F&R LivestockResource
Spring 2021 | Volume 4, Issue 3
Your direct source for livestock news and information
Published by Farmers & Ranchers Livestock, Salina, Kansas
In this Issue: 1 Modifying Nature with Nature (Part 1)
Not without controversy, gene editing poses enormous potential to add another tool to a food animal producer’s arsenal. The process also adds complexity to the profitability equation. As “low hanging fruit”, gene editing makes cosmetic changes possible. The possibility to use the technology to eradicate and manage deadly and chronic diseases in animals, as well as change human biologic reactions such as allergies and tissue rejection, is breathtaking.
9 Fundamentals Point to Higher Prices
Beef producers have waited years, survived blizzards, floods, wildfires and now a pandemic to see the pendulum begin to shift toward recovery and profitability in most sectors of the cattle business. Wes Ishmael’s conversation with the ag industry’s most respected economists and analysts forecast a bullish recovery that can begin later in 2021 and continue into 2022.
16 Profiting from Predictability
Registered seedstock producers have had access to genomic testing and expected progeny differences for more than a decade. Commercial cow-calf producers and other sectors of the commercial business were left to rely on the accuracy of the genetics they purchased for use in their cow-calf operations. Today, commercial producers have access to the same genetic testing and are using the tools to make rapid genetic progress in their own operations.
Targeted
23 The New Sixty-Five…Maybe
The cost to raise heifer replacements versus purchasing replacements has been the eternal conundrum in cow-calf production. Although there are many considerations that go into a producer’s final decision, “The New Sixty-Five” discusses the importance of nutrition and optimum weight postweaning and the effects on pregnancy rates.
25 Cool Pigs Running
Do the post-holiday, winter doldrums and extreme cold have you down? Ride along with Hooter McCormick’s latest adventure involving the first-ever International Running of the Pigs to spruce up your day. Wes Ishmael shares the latest from Hooter’s funny world.
Changes Modifying Nature with Nature Gene editing continues to make progress but there are plenty of hurdles to commercialization and adoption. Part 1 By Wes Ishmael
Imagine adding natural polledness to elite lines of horned breeds of cattle making cattle resistant to pathogens responsible for bovine tuberculosis and bovine respiratory disease, enabling cattle, to thrive in environments previously unsuited or adding carcass yield and tenderness.
All of those and more represent successful or ongoing gene editing research so far. And that’s just considering cattle. “Editing gives us the ability to make targeted changes in the genome to introduce useful genetic variation, in
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