The rate of technological advancement in our day-to-day lives around the farm is rapidly evolving. The cattle industry is a good example of this change.

For centuries, good stockmanship was approached like an art. To improve animals, a stockman needed a good eye and a knack for following pedigrees. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and good breeding stock was selected by choosing those that looked the best and came from a reliable, known bloodline.

"Early cattlemen that advanced the various breeds took this skill to the level of an art,” says Eric Meusch, University of Missouri agriculture educator. “The skills it took were difficult for the average cattleman to replicate, and hard to pass on from generation to generation.”

A look back

In the 1960s, frozen semen made it possible for cattle producers to begin using artificial insemination to improve their herds. This technology allowed cattlemen to use the top bulls in the various breeds without owning the bulls.

"The major breed associations promoted these technologies to improve the overall quality of their breed by getting their best animals into more of the herd's pedigree," Meusch says.

In 1983, a new technology call Estimated Progeny Differences, or EPDs, was introduced that used statistical analysis to determine how likely certain traits would be passed on to offspring.

This took much of the "art" out of cattle breeding by giving producers actual numbers to use in making breeding decisions. By the mid-1990s, the use of EPDs in selecting breeding stock had become widespread.

"Today, with the advancements in computers and the sheer size of the data sets held by the breed associations, EPDs have become remarkably accurate estimates of how traits will be passed on from one animal to another," Meusch says.

More ahead

Although EPDs are a great tool, they are basically a statistical guess of how that animal's offspring will perform. Developments in genetics have taken the guesswork out. Genomically enhanced EPDs take the approach to a new level by using genetic samples from the individual animal to develop the EPDs. Rather than using statistics to guess what genes the animal may have, they determine what genes the animal has through genetic testing.

"Now we are also able to sort the male and female semen when it is collected for storage,” Meusch says. “This makes it possible to choose male or female calves.”

Producers can use artificial insemination to breed a set of cows to have all female calves with the best GE EPDs for maternal traits in the breed to save as replacement heifers and breed another set of cows to have all male calves with superior growth and carcass characteristics.

"This isn't the future I'm describing, folks, these technologies are here today,” Meusch says. “Agriculture is changing from an art to a science. Not mad, Frankenstein's monster science, but good, solid, research-based science. The science is done at land grant universities, by scientists that may have been farm kids that grew up right down the road."

Source: The University of Missouri Extension, which is solely responsible for the information provided and is wholly owned by the source. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.