The Female Foundation Project

The Canadian Gelbvieh Association has enrolled 1200 females over 22 herds thus far. The program aims to examine the different measures and methodologies of assessing docility. The methods for assessing docility include crush scores, flight speed, pen scores, and artificial intelligence evaluation through the development and training of BETSY with OneCup AI.

We will look to examine the interrelationships of various traits, including docility on profit drivers such as mothering ability, calf survival, rebreeding success, longevity and carcass characteristics. We will look at developing an interrelationship matrix that can be used in the creation of a maternal selection index which includes the influence of docility.

All participating herds must 100K test all of the females in their herd. This is at a reduced rate of $20 / test. The Canadian Gelbvieh Association is investing $10 / test and thank you to Neogen Canada for sponsoring $10 / test as well. It is an investment in the Gelbvieh herd book that will go toward ensuring herdbook accuracy in terms of parentage and also improving the accuracy of the EPD evaluations for participating herds. Females represent a large portion of retained animals within the purebred herdbook and a large proportion of animals that go toward the accuracy of EPD evaluations. Thank you to Allflex for sponsoring the TSUs for all females enrolled in the project.

Each animal is assessed on the following:

• Movement score (MOV)
  • Assessed the movement of the animals inside the squeeze chute (crush) [from 1 = no movement to 5 =constant and vigorous movements, animal can jump and raises its forelimbs off the ground]
• Tension score (TENS)
  • Assessed the cattle overall body tension, and head, ear and tail movements scoring [from 1 = No sudden movements of the tail, head, and neck, no muscle tremors to 4 = exhibited continuous and vigorous movements of the tail, head and neck]
• Crush score (CS)
  • Assessed the cattle overall reactivity inside the squeeze chute [from 1 = animal does not offer resistance, remains with head, ears and tail relaxed to 4 = offers great resistance, abrupt and vigorous movements of the whole animal as well as the head, ear and tail, sclera of the eye visible, audible breathing and may jump or fall]
• Flight speed (FS)
  Measured the speed at which the animal leaves the crush after being weighed using a chronometer
• Or Flight speed Score (FSS)
  Visual score of how each animal leaves the crush after being weighed [from 1 = walking to 4 = running]
• Pen score (PS)
  • Assessed the reaction of the animals in a pen of the corral [ from 1 = the animal walks slowly, allowing proximity to the observer to 4 = runs during the entire time of the assessment, jumps against fences and obstacles, and tries to attack the observer]

Click on the below video links to see examples of the different camera views we set up to record these docility evaluations. Thank you to Goodview Gelbvieh for piloting the camera views in helping to train the BETSY artificial intelligence. The animal in these videos scored the following:
MOV = 2
TENS = 1
CS = 2
FSS = 1
PS = 1

Video 1 | Video 2 | Video 3

The Gelbvieh breed is known for it’s docility and mothering ability. Both very economical traits in the beef industry. We look forward to collecting the data to back up the long standing reputation of the breed and helping to pioneer the data collection of this phenotype using innovative technology.