Breed Improvement
Evolution By Sean McGrath
We evaluate things every day. Walking through a crop or down the aisle in a grocery store or looking at cattle; our minds are sorting through thousands of details and evaluating the options. It is quite a reasonable assumption that having more information and using it in the right way can help us in our evaluations and produce more pleasing results.
through to the genetic components of these differences. This is an important investment for the industry, as it is the genetic component that is passed on and provides the value to the next generation.
To further advance the ability to evaluate Simmental genetics a massive research and development effort is ongoing to define The grocery store analogy is a good one. If you were to walk the Simmental genome (DNA) and to evaluate traits such down the canned goods aisle and someone had peeled all the as fertility, longevity, carcass and meat quality traits. This labels off the cans, what would you see? Your assessment would improves our ability to evaluate cattle. be limited to the size and how shiny the can is. You would have The key point here is that evaluation improvements do not tell no idea what is actually contained within the can (also a fun us what we are looking for. When you walk down the canned game to play in someone else’s pantry). You might be able goods aisle, you are searching for specifics, perhaps it is pie to pick the can up and guess at the weight, or find some other filling or tomatoes for a stew. You are not just buying because clues. When the label is placed on that can, a lot of thought the label is pretty; you are usually buying with a purpose goes into the design, colour and other attributes to create an in mind. The same needs to be true with beef cattle. The appealing proposition for your evaluation skills. Simmental genetic base is diverse and can do a lot of things For those wanting further information, nutritional information, very well. Understanding what you want to do and then using the available tools to evaluate cattle will help to improve the weight and expiry dates are all provided. end results. Remember that even with differing end goals, the This is a good analogy for beef cattle selection. When we walk cattle can still look great and function well. into a pen of eye appealing cattle, we often do not know what we are looking at in great detail, other than the fact that they The breed average EPD for current animals is shown below. trigger our senses in a positive way. While this is certainly a This gives some idea of where the yearling and two year old good thing, for those with specific breeding goals, it doesn’t population is at. When looking at a potential herdsire, you can necessarily move them in the direction they had planned. There compare him to this value and to other Canadian Simmental cattle. The cattle cannot be compared with other breeds as the is a lot still left to chance. numbers are not directly comparable. The range (minimum to Simmental breeders have worked hard on collecting data such as maximum) shows that there is a lot of variation to pick from in weights, calving ease scores, mature size, ultrasound and other order to achieve specific end goals or use on different types of measures to assist in evaluating animals. Through investment cow herds. in genetic evaluation, further efforts have been made to work Pct Avg Min Max SD 24
CE 5.8 -8.9 18.6 3.23
BW 2.5 -10.0 11.3 2.30
WW 36.4 -4.6 68.7 8.05
YW 61.4 -3.9 119.2 12.60
MCE 5.3 -1.0 11.8 1.32
Milk 6.7 -12.4 24.4 4.88
MWW 24.9 -11.1 47.5 6.48
SC 0.17 -1.61 1.45 0.334
CWT 2.2 -54.0 121.0 16.70
REA -0.03 -0.70 0.88 0.238
Fat 0.005 -0.063 0.666 0.0402
Marb 0.04 -0.61 1.16 0.211
Canadian Simmental Association