12 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN March 2026 From Data to Do a s It’s an interestingly fortuitous time in the cattle industry, with record calf prices fueled by the smallest cow herd in more than 70 years. Will these calf prices be sustainable? Perhaps, but likely not in the long term. So, how can cattle producers leverage current economics and invest in technologies to better set themselves up for success in the coming years? In times like these, it’s important to ask these questions: Will my current breeding and management programs effectively sustain my business in the future? Are there changes I can embrace now to help me better my position in the beef industry? The industry is primed like never before to deliver solutions that enable producers to be more sophisticated and profitable now and into the future. Genetic improvement is a key objective cattle producers should consider in their herd rebuilding strategy. While buying elite sires is foundational to genetic improvement, recent advancements in genetic testing and evaluation now allow Making Restock Smarter PRODUCTION LANE GIESS | GLOBAL BEEF GENETICS TECHNICAL SERVICE MANAGER, ZOETIS commercial producers access to expected progeny differences (EPDs) and economic indexes on candidate replacement females to make more informed selection decisions. During the last major herd rebuild, genomics was just beginning to integrate into national cattle evaluations. Since then, the accuracy of genomic predictions for commercial females has significantly improved, and many tools once limited to seedstock producers are now accessible to commercial cow-calf producers. Genomic Results for Use in Traditional Genetic Evaluation Perhaps the most widely used application of genomics is the integration of DNA marker results into genetic evaluations for seedstock produced by breed associations. For decades, traditional genetic evaluations relied solely on member-reported phenotypes and pedigree connections to fuel the production of EPDs. While these early EPDs were still better indicators of
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