University of Idaho (UI) Fort Hall Extension is enhancing beef cattle quality and decreasing calving difficulties for Fort Hall Reservation beef cattle herds with support from USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Federally Recognized Tribes Extension Program (FRTEP).
FRTEP funds Extension programs on American Indian Reservations and Tribal jurisdictions that address the unique needs and problems facing Tribal Nations and their members.
“FRTEP is a competitive grant program that fosters projects tailored to the needs of a Tribal community,” said Janyce Woodard, FRTEP national program leader. “The University of Idaho Fort Hall Extension educator recognized a very specific need of cattle producers on the Fort Hall Reservation and developed a program to meet their needs.”
Commingled herds are common on western rangelands. On the Fort Hall Reservation in southeast Idaho, more than 3,800 head of cattle run on one extensive range unit on the Fort Hall Reservation. The cattle are released as individually owned herds in different areas but commingle and run collectively as one herd for a grazing season of approximately six months.
Producer herd size averages about 200 head for this range unit, but one rancher has approximately 650 head, the largest individually owned tribal member owned herd on the reservation.
According to Danielle Gunn, the University of Idaho (UI) FRTEP agent working on the Fort Hall Reservation, commingling makes bull quality a crucial factor in maintaining and improving the quality of beef produced by ranchers using this range unit.
“We started our annual bull grading program because we have animals from many ranchers grazing on one particular range unit,” Gunn said. “Only bulls that meet the program’s established standards can be introduced to the comingled herd to maintain high quality cattle.”
Annually, the Fort Hall Bull Grading program that Gunn leads evaluates and scores about 165 bulls aged from one to four. Evaluation includes both physical characteristics such as musculature, overall health, body condition and physical soundness. A veterinarian also evaluates the bull to ensure it meets fertility standards and that it is free of trichomoniasis, a sexually transmitted disease that causes early abortions.
“Over the years, we had to reject bulls every year, but through our education efforts, we have seen a dramatic reduction in rejected bulls,” she said. “This reduces producers’ costs because they don’t have to buy as many new bulls for the breeding season.”
Data from 2005 through 2015 showed an average of four bulls were rejected per year. Following UI Fort Hall Extension programming and additional requirements, an average of one bull was rejected per year from 2016-2024. Gunn noted that in some years that every bull tested passed the grading project’s evaluation.
Previously, bulls had not been selected for calving ease genetics, so producers were losing money when calves were lost due to calving difficulties.
Fort Hall producers now use a genetic selection tool, Expected Progeny Differences (EPD), that they learned through UI Fort Hall Extension workshops and beef schools. EPDs are predictions of how an animal will pass along desired genetic traits to its offspring.
“Producers were losing calves because of dystocia (difficult births) so now they are selecting bulls with high scores for calving ease,” Gunn said. As a result, dystocia rates have decreased to the point where producers rarely have to assist in a calf birth, and producers are reporting fewer calf and cow deaths.
“It took about three to four years for the implementation of this program to work, but we have seen a dramatic drop in the number of cows experiencing difficulty calving,” she said.
Gunn said better bull quality has improved overall calf crops and higher weaning weights. “Better quality calves can improve our ranchers’ bottom line financially,” she said. “It increases the marketability of the animals and can improve ranch income.”
The future looks bright for the program. UI Extension and the Fort Hall Bull Grading Committee will continue to evaluate and provide guidelines and education for genetic tools and traits to improve herd genetics and calf quality.