Beef producers today are surrounded by data — performance weights, expected progeny differences (EPDs), indexes, genomics and endless traits listed in bull sale catalogs. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and hard to know where to focus. No matter how sophisticated the tools become, the core challenge stays the same: beef producers need cows whose genetics match the environment and management they put them in, and they need them to be profitable.
“Our goal should always be to combine excellent genetics with excellent environment in order to enable that animal to express their true genetic potential,” says Jamie Courter, University of Missouri beef extension specialist.
She says the process starts with a genetic business plan or clear breeding objective.
“No business goes into a bank and asks for a loan without a business plan,” she says. “A breeding objective is no different. It’s just the genetic business plan that you have for your operation. You shouldn’t buy bulls or select replacements without knowing how your genetics are supposed to make money.”
She says producers need to consider:
- Are you selling calves at weaning?
- Holding them to yearling?
- Retaining ownership to the rail and selling on a grid?
Each path points toward different economically relevant traits:
- Weaning weight
- Yearling weight
- Carcass quality and yield
She says it is important to also consider these indirect economic traits:
- Docility
- Feed efficiency
- Mature cow size
- Structural soundness, udders, feet and legs
“Once you’ve outlined those economic drivers, there are three foundational traits I consider non‑negotiable when selecting the next generation of beef females,” Courter stresses. “Mature cow weight, hair shedding and calving ease.”
She explains these traits affect both biological efficiency and the ability of a female to thrive in her environment.
1. Mature Cow Weight
The industry has paid a lot of attention to weaning and yearling weights, but much less to what has quietly been happening to mature cow size. Across breeds, genetic trends show mature cow weight has been pushed higher and higher over time.
“As an industry, we have not been paying attention to it,” she explains regarding mature cow weight. “We have been driving not only the genetic merit, but the actual mature weight of our U.S. cow herd higher and higher, and from an efficiency and a profitability standpoint, there are a lot of problems with that.”
She says bigger cows eat more, require more forage per pair and may simply not fit a producer’s resource base or stocking rate.
Mature cow weight is not inherently good or bad, but it must fit the environment and management. A 1,600 lb. cow on marginal grass in a low‑input system is a very different proposition than a similar cow in a high‑input, irrigated environment.
She adds if you ignore mature weight, you may find your “better” genetics are actually eroding profitability because your cows require more feed than your operation can economically provide.
Read more about cow size:
When studying bull catalogs, she tells producers to not stop at growth and carcass EPDs. Look carefully at mature cow weight EPDs and related indexes.
“Ask yourself whether the mature size implied by those genetics makes sense for your pasture, your feed resources and your stocking rate,” she summarizes. “Mature cow weight must be part of every replacement heifer discussion.”
2. Hair Shedding
Courter says hair shedding is one of the simplest, yet most powerful, adaptation traits the industry has largely overlooked. It measures how quickly a cow gets rid of her winter hair coat in late spring and early summer.
She explains the cows are scored on a 1–5 scale, where 1 is a slick summer coat and 5 is a full winter coat, with the others in between.
Why does this matter? In hot, humid environments or where endophyte‑infected fescue is common — like much of Missouri and the fescue belt — cows that hold onto their winter coat longer suffer more heat stress. Heat‑stressed cows are less likely to breed back early, produce less milk and wean lighter calves.
Research by the University of Missouri using data on about 14,000 Simmental and SimAngus cows from across the U.S. showed earlier‑shedding cows have a clear economic advantage. On the same scoring date, cows that scored a 1 (slick) weaned calves that were, on average, 45 lb. heavier than those from cows scored as 5 (full winter coat).
She emphasizes at today’s calf prices, 45 lb. of weaning weight is real money.
Read more about shedding:
Early Shedding Cows Produce Heavier Calves at Weaning
Even better, hair shedding is a fairly heritable trait — on par with, or even more heritable than, weaning weight.
That means producers can make real genetic progress by selecting for earlier shedders. In hot, fescue‑based systems especially, hair shedding should not be an afterthought. It belongs alongside traditional traits when deciding which females and sires fit your environment.
“We often think of hair shedding as a trait only for the Southeast U.S. on fescue, but heat stress is everywhere,” Courter points out.
Note that hair shedding is distinct from hair coat thickness. Both can matter, but they’re not the same trait and shouldn’t be treated as interchangeable.
3. Calving Ease (CE)
Courter strongly recommends selecting bulls on calving ease EPDs, not birth weight EPD or actual birth weight. Many producers still say they want “low birth weight bulls,” especially for heifers. But what they really want is fewer difficult births. Selecting solely on birth weight often misses that goal.
Birth weight EPD simply predicts pounds of birth weight. Calving ease EPDs (direct and maternal) predict the probability of unassisted births in first‑calf heifers or their daughters.
The data show a big difference: “The correlation between birth weight and percent of unassisted births is .24,” Courter says. “If we look at the relationship between calving ease and percent of unassisted births, that genetic correlation is .9. Selection for low birth weight does not ensure calving ease. It just ensures low birth weight calves and all the problems that go along with that.”
There is also an intermediate optimum. Looking at Red Angus data, she says once calving ease direct reaches about +14, you already have roughly a 95% chance of unassisted calving in heifers. Pushing to extreme calving ease levels doesn’t buy much additional benefit and may create trade‑offs in growth and other traits.
She stresses mature cows, in particular, don’t need “heifer bull” levels of calving ease.
Her message to producers is when buying bulls and planning matings for replacements, base decisions on calving ease EPDs appropriate to heifers versus cows, not just a low-birth-weight number.
Courter’s three non‑negotiables — mature cow weight, hair shedding and calving ease — won’t tell you everything about a female, but together they provide a powerful foundation for building cows that truly fit a producer’s environment and business plan.
From there, she encourages producers to use growth, carcass and maternal EPDs — plus selection indexes and, if you choose genomic tools — to fine‑tune their cow herd toward a specific breeding objective. But remember, the goal isn’t perfection: “The perfect animal doesn’t exist, right? But we have to use the tools and the information that we have to get as close as possible.”
