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Chief Operating Officer and Director of Breed Improvement at the American Hereford Association, Shane Bedwell, joins the OG3 to discuss the Hereford breed and some key research that could help the entire beef industry. Thanks for listening.
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
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Bradley Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. We have an interesting podcast today. We have Shane Bedwell. He's from the American Hereford Association today. We got a lot of good things to talk about today. Welcome, Shane.
Shane Bedwell: Thank you. Appreciate you having me on.
Emily: I just want to add, we are also here. Joe and I are here.
Bradley Oh, yes, sorry. This is the first time that they've let me intro the podcast. Everybody knows that-
Emily: You're not doing a great job.
Bradley -Brad has already screwed things up, but yes, Joe and Emily are here. A little background before we get into the nuts and bolts of it is, I was listening to a webinar that the American Hereford Association, they began a sustainable genetics research project with Colorado State University. I thought that was very interesting. I reached out to Shane to hear his perspectives on all of that and maybe where Hereford Association is going with that research. First, we have our questions that we do ask every guest beforehand, and we have a running tally that Joe will help us out with. The first question, we'll make the dairy one first. What is your favorite dairy breed?
Shane: My grandpa had Holsteins growing up. My mom's dad. I would a little biased to Holsteins. I'd have to say Holsteins, but an interesting fact, while at Kansas State University, I was a part of the dairy judging team one semester, and I was the high individual on Guernsey-
Bradley Oh, wow.
Shane: -at one of the contests. I've got a sweet spot for Guernseys. Probably didn't expect a beef guy to come up with that answer, but I'm sticking to that.
Bradley We will accept.
Emily: It's a great answer.
Bradley We will accept that.
Joe: I was scared that you were going to say Holsteins. I'm totally fine with Guernsey. That's great.
Shane: Exactly.
Joe: All right. Here we go. We got Holsteins at 20. Jerseys at 14. Brown Swiss at 7. Montbeliarde at 3. Dutch Belted at 3. Normande at 2. Now, Guernsey at 2. Milking Shorthorn at 1 and Ayrshire at 1. We always shout out Taffy, who is a Guernsey that is loved by Eric Mosel.
Bradley The other question is, of course, you may expect, what is your favorite beef breed?
Shane: That's an easy one. Everybody loves Hereford, right?
Bradley Exactly.
Shane: Everybody's got a soft spot for Herefords.
Bradley That is the correct answer.
Emily: Yes, I was going to say, Shane, I feel compelled to tell you that Brad is convinced that the only right answers are Jersey and Hereford, and he has been a little disappointed with Hereford's performance thus far. We're pretty sure he brought you on just to get another vote in for Hereford. Don't be surprised if he asks everybody else at the Hereford Association to be on too. Of course, we genuinely wanted you on. I think Brad also saw an opportunity to get a little close to Hereford.
Bradley My grandpa was a Hereford breeder, so there is a soft spot for Herefords in my heart as well, and everyone knows that. Joe, what are we up to now? What's the breed tallies?
Joe: We've got Black Angus at 14. That puts Hereford today at 9, Black Baldies at 4, Scottish Highlander at 4, Red Angus at 3, Belted Galloway at 2, Shorthorn at 2, then all with 1, Stabilizer, Gelbvieh, Brahman, Chianina, Charolais, Simmental, Nalore, Jersey, Normande, Belgian Blue, Brangus, Piedmontese, and White Park.
Bradley Our guests have a wide range of beef cattle favorites. Thanks for joining us, Shane. We really are interested in hearing about the sustainable genetics research that is beginning. First off, let's get a little background on you. Who you are, what you work with with the Hereford Association, a little background on you. Then maybe a little background on the Hereford Association and what services they might offer to their members.
Shane: Sure. I grew up, like most of you guys here on the podcast and several of the listeners, in ag. My family's rooted. I'm the fifth generation to run livestock and be a part of agriculture. I grew up in South Central Kansas on a grain and cow-calf ranch. My family still operates that ranch today with my granddad and uncle and dad and their families. It's one of those things in my current job. Get to practice what you preach and preach what you practice, and all those things come together.
