Everything YOU need to know about crossbreeding!

What is crossbreeding?! Most people have heard what a crossbred animal is, but what most don't realize is that there is more behind the technique of crossbreeding, and can be beneficial to many farmers! We are going to jump in deeper and try to determine why commercial farming operations use crossbreeding!

Hybrid Plant- Cross Between Parents of Different Species 

What is Crossbreeding.
A crossbred animal is a result from the technique of crossbreeding. A crossbred animal usually refers to an animal with purebred parents of two different breeds. Crossbreeding is often done with the intention to create an offspring that share the traits of both parents, and is often used to maintain health and viability of the animal. Every type of plant and animal can be a crossbred, and in the cattle industry, crossbred cattle are called commercial cattle. 

My Personal Crossbreeding Background.

Sugar- My 2 Year-Old Charolais Simmental Cross Cow

Being born and raised on a mixed grain and commercial cattle farm, I have grown up hearing the stories and facts behind each farming technique that my father and grandfather use. Since our farm is a commercial beef farm, this means that we have purebred bulls and crossbred cows, which will then produce a crossbred calf. We choose the male and female breeds that will produce the most desired offspring, as well as provide ease during breeding and calving. Crossbreeding is basically a technique used to breed two of the best breeds on our farm, to produce the most structurally correct and easy calved offspring. This doesn't mean that problems aren't accompanied with crossbreeding, there are always problems that can arise no matter the situation. By being able to take two different breeds, and mate them to produce an offspring of desire, crossbreeding on our farm seems very logical and beneficial. 


Since our farm is commercial, we don't raise bulls due to the fact that all of the bull calves are crossbred's. Therefore, we castrate the bull calves to make them into steer calves, and feed them until they are old enough to be sold for meat at the auction market. Purebred producers often raise the bull calves, to then later on sell them as breeding herd bulls. We purchase our herd bulls from other producers, and each of them are purebreds. All of the heifer calves (females) that are born on our farm, all of which are crossbreds, are either sent to the market or are used as replacement heifers, meaning that they will be bred the following year, and will produce a calf. Due to this reason, this is why all of the cows in our herd are crossbreds. To fully utilize the potential of a crossbreeding program, the cows themselves must be crossbred. Crossbred cows, when compared with purebred cows, make better mothers. Crossbred cows wean approximately 15% more pounds of calf/cow exposed than purebreds. 

Pasture of Crossbred Cattle 

Benefits of Crossbreeding.
Crossbreeding provides advantages from heterosis (hybrid vigour) and complementarity (desirable breeds are bred together.) Heterosis occurs when different breeds are mated together. When different breeds are mated the crossbred offspring are less inbred than their parents, and this allows a better chance of avoiding inbreeding depression. All purebred cattle are considered inbred, because they mate within one specific breed. Inbreeding leads to a reduction in performance, which is known as inbreeding depression. As a result of crossbreeding, the offspring perform at a level above the average of their parents. Therefore, heterosis is more important for key traits relating to reproductive efficiency and calf survival. Each breed has its strengths and weaknesses. Heterosis in a sound crossbreeding program can increase productivity in the beef cow herd by 20%–25% over a comparable purebred breeding program. 

 Heterosis Boost with Crossbred Cows

• 10% increase in conception rate
• 10% improvement in calving ease
• 7.5% increase in number of calves raised to weaning
• 5–10% increase in milk yield

 Heterosis Advantage of Crossbred Calves

• 5% increase in number calves surviving to weaning.
• 5% heavier weaning weights
• 3% increase in postweaning gain

Complementarity results when desirable characteristics from different breeds are combined into a crossbred. Crossbreeding achieves a higher frequency of desirable characteristics among crossbred's than that found in either single parent breed. The characteristics gained from the crossbreeding complement each other, and allows for a difference in the structure and growth of the offspring, as well as the calving ease. Choosing which specific two breeds to crossbreed is very important, due to the fact that a poor choice in breeds and animals within that breed have a lasting impact on the success of any crossbreeding plan. An example of a complementary would be mating a Charolais bull (known for growth and retail yield) to a Gelbvieh Angus cross cow. The result, the cow has the milk and fertility, and the calf has more growth/retail yield.

Gelbvieh Red Angus Crossbred Cow

Charolais Bull 

Traits	Heritability	Heterosis
fertility, mothering ability, calf survival	low	high
birth and weaning weight, milking ability and feedlot gain	medium	medium
mature weight, carcass quality	high	low

I hope that gave you a bit of insight on why farmers use the technique of crossbreeding their cattle! If you have any questions please feel free to ask! The Ponoka Stampede starts tonight, and the town of Ponoka is all in preparation for the large annual event! Hope to see some of you out there!

-Jess 


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