Commercial Female Performance Improvement ProgramWhy Shorthorns?

“How can I utilise DNA testing to better select replacement females?”.

Choosing the right heifers to keep as replacements should be a top priority for commercial cattle producers. Many economically important traits—like fertility, growth, longevity, mature size, and carcass value—can’t be seen just by looking at the animal. Heifers from your best bull can still inherit poor genetics. Since these traits are heavily influenced by genetics, keeping heifers with weak traits can hurt your profits for years to come, especially in a tight-margin industry. In the past, improving genetics in commercial herds mainly meant buying a top bull from a seedstock producer and hoping his calves would be better than the average cow in your herd. But genetic progress was usually slow—especially if the bull didn’t turn out to be as good as expected.

For many years, improving genetics in commercial herds mostly meant buying a good bull and hoping his calves would be better than your current cows. But progress was often slow, especially if the bull didn’t perform as well as expected. Today, better statistics, stronger computing, and DNA technology have made genetic evaluations much more accurate. Now, when you buy a bull, you can have a lot more confidence he will deliver the results you want.

The use of genomic testing is a complete game-changer to the beef business because of the vast amount of information it provides on an animal before they ever have progeny. This is a great tool for the commercial producer who buys yearling bulls. Over the past decade, genomic technology has been improved and leveraged to greatly benefit the seedstock industry, but these products are now available for the commercial sector, allowing commercial producers to make decisions independent of the seedstock industry.

So, if we circle back to the original question was “how can I utilise DNA testing to better select replacement females?”

The first answer is to buy genetically superior, genomically enhanced expected progeny differences (GE-EPD) bulls (which lacks some precision). Second is to add commercial DNA testing and genetic evaluation to your breeding herd to make even better decisions. Shorthorn Beef have created a tool to help commercial producers – Commercial Female Performance Improvement Program.

So how can DNA testing, usually used for seedstock, help commercial herds? It’s pretty simple: Genomic testing looks at important genes that affect traits like growth, fertility, and carcass quality. Scientists study different versions of these genes to see which ones lead to better performance. By adding up the effects of many important genes, they can predict how an animal’s genetics will show up in real-world results.

These tests are based on millions of data points from both purebred and crossbred cattle, meaning the results are accurate across different breeds. No matter what breed composition of cattle you have, you can get accurate and reliable genetic insights.

Shorthorn Beef has teamed up with Xytovet and IGS to bring commercial producers a simple way to unlock powerful genetic insights.

Here’s how it works:

1. Collect a DNA sample from your animals
2. Send it to the lab
3. Get results in just 3 weeks

You’ll receive a detailed report showing:

✅ Breeding values for key traits

✅ Percentile ranks for each animal

✅ Information on maternal, performance & carcass traits

✅ Verified parentage

Cost: $30 per animal

It is worth considering that commercial cattle genomic testing is still in its relative infancy compared to the seedstock industry. A commercial genomic test provides a much stronger picture of the genetic merit of an animal compared to using your eye, but like any genetic prediction, there is still some level of prediction error, and test results may not be wholly indicative of an animal’s true genetic merit. If you want even better accuracy, it’s a good idea to also collect real data—like birth weights, weaning weights, or carcass results—and combine it with DNA testing. It is worth considering collecting and  leveraging phenotypic and pedigree data into a genetic evaluation that uses genomic information in tandem with actual data. The Commercial Female Performance Improvement Program can help producers who collect this kind of information get even more out of their testing.

The Commercial Female Performance Improvement Program helps producers improve their herds using DNA testing and advanced genetic tools. Producers are encouraged to enrol their entire cow herd or calf crop in the program.

For $12 per cow, you can enrol your whole cow herd or calf crop. In return, you’ll get:

• Genetic results (GE-EPDs) for 16 key traits
• A selection index
• Percentile rankings and accuracy scores

This program uses the same tools as seedstock breeders, helping you as the commercial producer make smarter decisions about your breeding females.

Keep in mind, this is a data-intensive program, so it requires:

• Knowing which bull sired each calf
• DNA testing to confirm female parentage will also increase the accuracy of the results.

Ultimately, the beef business is evolving, and precision tools such as genomic testing to identify genetically superior animals in commercial cow herds are becoming more widely available and incredibly powerful in the information they provide. Shorthorn Beef are excited to work with commercial producers to implement fees for Commercial Female Performance Improvement Program. Please reach out to Shorthorn Beef if you are interested to become part of the program.