Dr. Jason Smith, associate professor and extension beef cattle specialist at Texas A&M Agrilife, was recently a guest on the Angus At Work Podcast, talking about the potential of today’s mama cow herd, emphasizing the female genomics but also explaining how we need to pay attention to the body condition of the cow. Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays is featuring comments from the podcast in today’s BeefBuzz.
Although Dr. Smith is a beef cattle nutritionist, he still believes in genomics. He explained that although fertility is a low heritable trait, it is still heritable and deserves attention in genomic decisions because breeders have a relatively high potential for influencing the animal’s phenotype through the environment, specifically nutrition, when discussing factors that influence fertility.
He said that the body condition of the animal indicates its nutritional status, which directly correlates with the likelihood of its reproductive success; however, it isn’t the be-all, disclosing everything about an animal’s nutritional status. Dr. Smith explained, “Body condition is really an indicator of energy status in that animal; it doesn’t tell us certain aspects of protein nutrition or mineral and vitamin nutrition, so we can have cattle that are in good condition, but there may be things behind the scenes that we can’t see.”
Body condition is still useful for any producer to easily see if a cow is in a good energy status or if she needs something extra or different to get to a place where she can be a productive member of the herd. “The challenge there becomes nutrition expensive,” he cautioned. “We look at our major input costs, whether it is forages making up the foundation of most of our production systems, or it’s our nutritional interventions that we use to complement the forage base.”
He said it is necessary to ensure that producers aren’t unintentionally or unnecessarily making nutritional mistakes that influence the fertility of their females. Unless a producer’s goal is selling bred females, a cow has to be able to successfully birth a live calf that can both survive and thrive to its ultimate goal.
“There are a lot of things we can do to influence that,” he said. “Where we have to be very mindful because of the cost we might incur when making some of those interventions, is finding the optimum balance between intervening and essentially forcing an animal’s genetics to fit that environment. Selection is the way that we do that.”
He explained that the big thing is focusing on nutrition to provide the level of intervention that a producer is comfortable with, and choosing genetics to identify those that aren’t going to be successful or that will cost too much to make successful.
Listen to the complete Angus at Work podcast here.
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