Genomics Didn’t Replace Stockmanship

THE STOCKMAN'S STANDARD — Straight Talk on Cattle, Land, and the People Who Care for Them

Issue 1 · No. 4

What the technology captures, what it misses, and why the man who can evaluate 400 cows in a day will always have an edge.

By Isaiah Shnurman · Genetic Hedging Solutions

In 2009, the beef industry changed. Genomic testing — the ability to read an animal's actual DNA and generate predicted breeding values from it — arrived at commercial scale, and the industry embraced it with the enthusiasm of an industry that had been waiting for exactly this kind of certainty.

The promise was significant. You could now estimate, with meaningful accuracy, the genetic potential of a calf before it had a single progeny record. You could make selection decisions earlier, reduce generation interval, and — theoretically — accelerate genetic progress faster than any traditional selection scheme had ever allowed.

The promise was partially kept. Genomics has delivered real improvements in prediction accuracy for some traits. What it did not deliver was a replacement for stockmanship — for the ability to evaluate the animal in front of you and read what it is telling you. Those are different tools, and the industry has spent fifteen years learning where one ends and the other begins.

What Genomics Does Well

For traits that are highly heritable and difficult to measure directly — carcass merit, certain disease resistances, some reproductive efficiency metrics — genomic prediction adds genuine value early in an animal's life. A yearling bull with a high-accuracy genomic EPD for marbling, backed by reference population data, is more reliably sorted for carcass merit than the same bull evaluated by phenotype alone.

For breed-specific thresholds like BCHF (pulmonary arterial pressure resistance in Angus), genomic markers now identify animals in the upper percentiles of genetic resistance. This is useful. At Hollow Top Angus, the BCHF genomic data is used alongside actual PAP testing at elevation — not instead of it. The genomic prediction identifies candidates. The actual test at 7,000 feet confirms them.

The genomic test identifies genetic potential for altitude resistance. The PAP test at elevation confirms the real-world cardiovascular response. One is a prediction. The other is a measurement. Both are useful. They are not the same thing.

What Genomics Does Not Do

Genomics does not evaluate feet and legs. It does not observe whether a cow's udder is functional, whether her daughters hold body condition in the August heat, whether a bull's disposition makes him manageable in a working facility. It does not measure how an animal responds to the specific forage and environment of your operation.

The structural traits that determine whether a cow stays in the herd for a decade — the medial suspensory ligament of the udder, the quality of the hoof wall and pastern angle, the body capacity that allows a cow to harvest enough forage to sustain a pregnancy on grass — are not reliably captured by any genomic test currently available at commercial scale. They are visible to the trained eye in under thirty seconds.

The Jeff Ward scoring system I use in my evaluations — 1-5 on fertility, angularity, capacity, muscle, and udder structure — takes thirty seconds per animal. In a full day's evaluation I can cover 400 cows and produce a scorecard that tells a more complete story about that herd's functional soundness than any genomic report currently available for the same $30 per sample.

This is not an argument against testing. It is an argument for using the right tool for the right job.

The Combination That Works

The programs in the GHS portfolio that use genomic data most effectively are the ones that use it last in the evaluation sequence — after structural assessment, after production records, after pedigree review. At that point, the genomic data adds precision to decisions that have already been made on more reliable evidence.

Hollow Top Angus uses Neogen Igenity data on 922 animals. The high scores for ADG and yearling weight confirm what the phenotypic evaluation and production records already showed about the program's performance genetics. The Igenity BCHF scores flag the animals most likely to carry altitude resistance forward — and then PAP testing confirms which ones actually do.

That sequence — genomics as confirmation, not as primary decision — is the correct use of the technology.

A stockman who can evaluate 400 cows in a day and identify the functional, fertile, structurally correct animals with a 1-5 score on each trait has information that no genomic panel currently produces. The industry needs both. It should not confuse them.

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Isaiah Shnurman owns and operates Genetic Hedging Solutions LLC, managing the digital presence for seedstock programs across the country. He is the host of The Stockman's Standard — Straight Talk on Cattle, Land, and the People Who Care for Them, and evaluates cattle structure first, performance second, pedigree third, and EPDs last.

THE STOCKMAN'S STANDARD — Straight Talk on Cattle, Land, and the People Who Care for Them

Straight talk on cattle genetics.