The AI industry is in a transition of its own making

 

After fifty years of telling you “all you need to do is use the highest index sires at random across your herd”, the industry is imploding of its own weight, merging into a handful of entities dependent on patented technologies that subsidize the heavy costs of IVF-ET and DNA testing to identify ranking Genomic young sires to breed your cows.   This has “commoditized” semen to the point where many of them cannot recover all the costs of serving you, after having trivialized genetics.

In our case, we work with independent AI studs, often owned by people with the experience of breeding their own herds, who still believe breeding selection is a “profit center” for dairying, where you do not have to settle for “above average” but can specifically select for the “exceptional” lifetime performance that drives dairy profitability.     Give these programs a try.     You will not be disappointed.

Mich Livestock Service, Inc   ***   “For the best in bulls”   ***    In your service since 1952.

Ph (989) 834-2661    fax  (989) 834-2914      email:  greg@michiganlivestock.com

How to read “Maternal” pedigree data on sires

 

For dairymen interested in breeding and mating selection, the trend among large AI systems in favor of Genomic [trait/index] data, eliminating ancestor and phenotypic information, becomes unpopular.  The Reliability of Genomic indexes (60% for production, 50% for linear type, 40% for “health” traits) is not mentioned.    Progeny evaluated sires are no longer emphasized (“the new youngsters are so much better”) so the high number that do not live up to Genomic expectation is not recognized.     IF your breeding goal is to make every mating count, minimizing the rate of herd turnover (so that an optimal percentage of the herd is milking at mature-cow levels) is not guaranteed from blindly following the latest technology breeding theories.

How do we select in favor of realizable mature production volume?

Biologists (whose observations often contradict data-driven geneticists) tell you the two most important attributes to longevity are  (1)  long-life parents, and  (2)  adaptable physiques.   Now that we recognize that linear selection favors dysfunctional extreme physical traits in so many physical characteristics (driven by that 1970s desire to feed more corn to ruminant species, so that by 1990s it also required oilseeds to meet cow’s energy demands) – how do we “balance” our matings so that lifetime function can be maintained?

The majority of AI systems we represent favor sire selection on consistency of maternal lines.   As a result, you still find multiple generation cow performance data behind the dams of each sire we offer.    Here is how to “read” that information:

5-00  2x  365d  50,710  3.7%  1860  3.0%  1502   (best lactation for dam of “Porsche” 566H1303)
5-00  means   “calving at the age of 5 years and 0 months”
  2x    means   “milked twice daily for this lactation”
365d means   “the first 365 days of that lactation”   
50,710  is   the actual pounds of milk yield given by this cow during that lactation
3.7%     is   the average percentage of butterfat content during that lactation
1860     is   the actual pounds of butterfat yield  [calculated as 50,710 pounds x 3.7%]
3.0%     is   the average percentage of protein content during that lactation
1502     is   the actual pounds of protein yield  [calculated as 50,710 pounds x 3.0%]

Lifetime:  2586d  215,353  5.1%  10,953  3.2%  6963   (dam of “Forrest” 525HO122)

Consider this:  the average commercial dairy cow in the USA only completes two lactations.   On average, lifetime production is only 820 days in milk and (Holsteins) 47,000 pounds.  Sire choices  who show exceptional productivity and longevity for a multiple of maternal generations help to improve the functional lifetime length and production yield per cow in your herd.

Zoetis says mature cows milk 30% more than heifers.    That is greater than any PTA Milk ever.

The history of linear trait comparisons

 CONCEPTIONS    Dairy route newsletter                  Nov-Dec 2023

Prior to “linear” each breed had its own classification system.   Holsteins had “descriptive type” (and it is instructive that the seminal ancestors of modern Holsteins developed from this era) so was most affected by the change to “uniform type traits appraisal” as designed by scientists for four land grant universities that had on campus research herds.

USDA had an agenda in funding research into type traits: they wished to transform dairy feeding into using the mounds of corn rotting away in Kansas parking lots as a result of the federal grain crop incentive programs.     “Linear” defined the physique of the cow who would transform corn into milk  (instead of into weight gain, the traditional use of corn for steers, hogs and poultry).

