Beef cattle

Who's your daddy? Proof of concept for parent verification of beef on dairy crossed animals with unknown sire or dam information.

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Abstract

In the United States, approximately 20% of animals contributing to the total beef supply originate from dairies. In recent years, the genetic composition of these animals has transitioned from straight dairy to calves sired by native beef breeds. The increased use of beef semen in dairy cows has the potential to increase the accuracy of genetic predictions for terminal traits in national cattle genetic evaluations (NCE). The number of terminal phenotypes, such as feedlot performance and carcass characteristics, reported to genetic evaluations are significantly fewer compared to growth traits due to the lack of traceability for these animals from birth to slaughter. In most cases, the pedigree or parentage information of terminal cattle is unknown. Therefore, the objective of this study was to explore the potential for leveraging genotypes from a multibreed genetic evaluation of cattle to identify the parentage of terminal beef and dairy crossed calves. International Genetic Solutions (IGS) is a multi-breed genetic evaluation that evaluates carcass data for beef-on-dairy crossed cattle. An algorithm was developed by IGS to identify potential sires and dams by utilizing genomic information from over 1 million animals within the genetic evaluation database. The application of this algorithm for identifying the parentage of beef-on-dairy crossed animals has yet to be explored. Feedlot and carcass records were collected for Holstein and Angus-crossed calves (n = 124) from 12 weeks of age to slaughter at an average age of 425 days. Calves were sourced from three different farms, where the parentage of the majority of these animals was unknown. Tissue samples were collected on all steers for genotyping prior to slaughter and submitted to a lab for genotyping. Twenty-nine samples failed at the lab, resulting in ninety-five animals with valid genotypes. The IGS algorithm identified a potential sire for one crossbred animal with a genotyped similarity of 0.53 and an error rate of 0.02. Two pairs of the crossbred animals were identified to have a genotype similarity of 0.58 and 0.59, indicating a close relationship between these animals. This project explored the potential to utilize an extensive multi-breed genetic database to identify the parentage of beef on dairy calves with no prior pedigree information. The identification of only one sire could be attributed to the lack of genotypes for the Angus bulls used to create the crossbred calves within the IGS database. As more genotypes are added to the IGS database, the potential for parental verification could increase for terminal animals with unknown pedigrees.

Keywords: 2026

How to Cite:

Culbertson, M., Condon, J., Schwab, D., Atkins, J., Bowman, J. & Boldt, R., (2026) “Who's your daddy? Proof of concept for parent verification of beef on dairy crossed animals with unknown sire or dam information.”, World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production Digital Archive 2026(1): 2287313. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/wcgalp.24260

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