Working Ranch Magazine January/February 2025

improvements in vaccines for pre vention and antibiotics for treatment, bovine respiratory disease (BRD) con tinues to be a significant problem to the beef industry, accounting for over $1 billion in losses annually associated with death losses, treatment, and lost production across all sectors of the beef industry,” says Dr. Beck. “This is even with the improvements in phar maceuticals, technology, and genetics of cattle over the last few decades.” The animal’s ability to resist infec tion and illnesses like BRD is highly complicated and genetics are an important component, with signif icance on both a practical and eco nomic level. Even when vaccine, care, and nutrition protocols are on point, some cattle will fare better than others when challenged by an immune system threat. The researchers aim to under stand better why. “The importance of robustness-re lated traits in breeding animals is to enhance production in a wide range of environmental conditions and pro duction systems while maintaining a high level of animal health and welfare.

Genetically selected, highly produc tive livestock frequently show signs of reduced robustness due to a trade-off between productivity and robustness related to the animal’s energetic alloca tion when resources are limited,” says

Dr. Beck. “A robust animal will be able to allocate across metabolic functions which best adapts the individual to its environment for fitness (i.e., survival and reproduction). Genetic selection in the beef cattle industry has focused

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