For a commercial cow-calf producer, few losses sting quite like developing a heifer — paying for feed, vaccinations and breeding — only to watch her fall out of the herd as a 2- or 3-year-old open cow. The math is brutal: all that investment, and only one or two calves to show for it.
“The biggest loss in profit for most herds is the fallout of those young cows,” says Paige Pratt, Ph.D, at Neogen. “If we can select for cattle that are genetically predisposed to not fall out, then we can find cows that are curve-benders.”
At a time when producers across the country are focused on rebuilding the U.S. beef cow herd after years of liquidation, that ability to identify long-staying, profitable females before they ever have their first calf is more valuable than ever. That’s precisely what the genomic stayability trait — offered through Neogen’s beef genomics platform — is designed to deliver.
What Is Genomic Stayability?
In simple terms, stayability is a quantitative genomic score that tells producers whether a heifer has the genetic makeup to stay productive in the herd well into her later years.
“It’s a quantitative measurement where we can determine at birth, weaning or any time in the life, what the genetic propensity for that animal to stay in the herd for 6 years of age or longer is,” Pratt explains.
Critically, the model goes beyond just fertility. The underlying data captures whether a cow rebred in consecutive calvings, but it also picks up signals tied to structural soundness, udder quality, feet and legs, and disposition — everything that can push a cow out of the herd before her time.
“It actually mirrors exactly what a commercial cattle producer would be looking for in terms of an overall evaluation of a cow that can stay in the herd, do her job and not have a major issue that’s going to prevent her from being a high-quality female in your herd,” Pratt says.
From a scientific standpoint, the trait is more heritable than many producers might expect. Research published in the Journal of Animal Science shows the heritability of stayability is 0.36 — placing it closer to growth traits than to typical fertility measures.
The Economics: Why Longevity Is the Silent Profit Driver
Pratt doesn’t mince words about why stayability matters economically. Armed with data from Kansas Farm Management Association (KFMA) records, she makes the case that cow longevity is directly tied to profitability — and that producers who ignore it are leaving money on the table.
As an example, in 2023, the average cow cost for a mid-profit operation was $1,323. For a low-profit operation, it climbed to $1,650. That’s the cost of keeping a cow in your herd for a single year — before she even produces a calf.
When you factor in bred heifer development costs and salvage values, the numbers become stark. A 4-year-old cow with only two calves to her name requires producers to achieve $415/cwt. on those two calf crops just to break even. Push her productive life to seven or 10 years, and that break-even number drops dramatically — the additional calves absorb the development cost and the math finally tips in the producer’s favor.
“The value of longevity is completely tied to the ROI of evaluating stayability at a young age,” Pratt says. “It is tied to the profitability of a cow-calf producer directly.”
She acknowledges the topic isn’t glamorous. “It’s not sexy to go to the coffee shop and talk about our average age of our cow. Nobody gets excited,” she says with a laugh.
But she’s hopeful the industry is turning a corner — and that the economic data will make believers out of skeptics.
Less Than 1% of Cow Cost — The ROI of Testing
For producers who bristle at the cost of genomic testing, Pratt has a ready answer. She walks through the math at producer meetings, and it tends to stop the conversation.
“If we test twice as many as we need, we’ll just do a little math,” she explains. “You have $60 [in testing cost]. On a single-year cow cost, we’re at 4.5%. But if we make her, let’s say, 6 years of age — it’s $7,950 in total cow cost. Sixty divided by $7,950, we’re at less than 1% of cow cost to find out if she’s going to stay.”
The key, she emphasizes, is testing early — and testing more than you plan to keep.
Moving Quality Forward, Faster
Paul Mathews, general manager of Cannon Ranch in Nevada, manages around 2,000 Hereford-Angus mother cows on 480,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. With three cow herds, they manage a registered Angus herd and a purebred herd of non-registered Angus, which are bred to Hereford bulls to create F1 females. With a focus on heifer development, raising commercial cattle, and managing a feedlot, the operation implemented genomic testing in 2021.
“We were selecting visually and over the years, we figured out our visual selection leaned heavier toward terminal traits and good-looking heifers,” Mathews says. “We had a 12% open rate and got into genetic testing. Our thought in doing this is, ‘we can move our calf herd quality forward, faster.’”