I've been very fortunate to have the background that I did growing up. I attended Butler County Community College in El Dorado, Kansas, and then transferred to Kansas State University. I have a degree in Animal Science with a business option from Kansas State, and was a member of their livestock judging team. Both those places and dairy judged with John Shirley. Then went on to the University of Illinois and did my master's there in Beef Cattle Nutrition.
Finished that up, and then the opportunity to be on faculty at Colorado State University posed itself, and spent eight years as the livestock judging coach. Taught classes in livestock selection, nutrition, advised, and did a lot of other things there. I sure miss being out there. From there, I was hired here to work for the American Hereford Association. I've been with AHA now for almost seven years, and I serve as the Chief Operating Officer and Director of Breed Improvement.
Bradley Director of Breed Improvement. What does that actually mean and what services do you provide by being breed improvement?
Shane: We have four main pillars here at the Association. One of them is the area that I work in and that is our registry and our genetic evaluation. Our total performance program. I have a team here with me. The most important part of any association is protecting the integrity of the pedigree, giving that seal of approval. The association started in 1881 and we've been keeping records ever since. The registration part of it is a big one. As we've evolved over time, we've turned in more from a data input service to more customer service because a lot of our phenotypic data now is done by the producer online through a program that we call myHerd.
About 90% of our data that comes through, the producer puts in, and now our records team here deals with those folks over the phone when they get stuck with certain things. That's a big part of it. With that as our genetic evaluation, the Hereford breed would've started their performance recording back in the '60s. It's evolved from straight phenotypes to EPDs, and now, of course, you guys are well-versed in genomics as well. We've adopted that and have added to our genetic evaluation, the mixed marker effects model.
It's pretty neat what we get done. That's in a nutshell what I'm over. We have a National Reference Sire Program where we do a progeny test from birth to harvest and do a lot of neat testing as well with those sire groups. That's mainly what I'm over. The association would also have our magazine, The Hereford World. We have a department there that would publish that magazine. Also catalogs for breeders, creative service materials for whether it be postcards or mailers or that kind of stuff. We have a youth program or junior department, which is growing.
Association would be close to 8,000 members. About 3,500 of those are junior members, so it's a big department. A lot of excitement around that. Then our fourth pillar would be our Certified Hereford Beef program. Our branded beef product that was established in 1995.
Bradley That sounds like a lot of stuff going on for Hereford breeders and the beef industry, and that's exciting to see, especially, myself as a geneticist and seeing all of the great things that are happening within the genetics world and genomic enhanced EPDs. For our listeners that are not well-versed in the genomics world, the interesting fact is the first animal that was sequenced, that's used for genomic selection was, actually, a Hereford cow named Dominette, out of Line 1 Hereford study that's happening at USDA, where they're looking at inbreeding and there's a whole lots of-- We can talk about the Line 1 for many, many hours actually.
Actually, I was interested to hear a little bit about your genetics research that you're doing with Colorado State and looking at sustainable genetics research. Tell us a little bit how this came about and why might have the AHA decided to go into sustainable genetics looking at greenhouse gases and methane emissions.
Shane: Yes, it came through several different conversations that we had internally here as a staff. It was one of those things, the association's been committed to research here for quite a while and we started in 2001 fully embracing total herd reporting. That makes up our genetic evaluation where our breeders have to stay in compliance and submit that phenotypic data. Now we've got 23 years of that good data in our system.
We've, as an association, totally embraced cross-breeding. As you think about some of the different projects that we've done and conducted in Harris Ranch in California to some of the ranches here in Missouri. It seemed like the next step of things that we wanted to do to complete a full model because I would tell you, I think today we could give pretty good evidence that Hereford's do fit in very well to sustainability model, and particularly in a cross-breeding setting of being able to boost pregnancy rates.
We've shown that, 7% to 10% advantage in the F1 female compared to the straight-bred counterparts. More pounds of weaned calf, more cows bred. We've done some great efficiency work over time and through data, through the Meat Animal Research Center, we show about a two-pound advantage in intake, and so that's a significant edge in conversion.
We thought this sustainability project was the next fold. It's obviously a hot topic within all of our industries, but it was the next logical step that we could do as an association to establish a benchmark for beef cattle here in the US, and specifically, Hereford to see where we fit.
