SOUNDNESS

It has been recognised that animals should conform to certain structural requirements to ensure high levels of production and adaptability to the environment. When structural integrity is not maintained, substantial financial loss can occur. These losses could be due to such things as complete bull breakdown, bulls not being able to cover the allocated cows resulting in lower conception rates, or steers being unable to finish a long feeding program.

Structural soundness is heritable and can be improved by selection. While structural scores that have been recorded for an animal can be used to assess the current feet and leg soundness of that particular individual, Structural Soundness EBVs provide an indication of likely differences in the structural soundness of the progeny of animals. Collecting structural soundness information for BREEDPLAN gives beef breeders the opportunity to make genetic improvement in the structural soundness of their future herd.

Structural EBVs are now available on the ABRI platform, find out where

Breeders interested in having Claw Set and Foot Angle EBVs published on their animals need to collect structural scores. Structural score information will only be accepted by BREEDPLAN if it has been recorded by Registered ABRI Structural Soundness Assessor Bill Austin.