know how to ride," says Cooper.
And now ranchers like Cooper, who produce breeding animals for other beef
producers rather than beef for the table, use technology to round up not just
cattle, but their genes.
Artificial insemination and embryo transfer allow Cooper to produce the most
offspring from his best cattle. But the most important advancement, he says,
has been performance testing.
In the past, cattle were judged visually. Then in the 1930s, U.S. Department
of Agriculture and Montana State University scientists in Miles City, Montana,
discovered that important but subtle characteristics like growth rate were
heritable. Producers could improve their stock more by keeping precise records
and breeding animals with desirable traits than they could if they judged
animals by appearance.
To facilitate these genetic studies, the scientists developed several inbred
lines of Hereford cattle, including Line 1. The researchers continue this
genetic improvement. Line 1 remains a closed herd, and more than half of all
purebred Hereford calves produced in the United Statesincluding
Cooper'shave Line 1 breeding in their pedigrees (see "Beefing Up
Herefords With Line 1," Agricultural Research, August 1996,
p. 18).
Because Cooper raises registered cattle, say
ARS researchers, computers may play a
larger role in his family's future. Most breed associations provide predictions
of the genetic merit of individual animals, called Expected Progeny Difference,
or EPD.
"An EPD tells the breeder whether animal A or animal B will be the most
likely to produce the best young, in terms of a particular desired trait,"
says ARS geneticist Michael D. MacNeil. "A computer program uses
performance testing information and solves about 7 million simultaneous
equations to arrive at the EPD for Hereford breeders."
Producers use EPDs to decide whether to buy or breed specific animals. A
bull that provides consistently desirable EPDs may have a selling price of
$20,000 or more.
MacNeil is helping the American Hereford Association incorporate a new
measure into the program: profit.
"We're developing a systematic method for producers to balance traits
important to consumers, like leanness, and traits necessary for breeders, like
fertility," says MacNeil.
As genetic mapping allows them to add more precise information about the
genes responsible for those traits, they'll be able to refine EPDs even
more.By Kathryn Barry
Stelljes, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This project is part of Animal Genomes, Germplasm, Reproduction, and
Development, an ARS National Program (#101) described on the World Wide Web at
http://www.nps.ars.usda.gov/programs/appvs.htm.
Michael D. MacNeil is at
the USDA-ARS Fort Keogh Livestock and
Range Research Laboratory, Rte. 1, Box 2021, Miles City, MT 59301-9202;
phone (406) 232-8213, fax (406) 232-8209.
"Cowboys Use High Tech To Round em Up" was published
in the December 1999 issue of
Agricultural Research magazine.
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