Never having paid attention to “type” before, the small group of scientists involved made some mistakes that more skilled purebred breeders noted, but the industry momentum  (coming at a time when regional AI cooperatives were merging to compete with private national firms)  was focused on breeding young sires to be sampled by AI studs,  not on breeding exceptional cows.  
“Linear” was an easily-learned language even if it never considered the entire cow physique or concerned itself with all desired cow functions.    Milk at younger ages from corn was the focus.

It takes several generations before weaknesses of anything new in breeding show up.   For the first two-three generations, switching to linear had the same heterosis effect (“hybrid vigor”) as is promoted for crossbreeding.    Newly ranked sires were “outcross” to the previously ranking sire lines.    It was only in later generations that breeders’ “best” cow lines were seen to decline in functionality.    Geneticists explained all such observations as “examples of genetic trend” not acknowledging any intergenerational declines,  all evaluation formats transformed into “intra- generational” deviations  (in which half of all animals evaluated would always be “plus”).    

But within twenty years, the once-discredited practice of dairy crossbreeding came back with a vengeance, primarily in two types of dairies:  (1) larger forage-feed-based expansion systems;  (2) dairymen switching to grazing.   Both found their current cows lacked overall function to be profitable in their chosen systems.    Which crosses were most successful initially?   Those which quickly added substance, width and sturdiness (“round” qualities) back into highly angular cows.

Like all genetic ranking systems used to-date since 1970 in the marketing of AI sires, selection on “linear” after three generations gravitates into “single trait selection”.     Single-trait selection in any form promoted so far, has always led to the random increase in “inbreeding depression” (a misunderstanding of what should be termed “selection depression”).     While AI sire lines have become more narrow in their pedigrees, it is the constant selection pressure in favor of “linear angularity” traits that causes the physical or reproductive failure of typically short herdlife cows.

More dairymen seem to be selecting some linear traits on the “negative” side of the scale, thus hoping to overcome overall breeding trends.  Here again, lower trait heritabilities slow changes.

Do you focus on linear trait information?

  CONCEPTIONS    Dairy route newsletter                  Nov-Dec 2023 

There seems to be three major ways most dairymen pick out sires.
  
Those who generally let the AI stud control their breeding choices are getting cows randomly bred to Genomic index selected young sires.    Those who like to pick their own mating sires generally base selections on linear trait data, pedigree/maternal cow line data, “aAa” breeding guide  (DMS is a derivative of early “aAa”)  or some combination of those three. 

A major reason many dairymen still only use progeny evaluated sires is a general mistrust of a selection method that is based totally on drawing eggs from pre-pubescent heifers and mixing semen massaged from equally young bulls, creating an embryo in a lab in a Petrie dish.    There is this recurrent theory of “accelerating generations” to create bulls two or three generations “newer” than any current “proven” (progeny evaluated and verified) sire.    Thus the data sets on such bulls are all imputed from their possession of desired “marker genes” in their DNA.

So does linear data come from “real” cows, compared to their dams?    NOPE.    Never was and never will be.    Again, the genetic theory is to find the best performers in the current generation of sires; therefore, linear is a comparison of “contemporaries” (when we had daughter proofs, it meant bull x compared to unrelated heifers in same herd same age).   There is NO biological link in this information to say that when a cow got bred to this bull, the following trait deviations are found between his daughters and their dams.    Now that we have Genomic linear estimations, it is primarily a combination of “parent average” trait deviations and gene markers associated to each linear trait (in some cases, only one or two genes involved).     The heritabilities of all this linear information, as a result, are often too low to be seen in your herd.

H A V E A D E F I N E D B R E E D I N G P R O G R AM - BEEF

 

CONCEPTIONS   Dairy Route Newsletter                Aug-Sept 2023

 

How do you pick sires for your herd?

Do you plan matings to produce female replacements?

Do you depend on crossbreeding for both feeding and breeding animals?

Do we recognize the bias in EPDs that builds in from supplement feeding?

 

Now that breeding for this season is finishing, and we begin to wean off this year’s calf crop, how do you evaluate the results of your total breeding efforts?

This is the time to begin a plan for next year’s breeding approach.

