Calving Ease, not just for heifers.
24 August 2015
One of the most important fertility traits for breeding females is for them to calve unassisted.
Nationally, an MLA sponsored report identified dystocia (calving problems) as the 4th most costly disease in cattle! Cattle tick and buffalo fly were more costly, but as those diseases are mainly northern area diseases, it leaves dystocia as the 2nd most costly disease of cattle in our temperate areas
At Elite we put much emphasis on calving ease, direct and daughters, but consider CE daughters particularly, to be an extremely valuable trait to prioritize in any self-replacing straight-bred herd selection program.
By increasing the value of this trait in the females we are increasing the genetic ability of them to calve unassisted and this improved ability is permanent and able to be passed on to their own offspring.
Using sires with high CE EBV’s over the entire herd, not just the heifers, is the quickest way to put this valuable trait into the herd, through his daughters. Sires used over the mature females therefore need to have the growth and carcase traits necessary for the market supplied, as well as good CE.
As a sire’s daughters generally remain in the herd for at least 7 years, his genetic influence, through them, is quite long term. Hence the need to not delay in introducing this valuable trait.
The benefits of unassisted births are many and include supervision cost savings, veterinary services cost savings, less calf losses, better calf growth, more fertile dams for rejoining, and more peace of mind.
There many factors that can influence ability to calve, but to ignore the genetic component is to ignore a “free lunch” which definitely works!
In the future, as the influence of genetic CE increases, it may override some of the negative environmental and management influences.
Often it is said a high growth bull has “grunt”, but, unfortunately, if he doesn’t have CE as well it will be his heifers that have to “grunt”!
To view our Sale Bulls and select the combination of CE, growth and carcase that suits your program click here.
Several of our sires are also available for AI use, to view catalogue click here.
Enquire about new AI sires available for Spring 2015.
Calving ease selection progress at Elite
