Livestock Gentec is very lucky and grateful to have excellent partners in industry and elsewhere. It is sometimes difficult to give proper credit to those who contribute to our successes. However, when we can, we take the opportunity to highlight excellent collaborators and share some of their contributions to our projects. The team at Cow Calf Health Management Solutions (CCHMS) led by Dr. Waylon Wise, are excellent industry partners and are key to the success in some of our current projects. CCHMS, are a beef cattle veterinary animal health group in Alberta with a focus on cow calf operations. Dr. Wise and his team are directly involved in the pilot projects for two of our projects with Dr. John Basarab as the PI: “Using genomics to improve the profitability and sustainability of Alberta’s beef industry” Sustainable CAP funded administered by RDAR and “Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Canadian Beef Industry through the Development and Adoption of Genomic Tools” funded through an NSERC-SSHRC Alliance grant in sustainable agriculture.
The CCHMS team promotes innovative practices to their clients in areas they know can add value to producers. Where Livestock Gentec is concerned, they have promoted and coordinated the execution of our genomic tools pilot projects with their clients. This has significantly extended our reach, and provided a convenient means for producers to get involved in our projects through facilitating tissue sample collection and shipping. Caylee Dorval, account manager with CCHMS, has been an excellent support in coordinating the sample submission and phenotype compilation. For the Gentec team, this means we can receive consistent and detailed records for their animals to support our goals of validating and improving our genomic tools.
To help put this support into context, CCHMS has coordinated the sampling from 9,328 animals and supplied raw phenotype data for many of these cattle in our pilot projects. The pilot project for the NSERC-SSHRC alliance grant requires more data collection from the producer side such as feeding and management data. Always the innovators, Dr. Wise and team are implementing a new data collection platform with pilot producers that will simplify the entry and analysis for these data. We are using these data to estimate on farm GHG reductions through the implementation of genomic tools as a beneficial management practice.
Here’s a quote the CCHMS team shared with us on our collaborations:
“Cow/Calf Health Management Solutions (CCHMS) has had an excellent opportunity to work with Livestock Gentec on the Genomic Tools Project. This collaboration has helped bridge the gap between producers and genomic research. CCHMS specializes in boots on-the-ground support, helping producers learn DNA sample collection and track chuteside data using the herd management software tool, Herdtrax. For animals enrolled in the trial, CCHMS facilitates the extraction and communication of the raw data collected by the producers to the research team to improve genomic predictions. Livestock Gentec has seamlessly provided us their genomic data—including gEPDs, Breed Composition, and parentage results—with a quick turnaround time. The funding and genomic data have greatly benefited commercial producers by helping them make more informed decisions regarding replacement selection and sorting targeted mating groups. CCHMS is delighted to participate in the collaboration with Livestock Gentec and looks forward to incorporating genomics into our consultation service model.”
Aside from the direct support to our project goals, Dr. Wise has a very keen sense of what industry needs. As CCHMS has many clients representing a diversity in scale and approaches, the team is a very good sounding board for new ideas and how best to approach our projects and goals. Livestock Gentec aims to grow adoption of genomic tools in the beef cattle industry Dr. Wise and his team at CCHMS are key partners in achieving this goal. We hope to continue this strong collaboration.