Beef Breeding Blends Technology and Agriculture

Cattlemen can learn as much about their herd from a laptop computer today as sitting behind the wheel of their pickup out on the farm.

For Tom Hulls and his wife, Dr. Diane Balich, wireless technology is helping them build a better steak while raising their dream herd of registered Angus. From their Sugar Springs Ranch south of Lincoln, Hulls and Balich found themselves looking for a more cost-efficient and timesaving method for breeding beef.

What they came up with amounts to a $5,500 e-chaperone for the 100 registered breeding-age cows and 25 surrogate mothers in their herd.

Hulls purchased the HeatWatch Estrus Detection System, a product of DDx Inc. in Denver. It uses transceivers placed on tailheads of cows that send off signals with each mount from bulls to a 60-foot high transmitter tower.

The tower then relays the messages to a computer in the couple’s home. Every time the transmitter is triggered it is recorded, including the duration of the mount. The tower covers about a quarter-mile.

The system’s price included the transceivers, patches and software. The transceivers are placed under a colored patch and fastened with a nonirritant glue to the cow. Only a few have been lost, usually while cows are in ponds cooling off.

Balich said their 240-acre operation has seen a 7 percent pregnancy increase in each of the five years since installing the HeatWatch system. That’s made life, and business, a lot more comfortable.

Hulls is president of Cumberland, a poultry equipment company in Illinois, a job that often demands his time out of state. Balich owns the Lincoln Veterinary Clinic, so she has more than her share of responsibilities at that job.

The option of buying all registered cattle was too expensive, but the previous process of artificial insemination was one of inconvenience. To discover when both the registered cows and surrogate cull cows had come into heat, Tom and Diane were forced to spend their days sharing guard detail over the herd.

“In the past, I would come home for lunch, make a sandwich and go out and watch,” Balich said.

Attempts such as painting the tailheads of the cows to see when a breeding attempt took place had minimal success at best. But installing HeatWatch was like hiring a private investigator around the clock.

“We don’t miss any [mounts] now,” Hulls said. “And it’s much more efficient. It used to be labor-intense to no end.”

According to Arkansas Department of Agriculture reports for January, there were 1.8 million cattle statewide. At the same counting, 220,000 (114,000 beef only) of those were in Benton and Washington counties. Four neighboring counties make the area’s total 442,000 head, by far the most cattle-dense area in the state.

Hulls and Balich have 175 total cows, calves and bulls, but the registered breeding-age cows are the significant figure.

Surrogate Cattle

Balich is one of only two veterinarians in the state who does embryo transfers with cattle, a biotechnical procedure. And she certainly gets plenty of practice.

She waits nine days following the initial mount of the cow during the heat cycle. That time frame optimizes the natural cycle of the cow.

“We give her four days of FSH [follicle stimulating hormones] shots,” Balich said. “This causes her to have many ovulations. Instead of just one embryo, she may have 10. And seven days after she’s been fertilized, we harvest the eggs with a catheter. It’s a very sterile technique. We have to put the eggs harvested into a surrogate cow in heat at the exact same time the cow with the eggs was in heat.

“If the eggs we’re putting in are seven days old, the uterus of the surrogate cow has to be at that same stage. It just won’t take them any day of the week.”

Hulls pointed out on his computer that Cow 211, a registered Angus, showed signs of coming into heat at 2:14 a.m. on June 18. At about the same time, Cow 304, a Holstein, also came into heat. Therefore, he knew Cow 304 would accept the eggs of Cow 211.

The reason for transferring the eggs from a registered Angus to a surrogate Holstein is to get the maximum use of the Angus. A Holstein mother will cost about $500. A registered Angus mother will cost about $1,000.

“What’s the better one to use if you’re just using them for an oven?” Balich asked.

Hulls said DNA typing is done on the calves following birth to “insure the integrity” of the registration.

The embryo transfer was perfected on cattle. But Balich said monetarily the methods between cows and humans are worlds apart. With humans, the procedure costs about $50,000. With cattle, it’s about $250.

