Agricultural News
Cross Breeding v. Straight Breeding, a Systems-Based Analysis
Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:54:16 CDT
Dr. Nevil Speer of Western Kentucky University recently authored a paper examining straight breeding and cross breeding strategies. His research, he says, emphasizes economics systems-based approach as opposed to a genetic-based approach.
"We have introduced new value-based systems into our industry. So, commercial cow-calf producers now have real price signals coming back at them that they didn't have 20 years ago. They're obviously responding to that in some form or fashion as they begin to make decisions about buying bulls."
Speer's study sought to be comprehensive, taking into account factors that will affect the profitability of the whole system.
Time management and the efficient utilization of resources plays a large role in determining the overall profitability of a breeding strategy.
Straight breeding is easier to implement, Speers says, but the increased vigor of crossbred herds has its value as well, but every factor must be taken into account for an accurate analysis.
"And even if I have, maybe, a little additional benefit of heterosis, and maybe not a little, but a lot, but if it costs me something in terms of an especially functional trait such as calving ease, disposition, udder quality, what-have-you, I don't want to have to deal with those problems. And so the risk-reward becomes somewhat different when we put all those factors in there together."
Speer says that it may not be cross breeding as such that can lead to inefficiency from a systems perspective as much as it may be poorly-designed cross breeding programs which are a value drag on the system.
"We lose some uniformity as we introduce heterozygosity and try to obtain heterosis that typically crossbred populations are somewhat less uniform than straightbred populations. So there is, from a systems perspective, sort of that trade off as we deal with that and oftentimes what the paper really addresses is the indiscriminate cross breeding because that's where we have problems. And so we get situations where we have animals that are certainly hitting the target, but then we get a lot more animals that are outside of that or all over that. And that becomes a cost to everybody in the system because we have to somehow fix that or work with those."
Speer says his research shows that regardless of the breeding system one chooses, focus, planning and pleasing consumers are the keys to a profitable herd.
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