Elevating Wagyu Genetics to New Heights | The American Rancher

[Music] coming up wagyu breed is genetically predisposed to marblehead we tried it we just man this is all it's cracked up to be i wish every breeder would start using genomics today overnight you can make incredible differences if you're interested in becoming a wagyu breeder these are the cattle you really need see how four seed stuck producers are elevating high demand wagon genetics to new heights next on the american rancher hello and welcome to the american rancher i'm pam minnick wagyu beef has taken the high-end restaurant and farm-to-table industry by storm but for breeders and commercial cattlemen alike access to predictable waiguu genetics has been a challenge until now on august 21st four seed stock producers in texas will offer premium wagyu genetics for sale with advanced prediction and calculations including genomically enhanced ebvs that are only now becoming available in the u.s for wagyu cattle first we're in central texas to learn the story of the breeders and their passion for improving the wagyu breed in the early 70s i uh met a veterinarian up in georgetown that had had the four original wagyu bulls that came over here i actually bought one of the first seven eight swaggy heifers that was born in the u.s tell them what you paid through that we paid 13 000 for that heifer and actually sold the first wool cap for 16 000 and that's how we got started did our first embryo transfer work at that time and just continued on brandon baker also breeds high-end wagyu genetics he and his family have a long history in the beef cattle industry my family's been in the ranch since texas was still a part of mexico my dad was a cow-calf commercial operator for years and years and and so i kind of learned the basics from him and my uncle he produced some breed stock and he kind of introduced me to that and i was fortunate to be exposed to feeder cattle through my grandfather and another gentleman named paul wilkie and how i got started in the wagyu business was my brother and i were on vacation in thailand and we saw kobe beef being advertised extensively in restaurants over there but i kept thinking to myself you know is it really all they say it is so i got online and i ordered meat from several different companies we tried and we just man this is this is really good this is all it's cracked up to be and we noticed we kind of preferred the beef that had come from the black-heighted animals and my uncle right right then after eating it he said brandon so if you're interested in this i'll spot you the recep cows to to get started and bubba k right there in maynard checked him out and had a just solid reputation so i called him up bought some embryos waigu breeder josh eilers lives just east of austin texas there he owns and operates ranger cattle an ever-expanding farm-to-plate wagyu beef company here at ranger cattle what we do is everything from conception you know breeding the animals all the way to consumption whether that looks like delivering to a restaurant or a hotel locally we opened up this tasting room and we gave people access to it every day from four to seven you can come in and you can buy a steak for all the locals here well word spread quicker than i ever would have imagined i would have never thought that the public would be so excited about being able to buy beef directly from a ranch well on top of that they can also buy some of the best beef in america right here from the ranch and actually meet the farmers that created it and hear about all the hard work that went into it because it does take three years going from that conception the breeding of the animal all the way to the end product being so close to austin gave josh an edge when the pandemic slowed beef sales to hotels and restaurants one thing people forgot was just because the restaurants shut down well the cattle still had to eat so being vertically integrated but we still had the bills of you know feeding the animals without all of that income coming in from our traditional revenue sources such as hotels or restaurants we opened up an event space out here on the ranch and we'll host everything from weddings to rehearsal dinners we'll do drive-ins on friday nights we'll host you know concerts we're even doing a demolition derby this fall in 2010 ryan cade and blake robinson created rc ranch in engleton texas just south of houston they also breed high-end wagyu genetics and operate a successful farm-to-plate wagyu beef operation today the first day you can buy our rc ranch wagyu beef jerky at 68 hebs in september that's going to roll out to 165 hebs across texas we built our business based on the premise that people care more than ever about where their food comes from you know they want to know the story they want to know how it was raised we want to be on the front edge of educating that consumer on what good beef is and not only from those standpoints but also people want quality you know people want a well-marbled pretty steak people are starting to understand the wagyu difference and what makes it special and until about 10 years ago everybody knew what kobe beef was but no one knew what wagyu v5 so now it's very common for everybody to go into a restaurant and see wagyu beef and they said that's what i want in my personal opinion wagyu genetics are going to become more and more a part of the national lexicon in the beef industry it has to this point extensively influenced the high end market but i think it as we move forward it's going to affect the whole national beef production improve the quality overall and the healthiness of beef actually our goal when we i first started getting interested in the cattle was to upgrade american beef what we were getting in the grocery stores to me was just not satisfactory and i knew that this breed could upgrade the product that the consumer was buying in the grocery store if you put a wagyu bull on angus cattle or short horns or even charlays that are producing choice beef you're going to upgrade at one level a lot of them are going to come up to prime consumers just want to buy a good piece of beef and it comes out of a good prime carcass and if it's wagyu it even has more taste to it all ranchers know that ingenuity and innovation can mean the difference in surviving and thriving while innovations in the waiguu breed have helped these producers thrive they focus on profit traits that every producer looks for i always go back to the lassiter philosophy of cattle raising which i've i've found extremely helpful over the years you have to have a good