If we can help you with any of this, call (989) 834- 2661 and ask.
MIch Livestock Service, Inc ***      “For the Best in Bulls”  and   “High energy forage seeds”

AN OVERVIEW OF VARIOUS CATTLE BREEDING STRATEGIES

 

CONCEPTIONS   Dairy Route Newsletter                Aug-Sept 2023

 

The late Allan Nation as editor of Stockman Grass Farmer once did an article with some simple math comparing the Western range cattleman (grass-based farmers) to a Midwest feedlot (grain-based farmers) and where their basic attitudes came from, as they affected breeding and feeding selection.

The western range cattleman focused on grass production and overwintering with hay felt his ranch income depended on the fertility of his cattle (and, more recently, his soil).    Their goal was a 100% live calf crop, first.     They preferred a cow who could milk enough to wean a calf half or more her body weight, on primarily grass, second.     In summary, they bred for fertile, easy-calving, maternal instinct cows who would milk on grass long enough to wean their calf.
Allan did the math this way:   100 cows bred, weighing 1100 pounds, producing 100 live calves, weaning off 550 pounds of calf per cow, yielded 55,000 pounds of salable feeders.

By contrast, the midwestern grain farmer with corral cattle, by necessity being fed harvested feed year around, heavily invested in barns and machinery, impatient with fencing and pasture management, was only satisfied with a 700 pound weanling so tended to have 1400 lb. cows and did a lot of creep feeding to supplement momma’s milk supply.     Data on typical feedlot farms showed generally 10% of cows failed to conceive and 5% of the cows failed to birth live calves.   150 pounds of calf growth came from the creep feeding rather than momma’s milk.   You had an extra 300 pounds of cow to maintain all year long, pregnant or open, wet or dry.
Allan did the math this way:   100 cows exposed, weighing 1400 pounds, produced just 85 live calves, weaning off 700 pounds, a total yield of 59,500 pounds of salable feeders (but at higher cost due to added cow size, the creep feed offered calves, and the added facility investment).

Which model is at fault?    With so many midwestern land-grant universities and all their fellow associated feed, chemical, seed and machinery vendors all recommending seek the highest yield at the required higher input costs to insure the yield, it is no surprise that so many cattlemen are disdainful of the grass-based, low-input cow-calf system.     Certainly the focus on EPDs and DNA indexes in major breeds like Angus and Simmental to determine the “best” sires to use reinforce the mantra to maximize yields.
However, as in all commodity production systems, the highest margins of profit come from the most cost-effective optimization of inputs.     Profits in commodity production come not from the highest yields, but from the lowest costs of production per yield.      In the case of animal genetics, this means cow fertility, cow longevity and live calf births are the highest profit traits.
How do we identify better genetic sources for these primary breeding traits?    This is where we see a wide disparity in how cattlemen approach the choice of herd sire(s) both for AI use and for natural service in rangeland or AI “clean up”.

INDEXING

Do EPDs help identify the most fertile, maternal, longevity-capable cows?     Definitions of the summary traits predictably used in advertising:

EPD =  “Expected Progeny Difference” compares the bull to contemporary and historical sires.
CE = “calving ease”, the percent of unassisted births by comparison to other sires.
BW = “birth weight”, in pounds, progeny compared to other sires.
WW = “weaning weight”, standardized at 205 days of age, in pounds, compared to other sires.
YW = “yearling weight”, standardized to 365 days of age, in pounds, compared to other sires.
Mk =  the number of herds reporting progeny data on this sire to his breed association.
Marb =  “marbling score”, this is a combination of live visual estimation and carcass measure.
RE = “ribeye area” (square inches), of course, this is where the highest value meat cuts are.
$B =  “Beef dollar value”, terminal composite score, est. carcass value as graded at slaughter.
$C =  “Composite dollar value”, combines breeding replacement value and beef dollar value.

In other words, open cows, dead calves, services per pregnancy and calving intervals are not being compared for sires (although the data would be accessible from herd records).    EPDs are focused on income generation, NOT on cost control.

LINEBREEDING          (Inbreeding)
Does linebreeding aid us in producing more fertile, maternal, longevity-capable cows?
Linebreeding was integral to localized and regional breed formation, as prior to automobiles it was not practical for bulls to be shipped in numbers from one continent or country to another.  
England and Scotland alone produced a dozen distinct meat breeds as well as the more refined frame dairy breeds, generally named for their region of origin (ex, Devon, Galloway, Highlander, Aberdeen Angus, Durham, Hereford).     A bull used a couple seasons could in turn produce sons who got mated to their paternal half-sisters.   The best then would produce the next generation where “cousins” were interbred.    Desired genetic qualities in the foundation bulls and cows get reinforced over multiple generations of close breeding.
The most remarkable example of this process is the USDA “Line One” Hereford program in the western USA where a “closed breeding herd” has been maintained over 80 generations.
Therefore, if the original breeding animals possessed good fertility, maternal instinct, and will to live, these characteristics will generally be maintained or even reinforced by linebreeding.

