07/18/2025
Data Can’t Fix What Selection Broke and Your Grandpa Knew It...
Data is only useful if the foundation is sound. But in today’s cattle world, whole operations are trying to solve fertility, efficiency, and longevity problems with spreadsheets while ignoring the fact that their selection pressure created the problem in the first place. You can’t index your way out of a broken cow herd. You can’t chase extremes, prop it all up with inputs, and act shocked when it falls apart.
Your grandpa didn’t need formulas to find good cows. He watched them. He bred for cows that stuck around—ones that calved on time, raised a good one, and held up year after year. No excuses. No second chances. Just function.
Somewhere along the line, we stopped trusting our eyes and started trusting indexes built by people who’ve never culled a cow in their life. We’ve been measuring the wrong things for the wrong reasons, chasing marbling and milk curves while ignoring the basics: structural integrity, hormonal balance, natural fertility, moderate frames, and the ability to thrive on grass.
If you’re keeping cows around with feed, shots, and technician schedules, then it’s not your genetics doing the work. It’s your wallet. Numbers have their place, but they’re not magic. And they sure as hell aren’t a substitute for sound selection.
Maybe your grandpa didn’t have a laptop. But he had cattle that worked. And he knew how to spot the ones that didn’t.
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