Then for a Brandt Beef program that we have, we now have folks in the food service retail business, the consumer, is definitely out there wanting to know more. We have papers to cite and literature to cite, but we don't have the actual data, and that was something that-- Our goal is to try to develop an entire model using Hereford genetics, whether it be purebred or cross-breeding, and how it all fits. That was the premise of why we wanted to start this research with Colorado State.
Bradley: What sort of information will you be collecting? Will you be going into the feed lots and collecting feed intake data, and trying to get some maybe greenhouse gas measurements on either purebred Herefords or crossbreds to try and get some new information that we could do some selection on? How might that look?
Shane: The National Reference Sire Program I mentioned earlier, that was started in 1999, and so we have a great database of over 300, 340 sires that we've used in that period of time. Since 2010, we've measured feed intake and have individual feed intake on those cattle. We have a great base from a feed efficiency and intake standpoint. What we're going to add in one of our premier, reference our test started out in western Nebraska is that we're upgrading those feed intake systems out there with GrowSafe beef, or now it's with Vitality.
We're going to have infant weighing, we're adding water intake and at those infant weighing systems. We'll be at measuring feed intake, water intake. Then with our friends at C-Lock, we've added in the green feed machines where we will measure all the greenhouse gases. Then on top of that, we'll look at nitrogen excretion through blood urea.
We'll get and be able to have, instead of looking at a correlated trade approach, which we may use in the future depending on what the data says, but we wanted to really capture it all at one time to be able to, hopefully, make our feed intake data from the past to be able to utilize that more.
We'll be able to capture the greenhouse gas emissions and look at methane, specifically, carbon dioxide and then also nitrogen excretion.
Bradley: Yes, that's very interesting, and all of that data collection. As a researcher myself, it's like, "Wow, that's pretty extensive." I think we have, on this podcast, we've talked with some Vitality representatives. That maybe was even almost a year ago or more that we've had people from Vitality on, and even I've explored the GreenFeed system. It's a wonderful system to record methane emissions from cattle. They're out of Rapid City, South Dakota.
There's a lot of great technology that's happening there where we'll be able to collect this information. I'm really glad that AHA is moving forward looking at some of that stuff from a breed improvement standpoint as well as from a livestock industry and really important as the livestock industry moves forward to get that out to consumers as well and how to do that.
Joe: Can we talk a little more about embracing heterosis and crossbreeding? I think that that's really interesting to me, and I think it's something that is really interesting for a breed association to do. How difficult was that? Was that a difficult choice to make, to really bring in bullies to being part of your breed association?
Shane: The association over time, just as things evolve. You can go back 40, 50 years now, and Hereford was king and they rode that way for quite a while, and probably neglected some of the things that needed to be kept on and worked on one to stay Hereford on Hereford, and one to keep that commercial cow or Hereford. There's nothing wrong with that. We've got great tradition in our breed and it's still alive and well today, but other breeds, the continental craze that came in and the push to get bigger and leaner and more muscular happened and the Hereford breed did that, and that's not where the Hereford breed fits.
We've been a very efficient breed, a more moderate-sized breed, a maternal longevity breed, plain and simple, the cattle work good enough. Our breeders have really made a massive comeback as you look at selling bulls into the commercial market of what is today and the early 2000s, that cow base was pretty well straight black or Angus influence, and so it was a great opportunity for the breed to pursue that and embrace cross-breeding.
That's what would've started those great research projects that we would've conducted to prove that heterosis does work. Not only in direct heterosis and pounds of calf-weaned but really, where you really start getting your bang for your buck is with maternal heterosis. The pregnancy advantage, the fertility advantage you get there, the longevity with still more pounds of calf weaned so the association, I don't really know of any other breed association that's probably embraced it more than Hereford.
We've had a couple of national ad campaigns, actually three or four now with a Baldy or Red Baldy. We have a program with Red Angus, the Premium Red Baldy program where both associations teamed up and said, "Hey, the Red Baldies are just as good. Some people actually like them better. We've actually stayed a closed breed from a registry standpoint. We don't register F1s, but we promote the heck out of the Baldy commercial females.
Joe: It's still Hereford genetics out in the world, and I love to see it. We talk a lot about how I preferred Jerseys from a very selfish standpoint on the dairy side because I'm a vet and they're smaller and I can work with them. Herefords, when it comes to having a nice cow to work with, I can't argue with working Herefords at the shoot or anything like that from a docility standpoint, from a size standpoint. Again, selfishly, I have some family history that makes me say Black Angus is my favorite. Working with them, I would say Herford if I could.
