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Reproduction, growth, carcass traits. Can we have it all? This is a very easy question to answer. Yes, we can have it all!
Beef cattle production is easier today than any time in history. Reproduction has always been and will always be the No. 1 performance trait. Cattle must be given a job description. Job 1 is to reproduce. Cattle that do not reproduce must be eliminated. Cattle that do reproduce should then be selected for the economically important traits.
In the past the only selection pressure that could be applied was on reproduction. We did not have the information to change growth or carcass traits. Prior to the first American Angus Association Sire Evaluation Report published in the fall of 1980, we either made Angus cattle shorter or taller, but we did nothing to make a more efficient beef animal. Actually, as seedstock producers, we are fortunate that commercial producers didn’t sue us, because in reality the bulls we sold them only made their cows give milk — “cow fresheners.” Prior to the sire summary, we did nothing to change the genetics for growth, let alone produce a better beef product for consumers.
Today, we can use genetic selection to create Angus cattle that we thought were impossible 20 years ago. The American Angus Association has built a database that is the best in the world. I find it astonishing that even today there are Angus breeders who doubt the validity of this information. I find it even more amazing that some Angus breeders still do not use this information. I have heard it said that with all of the expected progeny differences (EPDs) we have today that it is too complicated to sort it all out. The reality is if breeders will look at EPDs as $$$$, the sky is the limit on the opportunities that they represent.
When I was learning to use EPDs and database selection systems in the early 1980s, two of my mentors, Roy Wallace and John Crouch, used to say, “Mark, you cannot have low-birth-weight, high-growth, moderate-framed cattle because these are all antagonistic traits.” What they meant by antagonistic traits was that, in general, higher-growth cattle tend to have larger birth weights and a larger mature size because of the positive correlation among growth traits. However, when cattle that defied these correlations were identified using the Angus database, it became possible to select them and to change the population. Now we can expand our use of those outlier bulls. This is our opportunity, and is what has made the Angus breed what it is today and what it will be tomorrow.
A great way to demonstrate the power of the sire summary is to sort bulls using the Angus Association’s database search on the Internet (www.angus.org/sireeval/index.html). There are 2,508 sires in the Spring 2000 Sire Evaluation Report. There are 13 traits listed in the sire summary, and another five traits listed in the American Angus Association’s preliminary ultrasound research data report. I want to select a sire that is:
Small at birth — in the bottom 10% of the breed for birth weight;
Fast-growing — in the top 1% of the breed for yearling weight;
Moderate-sized — in the bottom 15% of the breed for yearling hip height; in the bottom 40% of the breed for mature daughter weight and in the bottom 15% for mature daughter height;
Productive — positive for scrotal circumference;
Heavily muscled — in the top 15% of the breed for ribeye area (REA);
High-yield — above average for percent retail product; and
High-marbling — in the top 20% of the breed for intramuscular fat (% IMF).
If you add up all of the bull calves born during the same time period that the 2,508 bulls in the sire summary were selected, you would find that those bulls were selected from more than 2,500,000 bulls.
So, how many bulls out of the 2,500,000 will fit my above criteria? There is one. The bull is Rito 6I6. I have to admit that I was not smart enough to find him until he had appeared in the sire summary. I’ll bet you that the high-school basketball coach who cut Michael Jordan from the basketball team didn’t realize what he had done until Michael Jordan had proven himself in the basketball arena. I found this bull because of our ability to measure, describe and identify Angus cattle. The secret in the Angus business is that we have the most powerful, accurate information source in the world: the Sire Evaluation Report. It is worth billions of dollars. You have this information at your fingertips, free of charge. Use it!
Having the best database in the world doesn’t mean that there are no decisions to make when using EPDs. Every breeder still has to decide which traits are most important to him and his customers. In my mind today, it comes down to deciding the relative importance of selection for growth, carcass traits and reproductive efficiency.

Growth
Producers are paid for pounds. Gardiner Angus Ranch tries to breed for as many pounds as possible, provided we can produce those pounds in the correct package. To explain how we arrived at this breeding goal, I have to share a bit of our history with you.
Henry Gardiner started breeding registered Angus cattle in 1947. For 33 years Dad tried as hard as he possibly could to make genetic change. In 1964 he began using an intensive artificial insemination (AI) program of theoretically the best bulls of the Angus breed. He was selecting bulls that looked good, or were a bull-test winner, or a bull that was a purple-ribbon winner. He became very frustrated because no matter how hard he tried to make genetic progress, it did not work! The average weaning weights of our steer calves from 1964 to 1973 was 523 lb. From 1974 to 1979 we creep-fed our steers and also weaned them at earlier dates. Then in 1980 we returned to a comparable management of our steer calves, and those calves still weighed 526 lb. There had to be a better way. That better way was to establish the goals for our breeding program and to have the tools needed to reach those goals.
In fall 1980 Dad finally got the same tools that the dairy industry had used for many years when the first Angus Field Data Report (sire summary) was published. That was the first time that all of the most widely used bulls of the breed had been compared for the economically important traits. This allowed Angus breeders for the very first time to make sire selection based on genetic merit for the selected traits. Starting in December 1980, we began to rely heavily on EPDs to select our sires. Most of the bulls we use we have never seen. However, we select only progeny-proven sires that have sired hundreds, if not thousands, of calves.
We have a total AI program. No cleanup bulls are used. We started an extensive embryo transfer (ET) program in 1987. We currently breed more than 1,600 females/year and make about 2,000 embryo transfers every year. Every animal on Gardiner Angus Ranch is the result of AI or ET.
Our steer weights from 1980 through 1999 tell the rest of the story (see Table 1).



