deep in the southeastern corner of Idaho | Everybody can have their own opinions on Genomics. That is OK and no one should have a problem with that. I will never claim to be the smartest one but I can speak for a lot of years of experience. I remember the days when weights and ratios were fairly new to the industry. After we submitted weights our Epd's bounced all over the place each and every year. It seemed like it took 10 or more records for a cow to get up towards a mid .30 for accuracy. After genomic testing for several years, as Doug has mentioned, our EPD's, for the most part, don't change much as in those days and our weights on our calves are getting more uniform and increasing some with time. I am not naive enough to admit a lot of our weight increase over the years is from better management but I will give some credit to genetics.
I have an older Angus cow that we never did genomics on. She is of older genetics (Schaff and Finks) good but older lines. She has 8 BW records and waiting for this years WW data to get implemented into the system (usually 2 weeks from data submission). Her record shows a calf every year except in '17 (can't remember reason). She has had 5 calves in her record with Genomics submitted. Her WW accuracy is .39. She has bounced around a bit more than I would like on her ratio's and I would expect that. She is an average producer with better female than male offspring.
I have a young cow that just weaned her first calf. She has had her genomics done when she was weaned. Again waiting for the AAA to get her data into the EPD system on her first calf. Her WW accuracy, with only her own physical data and no offspring data yet, is a .47. Her calf's ratio is a tic above average this year. A heifer with only her own physical data and no genomics will have an accuracy of about .28-.30 depending. One with genomics and her own physical data will be in the mid .40's for WW. With all that said, regardless of if you like or believe in genomics they are giving you roughly a 17% better chance of making a more informed decision. One has to decide if the cost is worth it or not for you and/or for your customers. Same applies to commercial or registered status. Is it perfect science? NO. Will there be exceptions? YES, always.
I believe if used year in and year out, as one of your tools in your selection process, it will help you and/or buyers by giving greater confidence in the data and predictions to help make better decisions. As Doug mentioned sometimes you get some that the numbers go the opposite way but as he has said it is better to have the knowledge early and not later.. |
Genomic testing
