Avoid Genetic Train Wrecks with Troy Rowan

Why are genomes important for commercial cattlemen? That’s why you have a relationship with your seedstock producer, right? 

Well, as Troy Rowan discusses with today’s host Miranda Reiman, having that base knowledge and some practical applications as a commercial cattleman helps avoid genetic train wrecks. 

Today’s episode is brought to you by Westway Feed Produts, and we appreciate their support of Angus at Work. 

Find more information to make Angus work for you in the Angus Beef Bulletin and ABB EXTRA. Make sure you're subscribed! Sign up here to the print Angus Beef Bulletin and the digital Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. Have questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you! Contact our team at abbeditorial@angus.org.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to Angus at Work. Why are genomes important for commercial cattlemen? That's why you have a relationship with your seedstock producer. As Troy Rowan discusses with today's host, Miranda Reiman, having that base knowledge and some practical applications as a commercial cattleman helps avoid genetic train wrecks. Today's episode is brought to you by Westway Feed Products, and we appreciate their support of Angus at Work. So let's dig in.

Miranda Reiman:
Welcome to Angus at Work. I'm your host, Miranda Reiman. Today I have Troy Rowan with me, an extension specialist from the University of Tennessee, and we're at the Beef Improvement Federation conference. Troy gave an insightful presentation on why commercial cattlemen should be interested in genomics. Thanks for joining us, Troy.

Troy Rowan:
Yeah, thanks for having me, Miranda.

Miranda Reiman:
So I guess the first question is as simple as that, why should commercial cattlemen be interested in genomics?

Troy Rowan:
Yeah, I think that commercial cattlemen are ultimately purchasing bulls, and I think that's where genomics have the biggest impact, how are we able to make our selection decisions when we're using EPDs a little bit more accurate, make us a little bit more confident in what's ultimately a pretty risky decision? We go out and we buy an unproven bull. He doesn't have calves to back up his EPDs. Anything that we can do to increase the confidence in that prediction is ultimately going to help out the accuracy of our selection and ensure that we're making the right choice more often than not. Genomics allow us to do that. They just increase our confidence a little bit when we're going out and investing in that bowl that's going to be in our herd for years to come and really have a pretty big footprint in where we head genetically.

Miranda Reiman:
So commercial cattlemen might say, "Yeah, that's great, but my seed stock supplier does all that." How can they be sure?

Troy Rowan:
I think there's no substitute for doing a little bit of research. Digging in, asking your seed stock producer how they're genomically testing if you're going to a bull sale, particularly an Angus bull sale, there's always that little badge. It's either got the Neogen or the Zoetis Angus genomic test just to verify that those EPDs that you're seeing in the Bull Sale Catalog really, truly, are genomically enhanced. That's an easy visual way to check that box and make sure that those EPDs are as accurate as they can be on a young, unproven Angus bull.

Miranda Reiman:
Excellent. So we talk about that it adds accuracy. Maybe explain a little bit how it does that.

Troy Rowan:
Right. So accuracy is a hard thing even for PhD geneticists to wrap their heads around, and how we report it and how we interpret it. But really, what it is is how confident we are in that EPD representing the animal's actual genetics that they can pass on. So we've been able to calculate EPDs for decades using pedigree information, and the only way that we could increase accuracy then was to add more calves to the genetic evaluation. But in a commercial setting, we're never seeing that data flow back into the evaluation to increase the accuracy of a bull, particularly an unproven yearling 18-month-old bull.

So in genomics, what they're able to do is actually track the segments of DNA that an animal inherits, better resolve those relationships between animals, and supplement, I guess, by actually adding progeny into the evaluation. So off the top of my head, for a trait like calving ease direct in the Angus evaluation, getting a genomic test is like adding about 28 calves back into the genetic evaluation in terms of the accuracy increase that you'd see in the EPD. So again, a calf crop's worth of information that we get more confident just by genomically testing before they've ever gone out and bred a cow.

Miranda Reiman:
So a couple of decades ago, you might've had to wait until that bull had already contributed to your herd for a few years before you found maybe a mistake or something that showed up, where now, today, you might have that information sooner.

Troy Rowan:
I think the way that I always talk about genomics is that they do two main things. The first is, they reduce risk. So we can avoid train wrecks. Everybody's bought a calving ease bull who really wasn't a calving ease bull. Again, we're more confident that if an EPD says that that bull is calving ease that he's going to be, the other thing that they do is, again, increasing the accuracy of our selection decisions. We can make genetic progress faster because we're making those correct choices more frequently. So genomics can really do both of those things at the same time by making us more confident in the EPD, even though that bull has again never gone out and bred a cow.

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Miranda Reiman:
To understand how they are used in the EPD system we have today. A producer's not having to go out and read a genomics report and try to figure out what to do with that information.