We have retained ownership of some of our home-raised steers through slaughter since 1970. We have also been buying feeder cattle and putting them into the feedlot since 1972. There have been about 2,000 steers purchased each year and about 60-100 home-raised steers fed. Over the past 19 years the purchased cattle’s performance has improved some, but not as dramatically as our home-raised steers (see Table 2).



The data in Table 2 illustrates that with the disciplined use of EPDs over a 20-year period we dramatically improved the performance of our home-raised steers. The genetically improved steers were in the feedlot 50 days less than their herdmates two decades earlier, but still went to slaughter 262 lb. heavier than their earlier relatives. The genetic improvement was all done by the selection of sires. The mothers of the 1998-99 steers were out of the descendants of the same cow herd that produced the 1978-80 steers. The management and forage system was the same in 1998-99 as it was in 1978-80.
In fall 1994 Dad mentioned to a friend that our bulls had done well in their 95-day feed test, with some gaining more than 7 lb./day. The reply was, “Well, how do you know that the faster-gaining bulls do not eat all the time and are not the most efficient gainers?” We could not answer that question to our own satisfaction until we examined the gain and dry-matter (DM) conversion of our bulls on test from 1977-1999.
We have seen average pen gains go from 2.7 lb./day in 1977 to 5.37 lb./day in 1998. We have also observed that during the same time period feed conversion improved from 7.48 lb. of feed consumed on a DM basis for a pound of gain to 4.28 lb. of feed consumed on a DM basis per pound of gain. That’s a 57% decrease in feed consumed per pound of gain, while we almost doubled their rate of gain.
It’s pretty obvious that selection for faster gain also produced cattle that were more efficient. In the 1980s we identified as our goals to wean 10-month-old steer calves at 800 lb. and to have our steers gain 4 lb./day in the feedlot. We accomplished both goals by 1990. Before the year 2005 I predict that we will feed a pen of cattle that will have a feed conversion of a pound of gain from less than 4 lb. of feed on a DM basis. In addition to being efficient, those cattle will be gaining 6 lb. or more per day during their time on feed. That’s a long way from weaning 526-lb. steers that take 7.48 lb. of feed to produce a pound of gain at the rate of 2.7 lb./day!

Carcass traits
Value-based marketing is here. I have heard all my life that someday all cattle would be marketed based on the value of their end product. This becomes more true every day. In the past all fed cattle were marketed on an average pricing system. This led to huge premiums for the wrong cattle because the best way to make money was to upgrade sorry cattle and receive an average price for them. When the Certified Angus Beef (CAB) Program was started, this was a good program for consumers and the retailers who were marketing Certified Angus Beef™ (CAB®) product, but there were not strong economic signals to “pull” more CAB cattle through the system. Granted, packers wanted to purchase Angus-influenced cattle, but only for the “one price fits all” average price. This did nothing to pay producers more for producing a higher-quality beef product.
One of the reasons I became involved in U.S. Premium Beef (USPB) was because I felt commercial producers should receive more for using high-quality Angus genetics. Today USPB pays $9/cwt. for each and every Prime carcass, and $4.50/cwt. for every CAB carcass. An 800-lb. Prime carcass is worth $72/head more, and an 800-lb. CAB carcass is worth $36/head more. USPB is proud to pay some of the highest premiums in the business for high-quality Angus cattle, and I’m even more proud that we have helped the other packers see the light and pay more money for the high-quality Angus cattle. This is good news for the beef business because these economic incentives help pull the better beef products through to the consumer. The greatest news in the beef world today is that by improving product quality we have stabilized beef demand.
So what does this all mean to Angus breeders? We have Angus cattle. They put up good quality grades on the rail. We have CAB. Everything is great, right? Wrong!
Barely 20% of all eligible Angus cattle meet the minimum requirements for CAB. The biggest reason CAB still struggles with supply is because carcass traits of Angus cattle have not been good enough. When you look at the selection strategies our breed has applied over the past 26 years, you find that the Angus breed has increased the yearling growth by about 30%. However, during the same period you find that we have only improved the marbling by +0.11 units and the ribeye area (REA) by +0.17 square inches (sq. in.). In other words, we have made very little genetic change in our breed for carcass traits.
Carcass traits are highly heritable. We should be able to make more change with carcass traits than growth traits. We have not. Why? The American Angus Association has the largest carcass database in the world, but this carcass database has not been large enough or good enough. That’s about to change.
The genetic trend for carcass traits is going to “blast off” because of the breed’s commitment to ultrasound measurement of carcass traits. The Angus breed is now measuring nearly 100,000 head each year via ultrasound.
Is ultrasound data accurate? Yes! It is more accurate than carcass data. Everybody assumes that kill data is perfect, when the reality is that gathering kill data is very subjective; it suffers from the variability among USDA graders to the speed at which this data must be gathered. I support the use of ultrasound and publishing of that data in the American Angus Association ultrasound report. As your Angus colleague, I encourage you to embrace this system and measure your cattle in order to contribute to the database. I predict that we will see more improvement in the Angus breed for carcass traits in the next five years than we have seen in the previous 30. As your competitor, I would say if you don’t believe in it, that just gives me more opportunity to breed the best cattle.
If a breeder selects for carcass traits, will he sacrifice the reproductive or growth performance of his herd? According to Dr. Twig Marston of Kansas State University, there is little or no evidence in the scientific literature that selection for carcass traits will impair reproduction or growth traits of a cow herd. Marston’s review indicated that there is neither a positive nor a negative correlation between marbling and pregnancy rates. The Association’s database shows a minimal correlation between marbling and percent retail product. So breeders may simultaneously select for both quality and red meat yield. Moreover, since the genetic correlation between fat thickness and marbling is near zero, Angus breeders can select for marbling while not sacrificing the easy-fleshing cow herd, Marston says.