Shane: It'll be interesting where this research takes us and where we go with the sustainability project. There has been no doubt as we pushed carcass weights bigger and bigger within the industry. We've made a bigger mama cow out in the pasture. I think we've got to stop and question that a little bit when we get in tough environments or when we get in a stressed resource where we don't have a lot of hay.
Hay is getting really expensive. Inputs are getting really expensive. Have we made them better? Yes, I would say we've made cattle better, but we've also fed them a lot harder, and we've fed them a lot more. I think beyond the methane and those hot topics that we're going to look at, it's an overall model where we can make that beef cow sustainable and work at reducing some inputs.
I really like where Herford is positioned. I mean, when you start looking at some of the research that Dave Laman at Oklahoma State did, he did a similar study on pasture, feeding those cows on a limited basis. He locked them up. He showed a Baldy female ate two less pounds per day than a straight red-black female. Weaned the same pounds of calf but that Baldy female did it in a half-a-body condition score heavier.
There's a lot to be said right there in terms of sustainability. We can define it 20 ways till sundown. There's a lot of things that we want to tie this GHG data in with what we know to this point for an overall model.
Joe: I love that perspective of looking at efficiency as the number one factor. We're a little spoiled here in Minnesota and in the Midwest. We make really good feed. We usually aren't short of it, but that isn't always the case. The last few years where weather has been unpredictable, and we've had pretty significant drought. I think having these gigantic cattle and mama cows hurt us and it hurt a lot of people because hay was short all of a sudden.
I totally agree. I think we need to go that direction and stay that way. One of the questions I had when we were talking about the sustainability piece of this and looking with your partnership with Colorado State and looking at that data, how are you guys also keeping in mind the economic sustainability factor of all this? How are you working that into the fold when you're talking about gathering all this data and trying to be environmentally sustainable, but how are you going to make it also economically sustainable or look at that factor?
Shane: Just a question here, Joe. Are you talking about equipment for other producers to adopt or what specifically are you asking there?
Joe: Of course, there's going to be action items from research like this. These are things that we think that producers should be doing. At some point, again, like you said, there's equipment, there's something else involved. There's big genetic changes in your herd sometimes for some people. Is there a plan to look at the economic piece and the impact of that and how to keep it manageable for producers?
Shane: Yes, I think the economic component is certainly a big one. That goes back to that selection index theory that we have three selection indexes today, terminal index, and then the Baldy Maternal Index, and then the Brahman Influence Index. Those are essentially are Herford bulls being used on either English-based cows or Brahman Influence cows. What we envision with this research, this greenhouse gas data is potentially developing a trait that can fit into one of those indexes to service a selection tool and a weight in an index like what we have today.
Or we develop our own sustainability index that looks at mature cow size, efficiency, greenhouse gas data, and how they all fit together. Not doing this research before, we don't know what this greenhouse gas data will look like relative to other traits. It may be as easy as putting selection pressure on some of our well-established economically relevant traits we already have today to get the response that we need for a producer to move forward, and be more profitable or more sustainable.
Joe: That's the direction that I love that I see people going is that most of the time when we're talking environmental sustainability and we're talking efficiency, and if that's what we lead with, then that takes care of the economic side all by itself. If you're going to be more efficient, you're going to be more economically sustainable in almost every case. I love that this is the approach and that it's all tied together because I think sometimes the two get spread apart and that environmentally sustainable has to be expensive but it doesn't. If we're talking about efficiency, they can be one and the same.
Shane: When the time comes and it's probably going to come at some point, we want our producers to be ready to address whatever issue comes from the consumer. Whatever pressures come to our industry, we want to be able to have some answers. That's what I'm probably the most proud about is that when we brought this to our board of directors for the association, they really saw it as there was no pushback. They were like, "Absolutely, we need to be leaders in this area and find out what we don't know."
Emily: I have a question for you, Shane. You mentioned early on when you're talking about this study and building this model, you called it, and wanting to put together this model and using Herford as the baseline for that. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that, just the idea of creating this model and then what are the next steps with it, and how could this be scaled or used in other applications?