He explains they tested only the heifers selected at the beginning of their genomic testing journey, but over the last two years, they have started testing 100% of their heifer crop so they can have a DNA profile to reference during the selection process.
“I talk to other ranchers who think I’m crazy for spending the amount of money we spend on this, but I try to convince them I started half-in, half-out on this, but not for the future. We’re all in because we are building the DNA profile,” Mathews summarizes.
For Cannon Ranch’s program, they are testing all heifers across their purebred and commercial herds so they can tighten up those herds even more in the future by looking at the low producers, weaning weights and other key traits. Heifer ID tags are numbered based on the rank of their maternal index score. It’s all about referencing back — and it’s working.
By placing focus on maternal traits to boost pregnancy rates and stayability, using their Cannon Maternal custom index, their operation now has a 94% breed-up rate. They retain the top 50% of heifers.
“It’s expensive to develop replacement heifers, and they’re worth a lot of money when they are right, uniform, and correct,” Mathews says. “Our goal is to take out the inefficiencies. If we get the DNA data, and stayability is not good, the RFI feed conversion is not good, and we see that the heifer pregnancy rate is not as efficient as others, I want to get them out of the way up front, so then I have a valuable feeder heifer and not an open 2- or 3-year-old cow.”
When to Test: Don’t Wait Until Weaning
One of the most important practical messages for commercial producers rebuilding their herds: collect DNA samples at branding — not at weaning.
“If they wait till weaning, they are already making the heifer decisions,” Pratt explains. By getting genomic results back before selection decisions are made, producers have the data they need to make smarter cuts.
Her recommendation: test at least twice as many heifers as you plan to keep. “You need to test more than you want to keep. At least twice as many as you want to keep, to be able to find the phenotypes — the weight range, the females that fit your phenotypic selection. And then test twice as many as you need of those females and find your top genetic performers out of the phenotypically superior animals.”
Some producers choose to test their entire heifer crop. For those also marketing replacement females, the data can add value at sale time as well.
Plugging Stayability Into a Custom Index
Stayability scores come back as part of Neogen’s genomic results package, where they can be evaluated on an individual animal basis or incorporated into a custom multi-trait selection index.
Producers can build their own index on the platform, weighting traits to match their operation’s goals — whether that’s adding more emphasis on carcass merit, keeping mature cow size in check, or dialing up daily gain without increasing frame.
But regardless of how the index is constructed, stayability always makes the cut. “I have never developed a custom index without stayability in it,” Pratt says flatly. “Everybody wants it.”
For heifers that score especially low on stayability — even if they look strong on every other trait — Pratt recommends a hard cut.
“If there’s a one or two on stayability, we’ll red-line them and say, even if they’re good at everything, because they’re so great on all the other traits, they still aren’t going to stay,” she explains.
Why Stayability Got Left Behind — Until Now
Part of the reason stayability has lagged growth and carcass traits in producer adoption is structural: not every breed has historically offered a stayability EPD to select on. Meanwhile, the genetic correlations embedded in popular terminal indexes have quietly worked against it.
Data from Neogen’s commercial heifer database, spanning herds across multiple regions, reveals a troubling pattern. While traits like calving ease, average daily gain and even carcass merit score consistently across the country, one trait stands out as the weakest link in every region: stayability.
“We selected for terminal traits, and we’re pretty good at it,” Pratt says. “But if we don’t select for stayability, because we don’t have a tool that is high quality and has a high heritability, then we won’t be able to fix that trait.”
Now, with a genomic prediction that carries moderately high heritability and captures the full picture of what keeps a cow productive, producers have that tool.
A Tool Built for the Rebuild
Pratt grew up on a commercial cow-calf operation, and the passion behind her work in genomic stayability is personal.
“I have a high passion for keeping commercial cow-calf producers in business,” she says. “I feel like this is a way in which we can really impact our industry.”
As the beef industry works to rebuild the cow herd in the face of tight heifer supplies and elevated replacement costs, identifying the females most likely to stay and produce year after year isn’t just good genetics — it’s good business.
The cow that stays is the cow that pays. Genomic stayability is making it possible to find her before her first calf ever hits the ground.
