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.

WHO DO YOU WORK FOR ?

 

Are your cows working for you, or are you working for your cows?    In fact, do your cows make you work for the feed salesman, the seed salesman, fertilizer and spray salesman, tractor salesman, and farm lending system?

In understand it can be fun to be out riding a tractor (burning up $5.00 per gallon in diesel fuel and making payments to John Deere credit) when the weather is as warm and sunny as we are having --  but if your cows are unable to take some of the work load off you in the spring, summer and fall, you are not making money for your family, just for everyone else.

I understand there are bragging rights in 200-bushel corn and 80-bushel soybeans and the more you spend on them, the closer you get to those milestones.   But if the results of that are not impressing your banker, or your spouse, and if prices to replace all the iron sitting around the farmyard are scaring you, it is time to think over a  different cow-calf strategy, in favor of wholistic land management.

MIch Livestock Service, Inc ---    “For the Best in Bulls”    and fed by     “high energy forages”

MANAGING PASTURES FOR OPTIMUM FORAGE PRODUCTION

 

In the fall, make a decision which field will “winter” your cattle.    In general, the least value of your pastures should become the winter “sacrifice” pasture, where round bales can be unrolled for cows to eat (what they sleep on becomes soil-building organic matter) and then, while grass comes on in the spring, all the “pugging” of a wet pasture is contained in one field.

Plan on seeding summer annuals into the winter sacrifice pasture.    You may need to disc it over to smooth off all the pugging holes, but that makes a seed bed for sudangrass, sorghum- sudan crosses, or millet that (if seeded by early June) will be big enough to feed all your cattle during the heat of the summer when grass slows into near-dormancy growth (this will be very much a problem with this year’s dry spring conditions).    

As soon as soil is firm, move cattle into better pastures.     In fact, your smallest or irregular-shaped pastures need the cattle first, and here is why:   bigger pastures (rectangular shaped) can be bale harvest most easily.     With the weather conditions prevailing this spring, grass hay could have been cut by the 15^th of May.      By now they would have a good second growth and offer some early summer grazing before the summer annuals would be needed.

It is unsound harvesting to cut your alfalfa first.    Even the newest grasses will still push heads two weeks ahead of alfalfa first-buds.     Of you leave grass fields to bale last, you not only will sacrifice much of the protein content into the seed head, the plant may go dormant for most of the rest of the season.

Properly rotated vegetative grass may provide you six grazing passes per season per pasture.   This is twice the potential feed you are likely to harvest from a three-cutting hay making system.     It is our alfalfa-based approaches to hay making that are causing us to undervalue and underuse the fertility capability of a rotated, fertilized pasture system.

Unless you grow alfalfa to resell to dairy herds, do not worry about cutting it full bloom.    Early cut alfalfa is just too low in digestible fiber to be an optimal beef cow feed.    “Rocket fuel alfalfa” in a beef system is only of incremental benefit in feeding out finishing steers.    Grass is truly a more balanced forage feed than alfalfa, which grew to prominence only because when in combination with high energy corn it could appear to be a “balanced” ration on chemical tests.

The most profit in a beef cow-calf herd is to fully utilize the rumen.    Cattle raised on forages will develop a full digestive capacity from that forage, and with appropriate genetic selection on your cow genetics you can get growth, milk production for calves, and nice body conditioning without the need for a third to half the ration being corn and oilseed based.    Beef phenotypes should be selected for the ability to finish by age, not on weight gain from grain.   

What pays and what does not ?

 From:

CONCEPTIONS      Beef Cow-calf route newsletter              June-July 2023

 

Andy and Angus Arthur of Laingsburg have developed a successful grassfed beef marketing production system utilizing Angus, Hereford and “black baldy” crosses.
On a recent breeding visit, Andy mentioned that they tried some fly-repellent ear tags on cattle last year.    The feeder cattle going into winter hay feeding were 50# heavier with the fly tags than without.     They are thinking of trying them again.
 

How much does creep feeding and winter silage exaggerate EPDs?

As many of you are active grain farmers, the temptation to divert some of your corn crop into a corn silage supply for your cows for winter feeding is great.    You will of course be encouraged by most seed salesmen to do exactly that.   However, while corn (and soybean) prices still hold at record high price levels historically, and after the pandemic’s severe runup in fertilizer prices, we have to ask if this is a wise practice.

Most beef breeds were developed on grasslands grazing and winter hay feeding

The genetic instinct of animals is to live on what they were programmed to eat in mature.    For cattle, especially the English base breeds  (Angus, Red Angus, Hereford, Polled Hereford, Scotch Shorthorn, Murray Grey, and most “heritage” breeds of Highlander, Red Poll, Galloway, Dexter), corn was never part of their instinctual diets.     Thus when fed corn, it usually was metabolized as stored body fat, over muscle surfaces (not marbled), in mammary tissue, and around internal organs (kidneys, liver, uterine tract).     This fat has negative reproductive and health effects if too much accumulates, and in a broader sense, given it is just trimmed away in butchering, has no human food value—thus is a waste of your land and farming inputs compared to an effective pasturage and forage harvesting system.

High quality pasture that is treated like a crop  (ie, receiving some nitrogen fertilization after each grazing pass)  will not only regrow perennially but yield economically competitive volumes of feed.    No more than 2 acres per cow-calf unit of good, high energy variety perennial grasses in central Michigan will provide winter hay and spring/summer/fall feed, properly rotated.    The cows will rebreed more easily without being fat around the ovaries, and the heifers you save will calve much easier by not having excess fat packed into their pelvic structures pressing around the birthing canal.     

It seems to have developed primarily in the “continental breed” and “club calf” herds to believe that, either to produce higher EPDs for breeding stock sales, or fleshier calves for showing, that the cow herd has to be as “conditioned” as the sale and show stock.    This is not sound cattle breeding selection and has had many negative consequences, first in slower reproduction.
 

How early is it safe to preg check?

 With today’s ultrasound technology, pregnancies as early as 28 days can be seen on the monitor of the machine in the hands of a skilled operator (most vet clinics serving large animals may have one).      This is much earlier than safe times for a physical palpation (to avoid slipped membranes, vets prefer to wait 42 days).

If you follow a practice of early checks with ultrasound, the most economical way to fully confirm early pregnancies is to use a P Test strip from Emlabs.    Catch the urine stream under any cow bred 60+ days and you have a confirmation of status that is 99% accurate.     Should any cow have lost her pregnancy after the earlier (28- 42 day) ultrasound, the P Test will catch it.

Catch those repeat services

 By now most of you are either breeding or have completed a first round of AI>   
To have an idea of how you did, and if you desire to get another chance at some of your momma cows, consider applying Estrutech patches on the rumps of any you have serviced, or have not yet seen in heat.   

These have a gray surface that will rub off when a cow is persistently mounted, so a bright color (Red, Green, Yellow, several choices) will show.     If you check your herd every day, these will help you catch heats in a timely manner.
Another economical alternative is AI Paint, which we stock in yellow and green.

Mich Livestock Service, Inc     “For the Best in Bulls”   and   “High Energy forages”
110 N Main St   (PO Box 661)   Ovid,  MI  48866                          ph  (989) 834- 2661
www.michiganlivestock.com      email: greg@michiganlivestock.com       fax: (989) 834- 2914