Shane: Hopefully, this is a pipe dream. You got to aim for the stars to get somewhere. In the ideal world, that Herford bull is pretty dominant. You can tell if he has been there or not with that white face, whatever he has crossed with. In a perfect world, when somebody sees a white face animal, they know that animal is economically fit and environmentally sustainable, and can be profitable.
That's where we want to keep it on a big focus. We're going to find, I think, cattle in our population, no different than Holstein Jersey or some of the other dairy breeds. There's as much variation within breed than there is across breeds. If we can find the set of cattle that can take us into the next 50 years that have all the good traits that we've worked so hard on to get to this point, and we can improve on them that much more with what we're getting faced with from a consumer standpoint.
I think that's where we want to scale it. Whether that's an EPD, whether that's an index, whether that's some kind of a model that our producers can use to help them better select cattle, that's where we're going with that.
Bradley: From a dairy perspective, I think there is advantage to utilizing other breeds from a heterosis standpoint for dairy beef crossing. Herford obviously might not be one of the prominent breeds in dairy beef crossing, but I think there's a lot of advantages, in my mind, that Herford could bring to the table from crossing with dairy cattle as well. I hope that continues.
We're branching out into that, and Brad is going to start a research study here with utilizing different breeds on the dairy herd here to do some crossing from a dairy beef perspective to look at that because I'm not convinced that there's one breed that has it all that works for Holsteins or other crossbreeds.
Shane: We actually have a little study going on ourselves with that, Brad. There's other breeds that are more terminally focused, and that's fine. Honestly, that's where a little bit of this conversation started to go down this path, what was in the conversation to even begin the research because of all the-- not other breeds, not all the other breeds, but a lot of them. The beef on dairy business is booming and there is a lot of demand through the studs to find excellent beef bowls that work on dairy cows and heifers and whatnot. It was one of those things we said, well, is that the place where Hereford fits?
We thought, yes, there's a certain part of our breed that can be really good at it at that, but as a large hole and where we could really help the industry was probably with the mama cow out in the pasture and from a long longevity and overall doability standpoint. It'll be interesting what we've learned to this point using Hereford's in those herds that we've tried them, is that the fertility and conception has been amazing.
The dairymen have been impressed with that here at the front part of our study. We'll get calves here this fall, and so we'll figure out, one, what they look like. I'm guessing they'll be Baldies, but they could have a little more chrome on them. I know they're Baldies, but they'll have a little more chrome on them. I'm interested to see how they feed and if our conversion feed efficiency holds up and we put enough selection pressure, I think, on the carcass traits where we'll know where that ends up.
Bradley: Yes, that sounds like a very interesting study and I'd be very interested to hear the results when that happens to see how that fares out.
Joe: I've got one question, and since you're here and you're in charge of breed improvements, one of the things that I was wondering if we've emphasized on the Hereford side is polled genetics because I know there's still a big contingent of Hereford's that still have horns out there. What has your stance been on that?
Shane: Yes, so the association would have merged the two associations, the Hold and Horn Association would have merged in 1995. That was a major challenge for both organizations to come forward, as you can imagine, two strong associations that were pretty well rooted and had a lot of history. I think with those leaders at that time, what they saw that maybe some of the other folks in the association didn't at the time is that we could be so much stronger together and marketing together and moving forward together rather than, "This person wants to use a Hereford bull in their commercial outfit. Well, I'll use a horn one. No, that guy's got polled."
We spent so many much time fighting over what Hereford to use rather than just saying, "Hey, let's get this commercial guy a good Hereford bull." We've been able to make so much more progress since that time. As a registry today, we still distinguish them and our registry, polled from horn, and we would definitely lean more poll than horn today to the tune of probably 65% of the cattle registered each year, are polled versus horn, and it's amazing.
You can drive a hundred miles in the same state and run into a polled breeder and run into a horn breeder and they've got customers in those states and they-- Well, customers like a horn bull, customers like a poll bull really doesn't matter as long as they're using a Hereford bull. We're making them good and we're keeping them sound and doing the things that Hereford's are known for in the modern times. I would add to that, Joe, with DNA testing, we have more and more folks, especially on the seed stock side, but even now on the commercial side, that one them was homozygous poll, and so that trend is definitely increasing here as we've gone forward.
