Remember the power of cross-breeding

By Gary Sliworsky
OMAFRA Rep.

As cattle producers start to think about purchasing bulls and gear up for another breeding season, they need to remember the power of crossbreeding.
The boost in performance that comes from crossbreeding is called heterosis and is sometimes referred to as “hybrid vigour”. Many producers don’t take advantage of this heterosis. There are some very popular breeds and many commercial producers who are essentially straight breeding.
The real value of crossbreeding is in the crossbred cow. Commercial cattle producers need to take advantage of this maternal heterosis and plan for it as they develop their breeding programs. Crossbreeding is probably one of the few tools that commercial cattlemen can use which costs nothing and can provide high returns.
Over the last two decades, poorly managed or unmanaged crossbreeding systems have probably decreased returns in some commercial operations and tended to increase rather than decrease variability in beef cattle. Many commercial cattlemen have abandoned crossbreeding in an attempt to simplify management or undo past crossbreeding mistakes.
However, the value of a good crossbreeding system cannot be overlooked. Individual heterosis is the increase in productivity that occurs when producing a crossbred calf from a purebred sire and a purebred cow. Maternal heterosis is the increase in productivity achieved by using this crossbred calf as a cow in your herd.
USDA researchers found that individual heterosis could boost weaning percentage by 3%, and maternal heterosis could increase that value by 6.4% for a total increase of nearly 10%. For weaning weight per cow exposed, scientists saw a total increase of more than 23% when individual and maternal heterosis were taken into account.
Beef production traits that typically benefit most from heterosis are those that are related to fertility. Those traits also aren’t usually strongly related to genetics. These are typically traits such as cow fertility, weaning percentages, survival, and other traits which tend to be influenced by the environment.
Researchers found that traits like calving rate, calf survival to weaning and weaning rate benefited most from heterosis. However, heterosis had little influence on cutability, quality grade, ribeye area or mature cow weight – traits that are strongly influenced by genetics.
Place all of this in the context of your farm management system as you select bulls. Even with the increased emphasis on carcass traits that we see in the industry today, cow fertility is still the single most important trait influencing the productivity and profitability of your herd.