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Angus Productions Inc.

May 21, 2012
0512fp_wellnitz

Test for the Best, Cull the Rest

Kansas commercial Angus herd first to use GeneMax.®

Kevin Wellnitz and daughter Jennifer are of one mind when it comes to a vision for their 200-cow Plum Creek Ranch Angus herd, near Neosho Rapids, Kan. As herd managers, they want to keep only the best, and make selection calls as soon as possible.

That helps explain why they were the first to use the GeneMax® DNA test when it was made available by Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) in February for blood or at least 20 hair root follicles per animal.

Jennifer said, "On the first 23 head, we just tried to represent some from each sire group."

"We wanted to see if there was any correlation between the sire groups and the results," Kevin continued.

Did they find that connection?

"Not in the sires, but we looked at the dam's sires, and we think it helped determine some of the oddballs," Jennifer says.

Looking at a pen of replacements scheduled for artificial insemination (AI) in June, Kevin puts it in perspective.

"Our hope with the GeneMax test is that we can eliminate the outliers at this stage rather than four years from now when they've got a couple of calves on the rail or in our herd," he says.


Quality target
Plum Creek uses mainly Green Garden Angus bulls, following AI to sires from the same registered operation. It's part of the strategy to achieve consistency. They'll keep the pressure on marbling but moderate in growth so as to maintain efficient cows for their management-intensive grazing and crop rotation farm.

To flush for AI, the spring heifers graze ryegrass that was relay-cropped in after soybeans. "Then we synch them up," Kevin says, noting better than 70% showing heat in last years' heifers. An equal size group of fall replacement heifers will take the GeneMax test, too, as the herd moves from a spring-favored 60:40 ratio to an evenly divided future.

More than 30 cull heifers are finished at home without implants and harvested for a growing freezer beef market as Plum Creek Beef, processed at several local lockers. Lacking official graders, "the only thing you know at the locker is what you see," Kevin says. "That's one more reason we want to be sure all our cattle are hitting the target."

At that local level or on the national scale, he says, "We ask people to pay a lot for beef. We should have consistent quality in the product; that's our biggest problem in the industry."

DNA testing can be part of the solution.

"If we can like the results we're getting with GeneMax and gain confidence in what it can do for us, we will pull blood or hair samples before our spring calves go to summer grass, so I will have all the information when they come back in," he says.


Editor's Note: This article is adapted from a longer feature that will be published in the June Angus Journal.



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