Joe: That's, again, from a veterinary perspective, just a very selfish thing on my end. I don't like horns because I don't like working with horns because I think they can be dangerous. They're tough on my shoot, they're tough on carcasses and I don't like removing them because it's hard on cattle, so. That's my personal opinion and I just had to ask because I know that that's still a big, big piece of the Herford world. I have a quick question. When we're talking about certified Hereford beef, are we talking about it has to be 100% Hereford or are we talking Baldies as well or only Red Baldies? How does that work? Do you see it changing in the future?
Shane: Yes, so the certified Hereford beef live spec that was established there in '95 was that they had to be 51% white-faced or, or greater and so baldies do fit into it as long as they have more than that 51% white face there to look at. It's English based, so an English cross and so your Red Angus, Red Baldies, your Black Baldies, of course, the straight Hereford would fit still into that program. The white face is dominant and will be dominant, but I will say as breeders have put more selection pressure on pigment as far as making them red to the ground and darker red in color than some of the other older traditional.
We went through a time there where they were an off-yellow and different things. We have seen less of those cattle have that white face, more of a model or a brockle face in that F1 cross. We're at a point in time where we're seeing more demand for a branded beef program and so we have a spec or a line in our G10 schedule with USDA if they are parent-verified back to a Hereford sire that they can still be eligible for the program. We're not quite to that point from a demand because there's a ton of those cattle still out, but I think we're approaching it. It is something that we talk about and I hope we get to that point.
That research at Colorado State showed that even in the F1 cattle, that Hereford influence made a difference and so that's why that spec was set up with allowing the Baldies to come in it and that the advantages that it had over the straight. Very good question, and I appreciate you asking it.
Joe: The reason I ask is because it sets up the situation where you've got a Black Baldy lead that can qualify for two different programs now. That's really intriguing to me and I love it because it sets up direct competition for a branded program that had no competition really for a long time. I love that certified Hereford beef is getting bigger and growing and is moving into that space where there is competition for certified Angus beef.
Shane: You nailed it right on the head there, Joe. It's great to be able to tell a producer that you're selling bulls to that, hey, depending on what you want to do with these cattle and where you're selling them, they can fit into multiple different grids and opportunities to earn a little premium.
Joe: One of the things we've been doing lately, Shane, is with our guests, is inviting them to ask us questions if they have any, I don't know if you have any, it's fun to put Brad on the spot. If you have anything.
Shane: We talked about it a little bit, but just the beef on dairy cross part of that and we covered the research aspect of that. I guess an area that I'm interested in of improving on is bull fertility. It seems like BSCs are the old-- Joe, you do a ton of BSCs, but they don't seem to be maybe getting us to the point. We spend so much time worrying about how many cows we get bred and first AI, second AI, and putting all the pressure on the females.
There's got to be some kind of a research that we can figure out where we can predict better bull fertility and make progress in that aspect to move all of our industries forward. I'm curious to get a dairy perspective on what we need to be looking at and what we haven't looked at to this point.
Joe: Yes, go ahead, Brad, you start.
Bradley Yes, that's a good question, Shane and there are a few people at the University of Wisconsin working on bull fertility from a dairy perspective to try and increase fertility of that bull, whether it's motility of sperm. We don't necessarily look much at scrotal circumference, anything like that type of traits. It's some of the things that we are getting in the dairy world, we talk PTAs, we're getting conception rates sire conception rates. How well does that sire do on cows versus how well they do on heifers? You can pick and choose whether this particular sire maybe you avoid it for heifers because the fertility just isn't there with heifers, whereas in the cows it's much better.
Those are new even from a dairy perspective that we've just started exploring. That stuff from a bull fertility standpoint. I think the sky's the limit as far as that to try. I'm also interested, and I've talked with other dairy producers as well as beef producers too, it really comes down to maybe complementing different sires. You maybe use this sire on this group of daughters sired by that bull. You're really picking sires to deal with other sires of different breeds. It really comes down to precision breeding, I guess I could say that it's moving towards that direction.
Shane: Do you think at some point there'll be a marker where we can test a young bull and know whether this is a guy we really need to take on or just say, "Hey, he's better suited for somewhere else?"
