Gearld Fry defies conventional thinking about cattle breeding, especially when it comes to herd sires.
Fry, who describes himself as a self-taught specialist in cattle genetics and reproduction, advocates line breeding to help improve a herd. He also insists that through proper selection, bulls can be developed to easily breed 60 cows in a season and to endure in a herd for eight years or more.
“Line breeding is where you breed along one sire line,” said Fry during the Manitoba Grazing School in Brandon this month. “Normally it’s along the lines of a bull.
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“You breed a father to his daughters and then you would come back on those daughters with one of their half brothers out of the same father. Those are the line breeding tactics I am talking about.”
Line breeding requires a certain number of incestuous links in the herd. Fry manages any unwanted consequences through stringent culling.
The idea of line breeding is to concentrate specific genetic traits into the herd. That concentration of the gene pool should lead to what Fry describes as a paternal cow herd.
“By breeding that close, you are fixing a phenotype genetically, where each of the calves produced will be like their sire. The male calves will be like their sires. The daughters that are produced will still be like their mothers.”
Fry, who helped establish the Bakewell Reproductive Center in Arkansas in 2002, is tailoring cattle for finishing on grass. He views line breeding as an important part of that effort because it prevents the need to regularly bring in bulls from other herds. Bringing in other bulls would dilute the gene pool he is striving for.
“Every time you go out to your neighbour’s somewhere and buy a bull to bring in, you’re starting all over from the bull that you just used. You have introduced a different set of genetics.
“These bulls that you raise on your own place know every tree, rock, fence and watering hole. They’ll stay in your environment for many years.”
Fry said the bulls developed through line breeding should typically be able to last on a ranch for seven years, and possibly longer, providing there is careful selection of the sires. He looks for rugged, masculine bulls.
“It starts with selection of the shoulders, wide shoulders, and adequate testicles. You won’t have shoulders without testicles that produce testosterone.
“You get the rest of the body to fit that. It’s part of the picture.”
A good bull developed through line breeding should have no trouble breeding 60 cows in a season, Fry said. Even with that number, the bull should be able to get at least 80 percent of the cows pregnant within 21 days.
While in Brandon, Fry also spoke briefly about some of the traits that he believes make cattle better suited for grass finishing. He said there is a distinct difference from those that need to be finished on grain in a feedlot.
“Even the cattle that do very well on grass will do well in the feedlot, but the can only stay in the feedlot for 75 to 100 days. Once they have been there 75 days, the compensatory gain has been satisfied and the animals start putting on a lot of excessive back fat.”
Jim Wilton, director of the University of Guelph’s Centre for Genetic Improvement of Livestock, agreed line breeding can generally increase the uniformity of a herd’s genetics.
However, he said it may not be helpful in the long term because animal breeders like to have genetic variability so they can adjust the characteristics of cattle to suit changing market needs.
“My recommendation to a purebred breeder is keep as much variability as possible,” he said in an interview. “I believe in flexible approaches for purebred breeders.”
Depending on how closely related the cattle are in a line breeding program, it can result in what is known as inbreeding depression. One of the potential consequences is reduced fertility.
“It’s a question of risk management. You increase your risks of running into some problems and you do suffer usually from some decrease in fertility.”
