EXECUTIVE CORNER
Beware of theeGAP by Darrell Wilkes, Ph.D., International Brangus Breeders Association (IBBA) executive vice president I must give credit to my friend Dr. Bob Weaber from Kansas State University for finding the perfect word – a simple three letter word – to describe a phenomenon that is becoming more significant in the seedstock industry. In this case, the “GAP” is the difference in average genetic merit of cattle born each year in herds that are using all the tools and technology available to them compared to those herds that are less intense in their use of data and technology. Like any business in any industry, cattle breeders run on a technology treadmill – like it or not. In order to remain competitive, one must constantly adopt new technology. If you stand still, you fall behind. This has always been true and will certainly remain true for the foreseeable future – not just in cattle breeding, but in every industry that one can imagine. Technological innovations rarely accumulate in a straight line - a linear advance. Rather, there are certain points in time where a disruptive technology comes along and allows a quantum leap forward. Examples would be micro-processors, the internet, and DNA sequencing to name but a few of the most obvious ones. In our business, examples would be artificial insemination, the advent of EPDs, and the emergence of genomics (DNA testing). I think we have reached an inflection point in the cattle industry where the cumulative power of technology is allowing the most aggressive users of technology to advance at an accelerating pace in terms of genetic improvement. As
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May 2021
this occurs, those who are slower to adopt these technologies run the risk of falling victim to the GAP – that is, the genetic distance between the low-tech herds and the high-tech herds will increase at an accelerating pace. There has always been a GAP between herds in terms of average genetic merit for traits of importance. This was true long before we had EPDs to help quantify the differences. As far back as the 1940s, and perhaps even earlier, there were hard-nosed breeders who weighed every calf, multiple times, and kept meticulous records. Imagine these folks calculating adjusted weights and ratios longhand – without a calculator (maybe they had an abacus or a slide rule). Even before we understood all the nuance of quantitative genetics such as heritabilities and other parameters, it was understood that “like begets like” – this is just an instinctive understanding of genetics. If you breed fast-growing cows to fast-growing bulls, you’re likely to get fast-growing calves. This is cowboy common sense. But some breeders kept records. They did the math and used their data to select the next generation of parents. Others, it’s fair to say, just eye-balled the cattle and picked those that were bigger (assuming the goal was to increase growth rate). Image two breeders on opposite ends of town, each with a goal to breed faster-growing cattle. One is weighing calves, keeping records year-after-year, and calculating which animals have the greatest growth potential. The other one is
