Beef Carcase Traits Project – Update Dec 2017

Work to convert AHDB and HCC funded research for abattoir derived carcase information into EBVs for beef and dairy cattle took another step closer this month, with the receipt of a new set of breeding values as part of on-going research.

The striking part of this work is the sheer number of cattle that are now included in this multi-breed analysis, with over 65,000 sires with progeny included in the analysis. The numerically most dominant breeds are the Aberdeen Angus, Limousin and Charollais amongst the beef breeds and Holstein amongst the dairy breeds.

On average, each sire has around 16 progeny with carcase records (leading to high accuracy values for the EBVs produced) and even numerically smaller breeds like the Luing and Sussex are relatively well represented in the dataset.

What can you do to enhance the analysis?

• The most important thing that producers can do is to ensure sire details are recorded accurately on cattle passports – so please ensure that not only you record your details correctly – but get your bull buying customers to do the same!
• To enhance the analysis, individual breed societies can also provide additional pedigree information into the analysis – this is useful for older and imported genetics, which tend to be better recorded through a Breed Society database.

Where can we hear more?

Further results will be shared at the British Cattle Breeder’s Club, 22^nd January  2018. For more information contact Samuel Boon at Signet – 02476 478826 [email protected]

	Number of bulls	Av. Progeny Number	Total Progeny
Aberdeen Angus	13,385	21	284,189
Limousin	13,150	14	189,738
Charolais	7,217	19	134,072
Holstein	6,803	12	83,304
Simmental	5,833	15	85,461
Hereford	5,151	15	76,754
British Blue	1,979	18	34,896
Blonde D’Aquitaine	1,602	16	25,747
Beef Shorthorn	1,554	11	17,155
South Devon	1,455	12	17,067
Stabiliser	883	19	16,384
Salers	791	15	11,939
Friesian	657	12	7,977
Welsh Black	626	11	6,578
Devon	467	9	4,089
Luing	430	10	4,144
Sussex	348	14	4,827
Grand Total (including smaller breeds)	65,007	16	1,024,395

 

Data sourced from an SRUC analysis completed for AHDB, December 2017.