The average number of transferable eggs from a cow are about six, but Hulls has transferred as many as 25 from one cow. They are found in a microscope, washed in a sterile fluid, loaded in a straw and then into the surrogate cow. The process takes about six hours.

And the surrogate cow is eventually artificially inseminated with semen that’s purchased from prize bulls across the country.

“You’re screwing with mother nature,” Hulls laughs. “You just hope the embryo gods smile on you.”

Both eggs and semen can last indefinitely once frozen and dehydrated. They are frozen in liquid nitrogen at minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tom and Diane have several calves due this fall from Garden Prime Time, a Montana bull that sold at the Denver Bull Sale for $35,000. Semen samples from such a bull runs about $30. Then, registering the calf in the Angus Association is another $40.

Why Angus?

“Every cow eventually gets eaten, whether it’s at McDonald’s or somewhere else,” Hulls said. “The U.S. is a very expensive country we live in, so why not produce an animal that can provide a higher quality of rib eyes and T-bones and filets. None of this goes to Wendy’s. [The United States] exports most of our hamburger meat anyway.

“McDonald’s’ beef comes from Australia. We can’t compete with them. To live off the cost of our land we have to produce something more than hamburger.”

A number of Northwest Arkansas restaurants have asked Hulls for his Angus beef. But the market demand is more than the ranch can produce.

If his bulls don’t grade out high enough in certain areas such as reproduction capability, including scrotal circumference, they’re turned into steers. But it is a selective process on the farm. High-grade registered bulls have fetched around $4,000 for Hulls at shows such as the Denver sale, the Super Bowl of bull sales.

“We have some commercial cattlemen around here that buy some of our bulls,” Hulls said. “But we’ve sold bulls to farmers in Colorado, Nebraska, California, Missouri, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas and Mexico.”

Even if Hulls turns a young bull into a steer, it could still bring about $1.45 a pound live weight, meaning a 1,000-pound steer would bring $1,450.

“We finish out our steers and it’s a really high quality meat,” Hulls said.

In finishing out his steers, Hulls brings the animal into a confined feeding situation for several weeks to fatten it up on a corn-based product. (A similar process is done at poultry companies.)

Aside from trying to produce larger rib eyes, the Angus Association — headquartered in St. Joseph, Mo. — puts special attention on the marbling of the meat. Marbling is the inner muscular fat that carries the flavor.

“Meat itself has no flavor,” Hulls said. “The fat gives it flavor. If a meat is all red it has no flavor.”

IBP Inc., the South Dakota meat processor that Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale is in the process of purchasing, has an Angus beef product that it’s making for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The product is obvious even to the untrained eye at the stores’ displays — it’s almost double the cost of the regular beef.

Through ultrasounds, a cow’s marbling quality can be detected.

There are several ways to measure the quality of meat, including the knife pressure it takes to cut the meat.

One-third interest in Angus bull Garden Prime Time recently sold for $235,000 because of his quality carcass. Alberda Traveler, another champion Montana Angus bull, will have tens of thousands of calves before his time is up. Hulls will also have some calves from that bull this fall.

EXT, also from Montana, is a bull that for three consecutive years has had more than $1 million in sales, producing about 40,000 calves annually.

To Buy or Build?

Hulls said it took “about 10 years to get the number of cattle to support the feasibility of the land [he and Balich have.]”

“There are two reasons why we’re doing this,” he said. “We’ve got an $11,000 cow out there. We want to get a pasture full of them. She’s gonna have a baby from a bull who had one-third of his interest sold for $235,000. We want to build an elite Angus herd.

“You can do that by either buying one or building one. We can’t afford just going out and buying a herd, so we’ve got to build it. We can’t afford a whole herd of $10,000 cows.”

The Angus Association has the largest computer database of heritable traits of any livestock.

Hulls said farmers wanting to get into the cattle business to make money should “get hooked up with a program that can make you money such as CAB, Certified Angus Beef. With them, if I sell a registered bull to somebody, CAB will find them a feedlot interested in buying its offspring. But, if you just want to look at your cows, buy whatever color is pretty to you.”