Bradley: Right. I agree. Yes. I think we're getting to that point, especially in the dairy world, trying to identify some markers, and genes that are set up to do that right away. When we get a genomic evaluation back on a young bull that's a couple of months old, we can determine whether he's going to be good for conception rate fertility on cows, or heifers at a few months old. Then we can determine whether he should go to the feedlot or whether he should go into the breeding program.
Shane: Right.
Joe: I think some of the onus when we talk BSEs especially, is on my profession for sure, there's been a lot of updates in the last three to five years on the requirements for a BSE. When we're doing BSE exams, the requirements have changed, the techniques have changed, everything has changed. You've got a very slow adoption to these new BSE standards across the profession as you see the generation turnover. That's going to take some time, unfortunately.
We do have good standards that give us good bulls on natural service and have specific numbers tied to specific things that you're looking for. Getting everyone to adopt those standards is the first challenge on the veterinary side. Of course, there's the challenge of getting producers to actually do a BSE on their bull. That's a whole nother discussion. We've probably beaten that one into the ground on this podcast before. That's part of it.
When we talk about the dairy side, I get really, really nervous, and it's the reason I get so nervous when we're talking about unproven bulls on the dairy side, because of all the things that Brad was talking about. We don't know what this bull does with cows versus heifers versus AI versus natural service versus sex semen. That can be huge and vastly different. Every specific little category can be just massive. You see that when guys take chances on these really young unproven bulls, and you can see them have great numbers on the fertility for conventional semen, and then when they go to the sex semen, the conception cuts in half, and you don't lose just that 10%, you lose a crazy amount more.
There's these very, very specific things for each bull. I'm in the camp where on the genetic side, I reign things in and I pull stuff back, which I know sounds probably pretty weird for breed improvement, but I like to stay not all the way on the cutting edge, but on those bulls that are really proven. I know what they're going to do in every single situation. That gradual, steady, long-term growth from that perspective is better than trying to take these giant leaps because there's these bulls in there that we don't have enough information on yet. That set us back a little bit.
Bradley: Good question.
Joe: Any other questions, Shane?
Shane: No. I appreciate you guys having, having me be a part of this. It's fun to collaborate and share ideas, and I just can't thank you enough for having me be a part of your podcast,
Emily: Shane, before we do our outro here, I do have one final question for you. That is, I was looking around on the American Herford Association website, hereford.org, and I noticed that you guys have a podcast, 1881. Could you briefly tell us a little bit about your podcasts? Some of our listeners might be interested in listening to that one too.
Shane: Yes. We would've started 1881 last spring. Usually have one a month, sometimes two a month. We've covered a variety of topics, but it's a little bit about the people that make up the breed, some of our Hall of Famers, and some different stories as some very successful breeders too. We have a great, great one on crossbreeding. We covered the history of Line 1 Cattle. One of those podcasts, we just finished up with our junior national, our summer junior show there in Louisville, Kentucky. We did a little bit of a recap on that, but it's taking shape as we speak.
It's been a lot of fun starting the podcast. I'm not the specialist on telling you where to go look for it, but it is on our website and I think all of the channels that podcasts folks follow, podcasts on, it's on.
Joe: Perfect. I will make sure it's in the show notes so people can just click on it and get right there. That's definitely worth a listen.
Bradley: Well, we certainly thank you Shane for joining us on our podcast today. I think all of us learned an enormous amount about Herford and Herford genetics and where the American Herford Association is going in the future. It's been a wonderful opportunity to have you on today. We really appreciate it.
Shane: Thank you very much. You guys keep up for good work.
Bradley: Emily, would you like to lead us out since I don't want to screw up today.
Emily: I would love to. If you have any questions, comments, or skating rebuttals about today's podcast, you can email those to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. You can also follow us on Twitter at @umnmoosroom. If you'd like to learn more about extension programming, you can visit extension.umn.edu. Again, if you'd like to learn more about the American Herford Association, you can visit herford.org, and you can also find their podcast, 1881. Bye.
Bradley: Bye.
Joe: Bye.
Emily: I didn't mean to cut you off, Joe.
Joe: It's okay.
Emily: You're sick, so I just assumed.
Joe: No, no. I should have known you were going to take it instead, because--
Emily: I haven't talked on this episode.
[laughs]
Joe: We needed to hear your voice, huh?
[00:47:06] [END OF AUDIO]
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