I
have only been working in Angus Central for a few days, yet I am already
underway on some very exciting projects. For the next 7 months, I will be
working alongside Director of Breed Development Kajal Devani as the Canadian Angus
Association’s Research and Special Projects Intern.
One of our major projects for the summer is the development
of genomically enhanced expected progeny differences (GE-EPDs) for a few very
economically important traits: teat and udder conformation, as well as feet and
leg structure. To develop EPDs for these traits, we will be sampling around 1,500
cows to compare their teat, udder, feet and leg structure with their genetic
make-up. I will be visiting producer farms to score the cattle for these traits,
and collecting hair samples so that we can run the HD50K marker panel on those
animals. Essentially from this information, we will be able to correlate each
cows genetic make-up with their conformation for these traits, to come up with
GE-EPDs.
Currently we are in the process of applying for grant
funding and selecting cattle to be used for the project. We will be using
animals from several seedstock producers in the area, as well as animals from
the University of Alberta’s Kinsella Research Station. We are very excited to
get underway with data collection for this project.
Another item that we are working on is the development of a
Canadian Angus Performance Program newsletter that will be sent to producers
each quarter. Within this we will be writing some useful articles about topics
surrounding the performance program. In the first newsletter, we will be
including information about how our members can get funding through Verified
Beef Production (VBP) to put in a livestock scale on their farm. We will be
breaking this information down into the respective provinces, since there is
different funding available in each province, and therefore a different
application process. We want all of our members to be on our Performance
Program, so we want to keep you informed of opportunities where you can
receive funding to do so. Stay tuned for our first newsletter to come out in
early March.
I look forward to an exciting summer, and as always if you
have any questions do not hesitate to call me at any time.
Posted by Matt Bates
Feedback: mbates@cdnangus.ca