CROSSBREEDING
Just how beneficial is the heterosis (“hybrid vigor”) response from crossbreeding?
At the terminal cross, it is generally acknowledged, for example, that a “black baldy” (Hereford x Angus cross) will outgrow (out yield) purebred Angus or Hereford calves from the same sires.   A crossbred steer is like hybrid seed corn, and the “triple cross” seems to be the peak of response.
Crossbreeding to produce cows, however, has diminishing returns.    You need a “base” breed to maintain maternal efficiency and fertility in your cow herd, otherwise randomness takes over.

The Vegetarian bias in climate change agricultural agendas

  As cattlemen, providing an unmatched source of protein in the production of beef, which are able to convert cellulosic plants undigestible to humans thanks to the miraculous rumen, you are unjustly maligned for the production of “greenhouse gases” specifically methane.    While scientific fact will prove that naturally occurring swamps produce vastly more methane than all ruminants (cows, sheep, goats, yaks, water buffalos)—and that a single commercial jet flight is producing more greenhouse gas than an entire herd can produce in a whole year—efforts exist to convince legislators and regulators otherwise.    This “pseudo-science” agenda is originating from two directions – vegan activists and commercial interests promoting the conversion of human diets to soybean, corn and small grain derived plant production.

Now I fully recognize that most of you reading this newsletter may be as invested in grain crop production as you are in livestock.    But unlike the vast prairie acreages (not just here, but also in Brazil -- where thousands of acres of beneficial rainforest have been destroyed to produce soybeans, destabilizing western hemisphere rain patterns-- and in Africa, where herding tribes are being evicted from land for the benefit of billionaires pushing a GMO soybean-based diet) where no meaningful cattle exist, and billions of tons of soil is silted into the Mississippi and Missouri rivers flowing to the ocean deltas as a result of row cropping without seasonal cover crops, the presence of cattle on a grain farm to provide manure and humics to benefit biology and organic structure of the soil, and the periodic rotation of fields into forages between row crop seasons, exerts a stabilizing influence on climate and draws carbon back into the soil as nature designed the fertility cycle of the earth.

It is a good time to brush up on the science of how nature recycles nutrients to insure fertility

H E R E D I T Y and H E R I T A B I L I T Y

 From:

CONCEPTIONS   Dairy Route Newsletter                Aug-Sept 2023

Mich Livestock Service, Inc         “For the Best in Bulls”  and   “High yield Forages”
110 N Main St  (P.O. Box 661)    Ovid,  MI  48866       phone (989) 834-2661     fax (989) 834-2914
www.michiganlivestock.com        email:  greg@michiganlivestock.com             (also on Facebook)

 

Heredity:   the natural process by which traits and characteristics pass from parents to children

We all know from our various life experiences in families and with livestock, that there are many traits—physical appearance, temperament and behavior, adolescent growth rates and maturing to aging, comparative quality of physical function—that are inherited.
We also know that the conditions of the environment at each step in the life/growth process do affect the same traits (geoclimatic, nutritional, housing, herd pressure, human interaction).

Thus in the case of cows, the phenotype (the actual animal you raised) is a combination of both the genotype (DNA, RNA and Mitochondria) which was inherited from parents, and all the daily environmental inputs to which any life form must interact and adapt since conception.

The science of “Genetics” grew up as a statistical way to reduce the complexity of biology into a representation of the effects of Heredity.     In the case of dairy animals, the purebred industry (stockmen concerned with producing useful breeding animals for their neighbors) developed a general consensus around evaluation techniques and defined traits that appeared to have some economic value.

Heritability:   the statistical estimate of an individual trait’s parental influence.

From the earliest days of evaluation it became obvious that not all traits would inherit equally.   This could be both a problem of  trait definition  (are we really defining each desired trait in the most efficacious way?)  or of  trait measurement  (is the trait we wish to influence really easy or difficult to measure by linear methods?).     

