University of Illinois’ Professor Dan Shike at the World Angus Forum in Tamworth on the weekend

MATCHING cows to the environment and production system was the key message from United States animal scientist Professor Dan Shike during a session exploring the topic of “What’s the Ideal Cow?” during the World Angus Expo in Tamworth on the weekend.

Prof Shike is a professor in beef cow/calf nutrition and management and interim head of the Department of Animal Science at the University of Illinois.

“When you match cows to your environment, they will adapt or fall out of the system themselves naturally, through not getting in calf or not adapting to the feed they have available and you will move them on,” Prof Shike said

He believes that user-defined indexes are the future for cattle breeders and having the ability to fit an index to each operation and to fit those indexed cattle to best suit each operation.

“The biggest change we have seen to date was ultrasound, where we as producers gained the ability to not just scan steers, but the first tool to understand how heifers perform and identify outliers to make change.”

Prof Shike said the goal was to breed a bigger calf, without calving problems.

“The industry needs to remember that if we keep chasing extremes in low birth weight or high birth weights to create smaller or bigger calves, this is what your cow herd will look like, which creates bigger problems that are harder to correct long term.”

“Birth weight and mature cow weight have a greater correlation than most EBVs and we need to be mindful of balancing both traits to produce that ideal cow.”

When selecting for a trait, a breeder needs to understand the antagonistic relationship of other traits, he said.

Prof Shike presented numbers that showed half of the feed resources in the US are used in maintenance of the cow herd and he believes that is something the US beef industry needs to address, in creating a more efficient cow herd.

Feed Efficiency = Cow Efficiency

“We shouldn’t assume that big cows eat more and little cows eat less – we should measure and use the tools available to us to understand each animal and what purpose they have in our herds, identify the outliers and start to find the more efficient females to build our female base,” he said.

Mature cow weights

Prof Shike presented data showing that the Angus breed now has the biggest mature cow weight of all breeds in the US, and this was something that producers needed to be concerned about.

“The Angus breed is now a high-output breed, with more growth, more milk, more production,” he said.

“The issue here is that continuous high output produces a bigger cow and creates extremes that at some point will create health problems that become a bigger problem to manage.”

He said one of the myths out there was that a bigger cow will produce a bigger calf.

“If you continue to chase growth, you need to make sure you are getting compensated at the farm level for that through price or other factors, as you won’t necessarily get it from a bigger calf.”

Prof Shike said the Milk (EPD) figure was the “Goldie Locks” of the measured traits.

“You need to get it just right and find the optimum point for your production system to get the greatest benefit,” he said.

“There is so much technology and data collection these days, we as producers need to utilise all tools available to us, but make sure we still link with phenotype assessment. If we do this, it will see the biggest gains and improvements in the beef industry.”

Health challenges

Prof Shike believes the biggest improvements in the beef industry need to be focused around health challenges and their needs to be a big focus on health traits to make a more efficient cow.

“The overuse of one trait for a long period of time, at some point will burst and it will generally be the health of the animal that is compromised,” he said.

Prof Shike clearly stated that whether a producer was breeding show cows or commercial cows, they both have the ability to be profitable, as there is a market for both.

“But they will be completely different cattle – and that’s fine, but there is a market for them and they’re bred for that purpose.”

Target markets

Prof Shike said it was important for all cattle producers to know their market, whether it be show cattle or commercial cattle and build a production system around that target market, creating relationships to gain the biggest benefit from the sale of those cattle.

When questioned on his thoughts about cows in Australia and the variable weather conditions across the country, Prof Shike’s response was to simply measure and identify cattle that best suited each environment, and breed more of them.