RecríaINNOVA-2 Operational Group: New tools to optimize the development and selection of future beef cattle breeding stock
- Type Operational group
- Status In progress
- Execution 2024 -2027
- Assigned Budget 150.000,00 €
- Scope Autonómico
- Autonomous community Aragón
This project aims to develop and provide farmers with new tools that enable them to develop and select future breeding stock for a farm early and effectively.
Selecting steers and heifers with the best productive and reproductive qualities to increase efficiency and improve herd profitability. The goal is to ensure the proper morphological and functional development of the animals that will participate in the steer testing and heifer rearing programs carried out at the Government of Aragon Livestock Improvement Center (CENSYRA in Movera, Zaragoza).
Furthermore, the introduction of innovative tests, trials, and analyses will allow for the diagnosis, characterization, and prediction of reproductive traits and genetic merit that future breeders will be able to transmit to their offspring, optimizing the genetic selection process. Those males and females selected for life will form the basis for productive success and profitability of beef cattle farms.
The project's goal is to select the best animals of a breed by implementing a series of tools that together provide us with a wealth of information on each specimen under study, both in comparison to the batch and the breed.
With all this information, both breeders and potential buyers gain invaluable insight into how to best select the next generation of breeding stock for their herds.
What's really interesting is that the project doesn't classify which animal is the best, but rather praises the virtues and defects of each one, and these, in turn, don't have to meet the same requirements for different farms.
- Selection of heifers: The selection of heifers will be carried out on the farms of origin by specialized technicians.
- Heifer Feeding: Heifers will receive a forage diet of 11 kg/d of fescue hay, supplemented with 3 kg/d of concentrate.
- Recording and sampling during rearing: At the start of the rearing period and at month 11, morphometric measurements will be taken to determine the animals' body growth during rearing. During the rearing period, heifers will be weighed monthly to assess their average daily gain, and their body condition will be recorded every two months.
- Determination of pelvic opening: In this project, the pelvic opening of heifers is measured using a Rice pelvimeter.
- In vivo determination of marbling and subcutaneous fat: The use of ultrasound is proposed as a non-invasive in vivo method to estimate backfat thickness, loin area, and muscle fatty infiltration.
- Synchronization and fixed-time artificial insemination: In the 11th month of rearing, a heat synchronization and fixed-time artificial insemination treatment will be developed and standardized so that it can be easily applied to other farms.
- Estrus Expression Study: Estrus expression in heifers will be studied on the day of artificial insemination by using estrus detection patches placed at the base of the tail.
- Genomic study: In the 12th month of rearing, a sample of tail hair will be obtained from each animal to perform a genomic study and determine the "improving" character of different parameters, as well as the presence or absence of genes of interest.
By using new tools applied to the animals under study in optimal and similar conditions, the data obtained is analyzed and, by synthesizing them all, an individual information map is generated and better decisions are made when selecting future breeding stock for livestock farms, thereby accelerating the genetic improvement of livestock farms and increasing their productivity.
- Coordinator/entity name: Aragonese Association of Breeders of the Limousine breed
- Postal address: Calle Baja,16, 22192, TIERZ
- Coordinator/entity email: LIMUSINARAGON@GMAIL.COM
- Telephone: 634537059
- Asociación Aragonesa de Criadores de la raza Limusina
- AGROPECUARIA DEL SOBRARBE SLC (SCLAS@SCLAS.COM)
- Asociación Aragonesa de Criadores de la raza Limusina
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