Myostatin is a term some suckler farmers will be quite familiar with, while others may have never heard of it.
In recent years, further research has been carried out on myostatin to understand its effect on progeny from the suckler herd.
Myostatin is a gene that influences the production of a protein that controls the development of muscle in cattle causing what is commonly referred to as ‘double muscling’.
There are nine known variants of the gene and some of the variants can be linked to larger calf birth-weights, resulting in increased calving difficulty.
Some of these variants are also linked to reduced milk yield, delayed puberty and reduced fertility in females.
However, there are some benefits to the gene, which include increased kill-out percentages, improved conformation and increased meat tenderness.
The College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise’s (CAFRE’s) beef technologist, Natasha Ferguson, has recently updated suckler farmers on new knowledge and current investigations on myostatin within the suckler herds at CAFRE farms.
The impact of herd health problems and dystocia (calving difficulty) in particular on the profitability of the suckler/beef industry, is an issue most suckler farmers are well aware of. With this in mind, the team at CAFRE has been examining the relationships between the myostatin gene and a range of health and production traits in sucklers.
- If a stock bull or breeding cow has one copy of a myostatin variant it is classed as heterozygous;
- If a stock bull or breeding cow has two copies of a myostatin variant, it is classed as homozygous.
It is advantageous for suckler farmers to know the myostatin status of the sire and dam in order to predict the resulting progeny status.
The table below shows the probability of a mating resulting in progeny carrying the myostatin gene:
Artificial Insemination (AI) companies and breed societies are increasingly providing myostatin information on their bulls.
This information provides one-half of the breeding story and is useful especially as heterozygous animals may not exhibit extreme muscling and therefore, are difficult to identify as carriers without being tested.
The staff at CAFRE concluded that in order to get a full understanding of the effects of myostatin variants within the suckler herds and investigate breeding strategies to maximise calf quality, all females in the herd required testing.
This has resulted in the four stockbulls and 161 females in the CAFRE Hill Herd being tested last year.
The results indicated that 120 animals in the herd carry at least one copy of the myostatin variants: F94L, Q204X and E226X, including two of the stockbulls.
Going forward, all progeny will be tested for myostatin status in order to follow animals from birth to slaughter and provide farmers with more detail in relation to breeding outcomes.
Whether farmers are aiming for an easy-calving herd or trying to produce the next fatstock champion, it’s beneficial to know the myostatin variants in your suckler herd.
Knowledge on the myostatin variants in a suckler herd will allow farmers to develop breeding plans to maximise the benefits and minimise the disadvantages of the gene.
In addition, for the industry to use the information accurately, CAFRE has encouraged all Northern Ireland suckler farmers to record sires when birth-registering calves.