Red Angus Heifers Support Improved Beef Industry Sustainability

Getting first-exposure heifers to breed and calve at two years of age could be called the foundation of beef industry sustainability. Reproduction is where the beef life cycle begins. The producer who falls short at getting enough heifers bred to calve early in the calving season is immediately at a disadvantage that will last the lifetime of those females. There is no efficient or inexpensive way to catch up. Late-calving heifers become late-calving cows, which cost the same to maintain but wean lighter calves and generate less income.

When not enough heifers breed on time, ranchers eventually compensate by exposing more heifers than would otherwise be needed to maintain the cowherd. This too becomes a source of inefficiency, because additional heifers must be held as replacements, decreasing the number of heifers that can create immediate cash flow by entering the beef stream.

Heifer development itself is a balancing act. From the time a set of replacement candidates are weaned until their first exposure, they must remain healthy and be grown out appropriately, such that a high percentage are cycling and ready to breed at 14-15 months of age. At the same time, no producer wants to waste feed. There is a point at which a high gain rate becomes expensive and potentially detrimental to fertility and longevity. Weaning-to-yearling growth rates near 1.5 lbs. per day are often considered adequate. However, no specific rate of gain is right for every group of heifers.

Because of their ability to breed and calve at two years of age without requiring extra feed, the Red Angus breed supports beef industry sustainability at its most basic level. Cow-calf producers from coast to coast and north to south understand the importance of reproduction, which is a key reason Red Angus market share in commercial cowherds grew from 15% in 2019 to 20% in 2024, according to a BEEF Magazine survey.

The RAAA database offers interesting insight into this subject. One readily observable theme is that Red Angus heifers are champions when tasked with getting bred in time to calve at two years of age. And, importantly, that statement holds true across a wide range of post-weaning gain rates.

As shown in the table below, registered Red Angus females were split into quartiles from lowest to highest phenotypic gain between weaning to yearling. There is a sizable spread in gain rates from the lowest quartile (0.88 lbs. per day) to the highest quartile (2.27 lbs.), and the resulting difference in yearling weights is large at 215 lbs. (730 versus 945 lbs.). Also noteworthy is that approximately 98% of these gain differences are non-genetic. When sorted and grouped in this manner, differences in nutrition and management explain why the respective groups gained at different rates.

Following these heifer groups through parity reveals no material difference in average age at first calving. All four groups calved at slightly over two years of age, which is right on schedule. Many replacement heifers are selected, in part, because they are born early in the calving season. Short gestation lengths are also a factor in early born heifers. Thus, their calving at slightly over two years of age, on average, is by design.

The lowest gaining group showed no real disadvantage, despite significantly lighter yearling weights. Nor did the fastest gaining quartile exhibit any advantage in age when calved for the first time. Data is unavailable as to how these heifers were managed from yearling to breeding. It is possible that heifers gaining less from weaning to yearling were placed on a higher nutritional plane to “catch up” from 12 months of age to the time of their first exposure.

Nonetheless, we can still conclude that heifers gaining toward the upper end of range probably did not need to be fed to gain as much as they did. Built-in Red Angus fertility is doing its job well, even with gain rates below 1.75 lbs. per day. Note that average weaning weights for all four groups range from 573 lbs. to 588 lbs., which is adequately heavy and something of an enabling factor, allowing slower gains from weaning to yearling, while still achieving desirable yearling and breeding weights.

The question might be asked as to whether the percentage of heifers calving was the same for all four groups. We know their average age at first calving was nearly the same, but did a smaller percentage in the low-gaining group get bred and calve?

The lowest ADG group did experience a moderate, 3 to 4-percent-point calving rate reduction compared to the other three groups. This may suggest that the lowest ADG quartile heifers were being challenged to breed in a lower-input environment, and were, therefore, tested with the intention of weeding out any heifers unable to conceive without additional feed. Again, the difference in calving rates is only modestly lower for the bottom gaining group, and for the other three quartiles, calving rates were essentially the same.

In addition to this data-backed proof, showcasing early fertility in Red Angus females, RAAA also offers a Heifer Pregnancy EPD to aid the genetic selection for heifer fertility. Sires with higher Heifer Pregnancy EPDs, on average, produce daughters that breed up at a higher rate compared to daughters of sires with low Heifer Pregnancy EPDs. For more information follow this link: https: https://redangus.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/RAAA_Guide-to-EPDs_1-2021.pdf