What's happening in Breeding?

Nicholas de C.Grubb ICBF

A World beating revolution in cattle breeding is underway here in Ireland. It is thus opportune to explain to breeders what the implications are for their own breeds and enterprises. As pedigree breeders, the reason we all breed cattle in the way we do, is because we have it firmly fixed in our heads that we are doing the right thing to make cattle production more efficient and profitable for our commercial customers, such that of course they will pay us more money for our stock. In the past we did this on the basis of our visual observations and some basic recordings of cattle performance and ancestry and to put it bluntly, a fair amount of what some call "Muck and Mystery" at the marketing end. What commercial customers will want from now on, is hard economic fact on performance potential. Up until now the tools were not available to paint the whole picture. You can have a very easy calving, but slow growing animal at one end of the spectrum and a hard calving, fast growing one the other end, with a whole lot of different combinations of traits in between. And of course up until now, knowledge of the maternal traits of a bull, e.g. how easily his daughters go in calf, how easily they calve, how much milk they produce and how much feed they eat and how long they survive, were often simply matters of pure speculation.

Euro value plus or minus

However, with the power of modern computing, combined with the unique situation here in Ireland of some 90% of our production being subject to mechanical grading and now nearly a million births a year being recorded though animal events, it is easy to see that we will soon have more objective data on catde of known ancestry than could be even dreamed of by countries who have far greater populations of cattle than we do. This is all a direct consequence of DAF taking a very liberal and proactive role in the setting up of the massively powerful ICBF single database, into which all information for every Animal Events recorded animal flows. Once in that database, it can be drawn out on a regular basis by the Animal model Evaluation system, which itself is capable of doing a complete new run every week, whereas in many of our competing countries this can only be done once a year. What this new evaluation system does, is to produce Economic Breeding Indexes encompassing every facet of the animal's life and that of its relatives and every one of these facets is boiled down to a Euro value, plus or minus. Or put simply, very quickly most of the mystery is going to go out the door. All this comes about by the immense power of being able to get data off so many commercial relatives of our purebred stock, which none of our competitor countries have the ability to do.

Teagasc now fully on board

As of the Spring of 2006, we will see published on a regular basis, lists of the top bulls across breeds in the new EBI system. Initially there will be a Beef Production Sub Index, a Weaned calf Sub Index, a Beef Calving Sub Index and a Dairy Calving Sub Index. These will soon be followed by a Maternal Sub Index. So what are the implications of this for you the breeders.? Well firstly, very soon your commercial farmer customers are only going to want bulls which are sons of those well up near the top of the new EBI listings. Every Teagasc adviser in the country is going to be hammering this message home. Teagasc are now fully on board as a co player in this enterprise. So immediately you will find that the 95% or more of breeders and indeed commercial users will quickly zero in on just using these same top bulls. This obviously has massive implications for A.I. as well, in that a service provider will need to be very sure he has the very top bulls available, or the farmers and breeders will use someone else who has.

Future winners

The other 5% or so of breeders, the real leaders, will probably pursue a different course. They will look for interesting new bulls from home and abroad, natural service or A.I. to carefully cross on their very best cows. From these they will be hoping to breed the future winners. They will record them carefully, and if an outstanding male, will seriously think about putting him into Tully. If then he does very well in Tully, they will hope he sells for a lot of money or they may think about doing a deal with an A.I. service provider, to get him progeny tested. They may be joined in their deal by their breed society or by moneyed entrepreneurs. The new playing field will welcome all such combinations that will encourage better genetics forward from both home and abroad, thus making Ireland a World center of cattle breeding excellence. If any such bull comes out a real winner, the World will be his market and a lot of money could be made by the owners. An owner can protect his pedigree interests by imposing a high Semen Royalty charge and in this respect it will be important for breed societies to build reciprocal international semen royalty agreements.

Tully

So what is the message here for breeders. If you have average breeding stock, by far your best course is to A.I. them to bulls which are themselves already showing themselves tops in the new EBI indexes or if you use a stockbull, he needs to be a son of such a bull and if possible out a cow who is a daughter of another top bull in the EBI system. If you have what you are sure is an exceptional cow of your breed, you should endeavor to cross her with a very top new prospect, who perhaps is a foreign A.I. bull. If she has a bull calf, then as already said above, target him towards Tully. If a young bull does very well in Tully, you have greatly reduced the risk of putting a wrong one through progeny testing. The point being made here, is if your cow is only average, you will do far better to use the top bull in the new EBI system as opposed to a potentially very good bull, which is still unknown to the Irish system.

Semen importation

Those investing in importing large quantities of semen, would be wise to consider bringing in much smaller numbers of straws off more, much more carefully chosen bulls, or going the whole way and doing a deal with an Irish service provider which would see a foreign bull actually progeny tested here. This would need at least a thousand straws to be used out in recorded commercial herds, such that at least one hundred daughters end up being assessed for maternal traits in useful commercial contemporary groups. It is doubtful whether volume sales of unproven bulls will be made to the pedigree sector from now on, given the new ball park situation.

Linear Scoring

Meanwhile, a revamp of the Linear Scoring system is also under way. Linear Scoring has effectively up to now been an only tool for some breeds here in Ireland. It is only lucky that many of the bulls which came out well in it, were also top in economic trait recording in other country's systems. The real reason though for linear scoring is to mind the functional traits, such as legs, feet and locomotion. Type, docility and breed character and to a lesser degree the muscle scores act as a predictors for some commercial traits, in particular carcase quality. Soon though we will have vast amounts of actual carcase yield records flowing back into the system, so we need to see if we can get a visual scoring of a weanling, able to correlate well with "Yield of high priced cuts", as derived from the new grading machines. This might for instance just mean an overall assessment of the loin, factored with length of back. To this end a very large number of commercial calves are shortly to be scored under a newly revised trial system and the results compared with their actual slaughter data a year later.

Sales

In combination with these major changes in breeding, we can also expect to see great changes in the selling of pedigree stock. The days of pedigree stock simply selling on the basis of how they look, will gradually become a thing of the past. Indeed as the system moves forward, even the lowly commercial weanlings will begin to have indexes attached to them, showing for which purpose they might be best directed. Placing the wrong horse on the wrong course is at present one of the very greatest inefficiencies in Irish beef production. In the future selling of pedigree stock, serious consideration will need to be given as to how this can be done in a far more efficient time and cost effective manner. It is the firm view of the writer that only the very elite need be done up for a Premier type show and sale. All the commerical grade stock should simply be sold by the auctioneer and his clerk walking pen to pen, without any need for excessive "doing up" and halter training.