Onward & Upward

by IBBA Executive Vice President Tommy Perkins, PhD., PAS

Parts of the country continue to receive beneficial and much needed rainfall. It is nice to see baby calves being born and to appreciate the genetic improvement our breed continues to make every day. Remember, early nutrition is important in the life of the newborns as well as the potential for the cow to rebreed. A lot has been said about fetal programming and its impact on lifetime productivity of replacement females and carcass merit of feedlot calves.

President Belt has put together committee assignments for the upcoming year. I thank you for your commitment to the breed. Committee involvement is important to the future growth and development of the International Brangus Breeders Association (IBBA). Your strong leadership is an important part of the overall success of each committee. I appreciate each of the appointed committee chairs who have taken on the challenge and extra effort to lead their respective committees.

The Beef Improvement Federation Convention will be held in Athens, Georgia, this year. It is a great meeting to hear the latest science that is relatable to your operation and the beef industry. I lead a subcommittee on body composition and will have some speakers in my session discussing their research on Brangus® cattle. Therefore, plan on attending this very informative meeting if you can be in Athens, Georgia, the first three days of June.

Please place Aug. 18-19 on your calendar for the Southeast Brangus Breeders Association Field Day and IBBA Fall Conference in Okeechobee, Florida. Salacoa Valley Farms, which is the seedstock division of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, Inc., will be hosting the event. Alex Johns, Chris Heptinstall, and SBBA leadership have a first-class program in the works. You will get to hear some excellent speakers, eat awesome food, and see some great cattle on your visit to Florida. Make a vacation of it and visit some of the many Brangus® breeders we have in the Okeechobee area.

We have two years of calculating genomic-enhanced expected progeny differences (GE-EPDs) behind us. I thank each of you for the belief in the technology and its benefits to the good of your program. Over 11,000 animals have had DNA samples submitted for testing with the 50K or higher chip densities. We are easily the number-one American breed of cattle with this amount of genomic data in a genetic evaluation. As you know, the biggest gain from genomics is in the improved accuracy values for each expected progeny difference (EPD) trait. It is most beneficial to the young, unproven animals that many of you market to commercial cattle industry.

The availability of GE-EPDs on yearling animals has given the commercial bull buyers a selection advantage because of the increase in precision and reliability of the EPDs. The resulting parent verification has also been a huge benefit to our genetic evaluation. I see fewer and fewer errors in registering the correct parent(s) in the portal. I commend each of you for going the extra mile to be better record keepers. You are encouraged to continue submitting DNA for SNP profiling to ensure the customers of our product are afforded the best and most current technology available. This is more beneficial to breeders with small numbers of animals than it is for breeders with large numbers of animals.

The other good news is we are running our genetic evaluation every month. This provides new EPDs every thirty days for our cattle. This will also help accommodate the commercial cattlemen that are submitting DNA samples for testing with our new Brangus-specific DNA panel. The new Brangus Profiler yields commercial cattlemen three different selection indexes to use in heifer replacement selection and/or feeder cattle selection. The selection indexes include maternal, growth and carcass and are based on the suite of EPDs currently being provided for all Brangus® cattle.

Do not hesitate to call me if you have any specific questions about committees, DNA testing, or other Brangus® issues. For information about IBBA programs or other inquiries, please call (210) 696-8231. Stay connected to IBBA through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, or receive news updates by joining our email list.