Working Ranch Magazine January/February 2025

hen we hear the term robust, many things might come to mind, all examples of something tough or strong. The beef cattle immune system probably isn’t one of them. “Robustness in farm animals is the ability to combine a high production potential with resilience to stressors, allowing the expression of their high production potential in a wide variety of environmental conditions,” explains Paul Beck, PhD, Oklahoma State University Extension specialist for beef nutrition in animal and food sciences. As the genetic selection process has become more refined in the past W

two decades, the trend across the beef production industry has increasingly focused on higher growth and pro ductive carcass traits, raising suspi cion among scientists like Dr. Beck that those traits may negatively impact immune robustness. “There is speculation that selection for ‘economic’ traits (growth, milk, and carcass traits) results in reduced immune function and increased sus ceptibility to disease, with morbidity occurring later in the finishing period than typical morbidity patterns,” says Dr. Beck. Dr. Beck is the primary inves tigator for a study by researchers from Oklahoma State University’s

Department of Animal and Food Sciences examining the impact of selection of higher growth and carcass traits on beef cattle immune responses and robustness traits. Funded by the USDA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Competitive Grants Program, the project research began several years ago and is slated for com pletion at the end of 2025. “We got interested in this area of research because despite (BELOW) The study involves observing four herds of Angus cross cattle, taking tissue, blood, and serum samples; assessing and monitoring the immune phenotype of the calves at each milestone. Is the beef production industry’s focus on higher growth and production negatively impacting immunity? BY JAIME PULLMAN

Test to the Robust

OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

76 I JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2025 WORKING RANCH audited readers run 21 million head of beef cattle.