functional all-around animal they they've got to produce a good calf they've got to breed every year every 365 days that cow brings me money she either brings me a calf or she goes to the market but she's producing they've got to be well suited for their environment but i can't ignore what brings me to the dance the meat quality the feed efficiency the yield grades the extremely positive attributes that the wagyu cattle offer which brings up a myth that waiguu cattle must have special care and that they're difficult to raise that's not a true statement at all you've seen how we ours are out here in the pasture sometimes we don't see them for days we wait for them to come out of the brush to see what kind of calf they got we have a lot of brush pasture they're tough little cows they can handle anything we've raised them from south texas to canada and shipped them back and forth and bought cattle in washington state and shipped them all the way to florida so they're sturdy little cattle and they can they can handle it up next i wish every breeder would start using genomics today right yeah that's how you overnight you can make incredible differences genomics are advancing wagyu genetic predictability to levels unheard of just a few years ago that story is next on the american [Music] rancher welcome back to the american rancher when bubba k began breeding wagyu genetics in the 1970s he had very little data to back up his breeding decisions today advances in dna technology are used to calculate genomically enhanced estimated breeding values which are far more accurate than pedigree alone all they had was marbling at that point and that's what we bred for was barbling and we wound up with a lot of little cows and small bulls and we couldn't get the commercial man to buy them at first because they were so small but later when the genetics came in back in the early 90s when we got some new genetics in we've got some bigger cattle and just taken years to breed that into and keep the high marbling that the wagyu cattle are known for prior to starting ranger cattle i was actually an army ranger and i was one for five years did four combat deployments and one thing that i really learned from the rangers and the leaders there was hey if you're gonna do something do it right otherwise you don't waste your time so that's the exact approach that i've taken with ranger cattle and how we breed our animals and even the quality of product that we produce at the end of the day is hey i want to make it the best possible and through genomics we're making wagyu cattle more predictable for the entire cattle industry as well as in consumers so based off of a trip to australia probably about four or five years ago and seeing how much they were able to capitalize off of genomics and using them and how great they were being able to make their herd and create beef as far as on a quality standpoint i came back to the united states and said we have absolutely got to adopt all these new technologies especially if we're going to continue to spearhead the beef industry in the united states we got to continue to be progressive especially adopting these new sciences and collecting carcass data and coupling those two things together really identify hey what is our single best bull we're producing what is our single best cow and then you know cross those two to create even better offspring every single year so a ton of artificial breeding but i mean that's how you're able to get ahead especially with the use of genomics these days you know you can really target what bloodlines you want to use and use you know the actual science behind it to make your breeding decisions right and ultimately that should be the goal of all the breeders i wish every breeder would start using genomics today right yeah that's how you overnight you can make incredible differences you know just three years ago we were producing bulls that now i'll look at and i'll say man you know where were we going wrong we were headed in the complete opposite direction where we should have been going animals that we thought were great you know just four years ago now are turning out to be not so great you know they're average animals and with those average animals what's great about our program is we do so much embryo transfer that hey just because an animal now we consider average in our herd well now she can become a reset and so it's not a lost animal we didn't have to completely cull her you know she was a good mama and she was very fertile and that's why we kept her around in the first place well now we can just put an embryo in her and she can have a calf every year just like a good cow should but she's having a calf that she's not even related to and so we're able to only pass on the best genetics in our herd yeah at the end of the day the most important thing is the carcass for us right and so we want to produce the most amazing carcass possible but it's really hard to predict how great a carcass is going to be and it's pretty much impossible without the use of genomics early on in 09 when i bought the first embryos there wasn't just a lot of information to go off of and not being able to link all that together you had a hard time making decisions between herds on on breed stock bubba and i started sending cattle to the genetic development center which you know gave us a lot of ultrasound debt a lot of growth data we got some residual fee take information off their gross safe system we were able to make a lot of decisions you know within our own herds the purebred waiguu herd in the united states has evolved dramatically since the first animals arrived in the 70s breeders like bubba josh brandon and ryan have implemented years of genomic experience to create a high benchmark for wagyu genetics their work helps to set the stage for propagating genomically enhanced waiguu genetics throughout the commercial beef industry when you're looking into the future and you're trying to figure out how you make decisions today to produce the best cow tomorrow i've always used this analogy with people and compared it to a megapixel and a camera you know in 1975 kodak produced the first digital camera it had .01 megapixel back then there's just pedigree they had four bulls they brought in from japan in 1976 and that was the the best you could decide on as time went on in the 90s you know the cameras got better and well that was your basic epds your weaning weights your drilling weights then ultrasound started to come in he started to collect that data set time went on the digital cameras got better you know now you