Genetic Improvement is NOT like Herding Cats

by Darrell Wilkes, Ph.D., International Brangus Breeders Association (IBBA) executive vice president

I’ve been told that it’s hard to herd cats. I admit I’ve never tried, since I’ve always believed that one cat was too many and one cat does not make a herd anyway. As a kid, I tried roping cats and I can attest that it is extremely difficult to catch a cat with a 30-foot lasso.

I don’t think anybody has really tried to herd cats. It is just an expression to describe an activity that results in a chaotic and scattered outcome with no predictability. Genetic improvement of cattle is the exact opposite of that. With the modern tools of genetic evaluation and reproductive technology, breeders who choose a specific genetic path and diligently stick to their plan can make steady and predictable genetic change. Guaranteed.

In the preceding paragraph, the term reproductive technology is emphasized because it is a vital component of genetic change for obvious reasons. The ability to get artificially high levels of reproduction from animals with the highest genetic merit dramatically amplifies the impact of the genetically superior animals. Without showing the mathematical proof, which would bore you to death and would hurt my head, I will just state that, in any breed of cattle with forward momentum, the “80/20 rule” that we’ve heard a thousand times is replaced with the “90/10 rule”. Ninety percent of the genetic change in a population can be traced to about 10% of the population, and the majority of that can be traced to high impact sires.

In this issue of the Journal, we provide an overview of the most influential animals in the breed in terms of the number of calves registered during the past year. Would you be surprised to learn that the top 25 black sires sired almost 4,400 calves that were registered just in the past 12 months?

The daughters of another list of 25 black sires produced 4,600 calves in the past 12 months. That’s 9,000 registrations from a small list of sires. Some sires show up on both lists – they sired a lot of calves directly, and their daughters produced a lot of calves. That’s what you call genetic impact.

Another rather fascinating statistic is the number of calves produced by the most productive donor dams. The top 25 donor dams produced almost 600 calves that were registered in the last 12 months. Based on what I see some members doing with E.T., I believe we will see that number grow significantly in the coming years.

These lists are not intended to shine light on the “big boys”. They are intended to highlight the animals that are leaving the biggest genetic footprint in the breed. It is true that many of the animals listed are produced by the larger operations, but that is not unique to Brangus. It is true in virtually every breed. It is also true that those who make the most aggressive use of modern reproductive technologies such as A.I. and E.T. increase their odds of producing animals of high genetic merit that many other breeders elect to use in their breeding programs – either by direct use via A.I. or through sons and daughters of these elite animals.

I have told this story before, but it is worth repeating. I grew up on a family-sized seedstock operation in Wyoming. We were not one of the “big boys” by any stretch of the imagination. We didn’t view the larger outfits with envy and jealousy. Rather, we saw them as our very own R&D department that we didn’t have to pay for. We were perfectly willing to let the larger operations sample the hot young sires and develop a proof on them before we bought semen for use in our own herd. We were able to minimize our genetic mistakes which was essential for our survival. We were happy to see the larger outfits spending money to prove and promote a bull because we had sons to sell just like they did. We were a year or two behind them with the sons of the leading sires, but that didn’t seem to matter much to our commercial bull customers who just wanted sound bulls with proven genetics.

When you sit back and compare the beef seedstock business to other businesses, a stark contrast emerges. We (seedstock breeders) are willing to sell a piece of our intellectual property for a pittance to our competitors. You may not have thought about it that way, but that’s exactly what occurs when one breeder sells semen on their top bull(s) to another breeder – who then produces progeny and sells them in competition with the person who owns the sire. If we didn’t do this as a breed, we’d soon be toast. This is because we are not competing with one another. We are competing with other breeds, and in the larger picture, we are competing with other sources of protein like poultry, pork, fish and even fake meat. We are competing for market share, and there is a huge chunk of the market for commercial stock bulls that we don’t have but can have if we continue to search for the top sires and then use the heck out of them.

Congratulations to every bull and donor dam on the lists in this issue of the Journal, and to those who bred them. You aren’t there by accident.

I’ve been told that an essay like this should end with reference to the title, but I really don’t have anything more to say about cats. Where I grew up, it was considered impolite to ask somebody how many acres they had. I once asked that question and was told by the lady rancher that her place was big enough that she needed her own tom cat. And, no, I never did catch a cat with my rope but it was not for lack of trying.