Troy Rowan:
No, exactly. The only change that you would see when you get a genomic test right is that that accuracy value, typically right underneath the EPD itself, is going to go up with a genomically tested individual. But the way that we read EPDs, the way that we interpret EPDs, the indexes that we're hopefully using as commercial cattlemen, those are all exactly the same. It's just our confidence in those numbers representing the animal's actual genetics that go up when we utilize a genomic test.

Miranda Reiman:
Now, I may be thinking of some cattlemen in my life when I ask this next question, but there might be some people that are a little bit skeptical. This DNA stuff, we used to pick cattle just by looking at them, and the EPD seem to be working fine. Is there any angst out there that perhaps including DNA data actually isn't better?

Troy Rowan:
I think that's a tough question. In all of these things, I always talk about them as tools. There's no substitute If our EPDs don't capture something about an animal. We've got to figure out a way to get that into our selection objective if we're a commercial producer. If a bull isn't able to go out and travel and breed cows effectively, he can't deliver that genetic potential. So EPDs and, by way of EPDs, genomics are tools that help us make better, more holistic decisions. But I think that a lot of times there's some angst when genomic test results come back in that EPD that you had from the parent, average results actually goes down. But my argument is that a genomically enhanced EPD is always better than a non-genomically enhanced EPD. Whether or not it goes up or down, it's really a matter of our confidence that that's representing that animal's true genetics. So if we're getting closer to the truth, that's always a good thing because it's helping us make more accurate selection decisions.

Miranda Reiman:
It's also probably good to note that our breeders have not stopped collecting phenotypic data or stopped collecting actual data on actual calves.

Troy Rowan:
Absolutely. There's no substitute for collecting phenotypic data. If Angus breeders stopped collecting phenotypic data, the value of EPDs would just decline overnight almost. So your seed stock producers are out there collecting data, making sure that these models, the ways that we train these genomic tests and integrate them into genetic evaluations are as tied to real animals, real data across many contemporary groups and environments as possible. So there's no substitute for phenotyping in the era of genomics.

Miranda Reiman:
Is there anything else that I haven't asked you related to genomics and why they're important for our commercial cattlemen?

Troy Rowan:
Yeah, I think commercial genomic tests for selecting replacement females get a little bit more common. That's something to keep an eye out for. There's some products on the market now. We're still trying to figure out what the return on investment in those things are. It takes a little bit of back of the napkin math maybe to see is utilizing a commercial genomic test, maybe for selecting heifers or for marketing feeder calves, am I seeing a return on investment in the same way that I would if I just reinvested that testing cost into maybe a little bit higher quality bowl? So again, things to keep our eyes out for over the next few years as commercial genomic testing itself gets more and more commonplace.

Miranda Reiman:
I'm sure that back in the napkin math, there's a lot of things like the price of developing the heifers. So you've got feed costs in there, and the price of selling the heifers, things like that.

Troy Rowan:
Yeah, I think that, again, it's just like anything. Are we adding enough value on the marketing side to say we're testing feeder calves right? Are our purchasers of these calves actually paying a premium for genomically tested animals? How much better am I doing in selecting replacement heifers when I'm using genomics versus not? And it's important to know that these things aren't necessarily the same thing as being in a true genetic evaluation, like an actual seedstock registered Angus animal would be. So there's lots of moving pieces, but it's a really exciting time in the industry as the cost of genomics keeps going down, that allows us to expand outside of just the seed stock realm and the animals that we test.

Miranda Reiman:
That's great. I always think of when I first started, we talked about someday we might actually be able to use DNA and Genomics. To see how far it's come in the last couple of decades has been really exciting.

Troy Rowan:
Right. Absolutely.

Miranda Reiman:
So we always end this podcast on a high note. There's enough bad news out in the world, so you tell me something good, whether it's personally or professionally. I just want some good news.

Troy Rowan:
This is my first trip to Canada ever, and Canada is awesome. It's been a nice little break from the summer heat up here in Calgary. The mountains are beautiful, and it's a great little city, and there's no place I love more than being at BIF with all the folks in the beef industry, producers, academics, industry folks, getting together and solving some of our big problems. So it's just been an awesome week to be here, and I'm glad to get to chat a little bit about genomics at BIF with the commercial Angus folks.

Miranda Reiman:
That is excellent news. Thank you so much, Troy, for being with us.

Troy Rowan:
You bet. I appreciate it. Thank you.


Listeners, to get more information about how Angus can work for you, check out the Angus Beef Bulletin and its digital counterpart, the Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. You'll find links to subscribe to both of those options in the show notes. Again, we want to thank Westway Feed Products for their support of today's episode. If you have questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you at abbeditorial@angus.org. Please share this episode and this podcast with any other profit-minded cattlemen. Thanks for listening. This has been Angus at Work.