can buy one with 29 35 megapixel well that's your genomically enhanced epds you know you're tying a dna sample back into the data set and linking all that together and it's giving you a much clearer picture of what you have today and where you're trying to go it's it's your picture of the future is much more crisp than it was back in the 1970s so not only do we plan on helping to make the entire wagu breed better but we plan on making it more predictable and what i mean by that is we want the commercial cattlemen to trust in the ebv's and trust in the genomics that we've been using for years and years to really prove out these animals so it's like hey it not only marbles well but the rib eyes are big and the animal grows and it's people feel safe in buying the ranger cattle genetics because they know how much hard work and how much research and development has gone through the breeding and the upbringing of these animals today the use of genomically enhanced estimated breeding values or ebv's give wagyu producers twice as much information as making breeding decisions compared to the use of pedigree alone which has been the practice of u.s waigu breeders for years the australian abri use ebv which stands for estimated breeding value and an epd which is expected progeny difference is one half of the estimated breeding value nowadays you can look at the genomically enhanced ebv's and understand this is where i'm trying to go and this is what i need to do to get there after the break when you get into some of the chuck cuts like chuck eyes and denver's they may be considered marginal you know when you're just talking about usda choice b but when you get to the wagyu they're spectacular ryan grills up a wagyu taste test after the break here on the american rancher [Music] welcome back to the american rancher increased consumer demand for waigu cattle begins with their predisposition to marbling compared to marginal choice cuts of beef from other breeds the same waiguu cuts are exceptional ryan puts that to a taste test over a hardwood fire [Music] so we have two chuck eyes at denver and some good old burgers hard to beat a great cheeseburger and that's one of the things that's interesting about wagyu is a lot of times people just think about the rib eyes the strips and the fillets but all the cuts are special a wagyu burger is that much better than just a a regular old burger and when you get into some of the chuck cuts like chuck eyes and denver's they may be considered marginal you know when you're just talking about usda choice b but when he gets to the wagyu they're spectacular a great beef program starts with great genetics if you don't have the right genetics in the beginning then all the other things you do they don't matter great feeding programs maturity raising them right none of those things are going to get you the finished product you want if you don't start with the right genetics wagyu breed is genetically predisposed to marble heavily and and that is that is genetic dig in guys this is a fun one that a lot of folks don't know about this is a denver stake then restate comes out of the chuck gentlemen that is tenderloin yep can't pass [Music] it's like a lot like a rib eye but feel like it has a really good flavor too well i always like tenderloin but this denver cut is something new to me i don't know that i've ever had a denver cut it's very very tasty and flavorful it eats a little bit like a like a tri-tip almost is what i would compare it to as far as texture and flavor very good wow you were also known for things like docility as a breed i'd say it's pretty much the norm also low birth weight that's why a lot of other commercial cattlemen and other breeds like to use our bulls is their low birth weights it's absolutely our goal as a family ranch that every year our genetics get better and with the science that's available today there's just no reason that it doesn't we've got a an array of lots going to be available in that cell we have some really nice females we have some you know some some heifers we have some pears we also have some really neat embryos that we made kind of sourcing some of the best genetics out there and those embryos will be you know safe and calf and they'll be 75 to 90 days bred at the sale palpating guaranteed to a certain embryo so those will be some some fun lots as well for the first time ever we're really opening up our herd and we're having a sale on august 21st where you know individuals from other ranches will be able to come in and buy some of these genetics that we've worked so hard proving out over the years as well as i would continue to plan for years and years in the future of being able to just improve the quality of the wagyu breed in general you know the better we can make every other ranch through using our genetics the better we are because if everybody makes money and everyone creates a better product then the end consumer will start to recognize oh wago beef really is that great and that's going to help us as well in the long run join bubba k josh eilers brandon baker and ryan cade on august 21st in solato texas for their elite wagyu genetics sale this is your opportunity to get in on wagyu profits with the top of the line genomically enhanced wagyu genetics some that have never been available to the public before this sale if you're interested in becoming a wagyu breeder these are the kind of cattle you really need they're definite donor potential cows in this sale as well as herd bulls i would encourage you to come to salado texas on august the 21st we'll have chefs there preparing outstanding beef product we will start the sale at six o'clock central time and we'll start with the bulls we'll have 20 head of bulls there that can go on any cow in america we'll have a hundred head of females in this sale and all of them are going to be genomically enhanced on their ebv's so if you're unable to attend you can see the channel on superior click to bid all the videos are available and also we will be broadcast live on sla tv to learn more about the august 21st elite wagyu sale and to register for a buyer's number log on to superiorlivestock.com or give robbie shocker a call and to find out more about us visit our website theamericanrancher.com or connect with us on facebook we'd love to hear from you i'm pam minnick for our entire american rancher team thanks for joining us we'll see you next time [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Superior Productions

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Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 10 2021