Beef breeding – past, present and future

Two or three times a year I give a lecture to university students as a guest speaker. One of these invitations is to talk about beef breeding and genetic developments. To give some depth to the presentation, I go back 200 years and talk about how breeds were established in the UK from local “mongrels”. This work was often done by one or two passionate individuals who set about “fixing” the characteristics of the breed. Some of these programmes were impressively ambitious in their scale. Some of the well-known and well-documented examples include Hugh Watson and William McCombie working to establish the Aberdeen Angus from 1808, and Charles and Robert Colling who established the Shorthorn as a breed.

The point of this was really to try and make an association between breed and expected performance, an early form of branding if you like. Modern brands of all sorts are trying to get buyers to make an association between the brand and some special qualities. You don’t have to think long before you can come up with a few, VW cars for reliability, Volvo for safety etc.

Like other brands, beef cattle breeds have not stood still. When you plot a path from the breed fixing stage to today, you can quickly see how breeds have changed and developed. South Devons have gone from being dual-purpose milkers to a beef breed. Hereford and Angus have shrunk and then grown again in mature body weight as the market demands have changed.

The changing demands of the market and, if we are honest, fashions shaped in the show ring, have had their influence on cattle breeding and genetic development. In the early days, by which I mean the 1850s through to say early 1900s, showing of livestock had a very positive development on breeds and breeding. County and national shows encouraged the pursuit of commercial traits and gave a profile to the successful breeders which increased the value and demand for the best stock.

However, that was then and today it’s a different story. I think the value of livestock shows for breed development has passed. As a fun competition between like-minded friends and neighbours, there is no harm in showing cattle, in a similar way to dogs or canaries. The livestock show is also a great way of engaging with the non-farming public — there is nothing like a good show of cattle to get discussion and interest going in food production and matters agricultural.

But times change and the availability and accuracy of Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs) means that showing has no place as a means of identifying the best genetics for commercial production. For many years now, commercial pig and poultry breeders have been driven by well-planned and controlled genetic selection programmes. Dairy breeding is not far behind. So why has beef and sheep breeding not moved in the same direction at the same speed?

I think there are a number of factors at play. Firstly, the structure of the beef industry is one where many small pedigree herds service lots of smallish beef breeding herds (averaging 29 breeding cows). This means that bulls have a limited number of animals to serve, which in turn restricts the price paid for them. Secondly, the low number of offspring from cattle means that selection pressure is limited. You can increase production from the best cows by embryo transfer (ET), but that has associated risk and costs. Thirdly, the extensive nature of beef breeding means that artificial insemination (AI) use has been limited, leading to restricted access to the best bulls and again limiting stock bull value.

Around the world, and here in the UK, there are signs of a change in breeding practice. Producing EBVs through quantitative assessment is now simple and good value through Signet or ABRI systems. The increasing impact of molecular markers means that genetic progress can be accelerated and applied to some previously difficult-to-measure traits (provided the in-depth background work has been — and continues to be — done). EBLEX is working to integrate the existing EBVs with molecular EBVs so that breeders can interpret the result in one common “language”.

Having spent a couple of centuries stabilising breeds (although they have since altered quite a bit), the most adventurous breeders are now creating composites by picking the best genetics from several breeds. The idea is that you create a commercial animal that can be adapted to changing market requirements by changing the breed mix – a more responsive approach. Current genetic understanding and computing make these more complex systems workable. Other breeders look around the world for breeding stock that has been developed for a market and can be “parachuted in” to the UK market, as market demands and production conditions change.

All in all, beef breeding and beef breeders are on the cusp of a revolution, and the speed of development will be similar to the change that occurred when Charolais and Limousin arrived in the early 1960s. And the same things are happening in sheep breeding too.


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