From the early days of the AI era (1940s and forward) dairy scientists debated what was more or less important to measure.    The earliest debates revolved around how much animal form could influence animal performance.    This became the “type” vs “utility is beauty” debate…  As long as purebred breeders had the most impact on sire development, it was clear that “type” in their experience had a strong correlation to both lifetime production and transmitting ability.

Beginning with linear evaluation, however, designed by a university committee to determine the “form” of the higher production heifer (and the phenotypic response to heavy grain feeding), we saw purebred breeder influences on sire selection decline.     Today, with the heavy costs of Genomic-related IVF-ET propogation and DNA testing, breeder influence is nearly eclipsed.

Linear evaluation has defined a set of “traits” that are imposed equally on all breeds  (prior to this, each breed association had its own classification system which helped to maintain “breed character”).     These are more easily measured traits, such that they can be learned in a week.   (The goal of AI was to eventually replace breed classifiers with AI stud sales personnel.)

The scientists threw out from consideration any physical characteristic they could not figure out how to “linearize”, no matter how important to function the discarded traits might have been.  For a couple decades, dairymen used type ratings to cover areas that linear could not define.   With the advent of Genomics, this has pretty much gone out the window.

Once data accumulated, studies of heritability for each trait were performed and it was found that not all linearly-measurable traits have equal heritability.

Irregardless, the decision was made to present trait measurements in uniform blocks of data, a progression from frame traits to udder traits to feet & leg traits.    The appearance of these have always suggested that all linear measurements are pretty equal in heritability  (which they are NOT) and we now manipulate them into “composite indexes”  (Udder composite, Foot & Leg composite, Body composite;  Net Merit; TPI, LPI, JPI)  that say “who are the best bulls?”

Single Trait Selection   causes inbreeding depression

All through this period, in which mathematical geneticists took over the leadership of breeding from biologically-based observational breeders, dairymen have experienced what is now known as “inbreeding depression” [perhaps more properly called “single-trait selection depression”].    The decline of linebred breeding herds with predictable breeding ability, the rise of hybridized AI sires evaluated in reductionist ways and then ranked by indexes, the increasing tendency to reduce the breeding population to a handful of “elite” animals in every breed based only on the indexes, ultimately the implementation of Genomics in which animal evaluation on phenotype has virtually disappeared, at each step has produced an “inbreeding depression” in the general commercial cow population.    

Focus selection on what is most heritable

In quantitative traits, Lactose %, Protein % and Butterfat % are the most heritable (approx. 50%).    Pounds measurements have half the heritability of Percentage measures (ie, twice as influenced by management).      In the subset of additive linear traits, Stature (40%) and Udder traits (35% to 20%) are the most heritable.    As for all the rest, where heritabilities are 15% or less, the majority of improvement (85%-95%) has to come from outside the realm of linear evaluation.    

It is for this reason that the “aAa” breeding guide (also known as Weeks’ Analysis) continues to aid dairymen in breeding more adaptable and long-term profitable cattle.    In its design it offers a way to manage the “qualitative/characteristic” aspects of gene combination so as to avoid the effects we now call “selection depression” that result from single trait [index] sire ranking.

In reality, the genotype does not control or dictate future animal performance.    It merely sets up genetic boundaries for potential phenotype expression, in which your cow is always equal in gene contribution to the chosen mating sire.    You make your living from adapted phenotypes, comfortable in the environment you can provide them.      “Inbreeding” can be avoided.

 

Heritability    might be more important than genetic ranking?

In the current “Net Merit” formulation, 10% of the “health trait composite” (the largest component in the total 40-trait formula) is based on GPTA “Livability” – the newest linear measurement, defined as whether your culls will die before you can get them walked on a truck to leave.     PTA-LIV however, is now known to be less than 2% heritable.    

So what does this mean?    It means, 98% of the time when you find a cow dead in a free stall, she died for some reason other than who her sire was.

Similarly low heritability measures now clutter up the formulas for all sire rankings and we have to ask ourselves, are the highest ranked sires today any better than basically sound individuals born from proven cows and consistent cow lines?

Inside are thoughts on how we ended up in this situation… and one possible way you can escape from the peer pressure of the DNA defined by half the pedigree.