Reproduction
Don’t forget, reproduction is still the No. 1 performance trait. Remember that fertility is a lowly heritable trait. According to Dr. Richard Saacke of Virginia Tech, semen evaluations can only account for 50% of the variation of fertility among bulls. On the female side, the environmental differences between neighbors may have more affect on cow herd fertility than differences in their genetics.
I would love to place selection pressure on fertility that would allow me to effectively select bulls or cows with higher fertility, but I also think we should realize that we are dealing with very low heritabilities on fertility traits. Heterosis will have more of an effect on reproductive traits than genetic selection during two of my lifetimes. Therefore, I believe it is important to place a heavy emphasis on fertility as a threshold trait. In other words, make cows conceive during a time-restricted breeding season. It is important that cows work for you and not vice versa. Cows that do not work under their job description need to find a job elsewhere.
We have been able to make genetic progress and maintain a cow herd that is reproductively efficient. Since 1964 Gardiner Angus Ranch has had a total AI program with no cleanup bulls. Since the inception of this program, the heifers were given 30 days to conceive, or they exited the herd. The cows have always been bred on a 60-day breeding season. Since 1964 our pregnancy rate (total cows that conceived divided by total cows serviced) has been 95% or greater. The bottom line: We didn’t have to compromise reproduction to achieve genetic improvement.

Conclusion
I have heard it said that EPDs are just a fad and they will not last long. Well this fad is well into its 21st year. Data-based selection will become more and more a part of the beef cattle industry. As value-based marketing becomes more of a reality, it will be impossible to survive in the beef cattle business without a reliable database that allows cattle breeders to react to economic signals.
We believe in EPDs. Our goal has always been to produce a live calf that will grow as rapidly as possible to market weight and then quit growing. We believe that you cannot have too much growth as long as that growth is in the “right package.”
We use 18 EPD traits to select our sires. We put a lot of selection pressure against birth weight; most of the bulls we use are in the 2.0-lb. range or less for birth weight EPD. We also put a lot of selection pressure against mature size, so we select sires that are below breed average for the yearling hip height EPD, and below breed average for the mature daughter weight and height EPDs. After applying the previous selection criteria, we select bulls with as much yearling weight as possible. Then we select bulls with adequate milk EPD. In general we keep our milk in the 15-20 range, but we do select some bulls with less milk for our customers who get less rainfall. Next, we look at the carcass EPDs. We want the sires to be positive for marbling, ribeye area and percent retail product. We want the sires to be negative for the fat EPD. Finally, we use the scrotal EPD to make our sire selection. We would prefer to select bulls that are positive, but we do use some bulls that are negative for scrotal EPD.
We only select sires that fit the above criteria and are high-accuracy bulls (>0.80) for these EPD traits (progeny-proven). This is not a complicated system, but it does require discipline. We believe it is very effective, based upon what it has accomplished for us.
I’m a living example of the economic reality of EPDs. Gardiner Angus Ranch would have gone bankrupt weaning 525-lb. 10-month-old steer calves. There would have been no ranch for us to come home to if my Dad had not chosen to use EPDs. I would like to thank Roy Wallace and John Crouch for all their help over the years and for helping implement data-based selection. I would particularly like to thank Henry Gardiner for his tenacity, the foresight to recognize the economic reality of EPDs, and especially for implementing the Gardiner Angus Ranch breeding program. My Dad and I have many “discussions” about our sire selection, but I usually end up reminding him “I’m only implementing the program you taught me.”
Reproduction, growth and carcass traits. Can we have it all? Yes!