Agricultural News
Better Reproduction Rates Lead to Better Carcass Quality
Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:02:40 CST
Better reproduction rates lead to better carcass quality. Among ranchers, the number one reason for culling cows is just because they are open, says George Perry of South Dakota State University
"When we're dealing with poor reproduction, we're not making the management decision; Mother Nature is making it for us. And so when we actually get our reproduction up where we have high levels of reproduction, now we can come in and select animals if consistently her calves don't perform well. It doesn't matter if she is open or pregnant, we can still have a chance to cull her because we can still maintain our herd inventory and fertility is not making our management decisions for us."
In his work with several South Dakota herds, Perry has found that once fertility is at a certain level, producers can start fine tuning their herds. Take for example, cattleman John Moes.
"In the past five years he's actually brought his calf crop up, carcasswise, to the level where his highest performers were five years ago. And, so, we've actually seen an improvement through genetic selection in marbling, percent choice, percent prime, moving the whole herd up and getting a better quality product by combining those genetics. And one thing both herds have been able to do is really select replacement heifers to go back into their herd in addition to using AI they're adding the genetics back in that way by selecting replacement heifers that are from these top-quality AI sires."
Moes says the key to his progress has been data.
"Like someone says, 'How come you're always weighing these cattle? How come you're always doing this?' Well, we can go back and with records-you can't have enough records-but with those records we can say, 'OK, this cow's longevity, she's been in the herd seven or eight years. OK, if she's got a heifer calf, you'll more than likely keep her back."
The past few years, carcass data helps him hone in on which heifers to retain. And, recently, Moes has added the GeneMax DNA test as an additional selection criteria.
All of that wouldn't be possible without, first, getting a handle on reproduction.
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