Preparing for August: Inside New, Updated Reproductive Traits

Get ready for the reproductive performance trait updates coming in the August evaluations by listening to the May episode of The CDCB CowCast! CDCB Geneticist Taylor McWhorter, Ph.D., discusses the work a team of CDCB and USDA AGIL

researchers undertook to examine recent trends in the reproductive trait portfolio (DPR, CCR, HCR, and EFC) and why they saw a need for an additional interval trait, which became First Service to Conception (FSC)

Taylor explains how all of the reproductive performance traits work together to capture different pieces of the reproduction puzzle and when it is a good time to use DPR, CCR, and FSC. She also describes the adjustments being made to the existing traits in August and shows how PTAs in the new system will relate to PTAs from the legacy system.

Watch the episode on YouTube or listen on your podcast streaming platform.

Print and web resources are also available for learning about the reproductive performance changes:

• Summary of research and changes

• Frequently asked questions and links to individual trait pages

• First Service to Conception trait details