Our family’s approach to cattle genetic improvement has always focused on balance. My grandfather Tom Lasater closed his herd to outside genetics in 1937, so we are approaching 90 years of intense selection across four generations of our family and many generations of cattle. By adhering to the Six Essentials, we have steadfastly avoided the fads and single-trait selection that have proved costly to other breeds. The problem lies in that when you over-emphasize a certain trait, it always comes at a cost to others. Examples include choosing color over fertility, rapidly selecting for polled genetics which can lead to prepuce problems, chasing pedigree at the expense of structural correctness, or tolerating bad temperament to achieve some other goal. The industry has chased every imaginable fad when it comes to stature—short, tall, double-muscled. A new one now coming from the show world is insanely long necks. What possible purpose could that serve in cattle production? Pure aesthetics should never dictate selection—only form and function should, which always result in beauty.

This is not to say all those goals don’t warrant emphasis. We simply believe it must be done slowly, methodically and in balance with all the other important traits. Take the polled gene for example. Polled bulls have become very sought-after in our cattle sales. We are moving to increase the numbers of polled calves we produce, but not by accepting lesser bulls or females to accelerate that process. They must check all the other boxes, too—and there are a lot of boxes to check. If they are polled and meet all the other criteria, so much the better. I imagine our herd will be all polled someday, but I expect it will take 50+ years and believe that is the right way to achieve any goal.

Cattle breeding is a brutally slow process. My dad used to say a breeder only gets 40 calf crops in his career. The absolute best a cow can do naturally is produce one calf per year. She can do that for up to 10 or 12 years in a calf-a-year program, but many more fall out in the early years. When we make breeding decisions, it takes at least three years to truly know the outcome. This timeline is hard to accept but important that we do so. Those successful cows imprint critical fertility and longevity into the herd’s DNA.

On the flip side, many programs calve heifers later to avoid calving challenges, but this approach just exacerbates the problem, costing the breeder both in genetic calving ease and fertility. Selection pressure wields a tremendous force in a herd, but we must have the fortitude to stick with it, which is never easy.

Another modern development that can sometimes prove costly is A.I. and embryo transfer. You won’t find a bigger believer in these technologies than me, but they must be deployed judiciously. In other operations, we see a lot of virgin heifers flushed without ever having had a natural calf. What if they are infertile, poor mothers, have a bad bag or raise sorry calves? Just because a heifer cost a lot of money or offers something desirable on paper does not mean she should be reproduced beyond the natural realm. In our program, we look for proven donors that have successfully raised calves, are packed with performance and fit our desired phenotype.

The same holds true with semen sires. Ideally, we would want to see their offspring and how they grow out. Young bulls can change a great deal until they mature. The better part of valor is to wait and see what they bring to the table. I believe a lot of structural problems and genetic abnormalities stem from the over-acceleration of untested genetics.

Our L Bar Beefmasters are unique among many seedstock herds in that we employ multiple-sire breeding. We believe it is critical that bulls learn to compete to breed, just as they will in our commercial customers’ herds. If you turn out four bulls on 100 cows, they never breed 25% of the calves individually. One will get 60%, and one might have less than 5%. Guess which one is the best bull? You would never discover this in single-sire program. This selection tool for precocity, fertility and breeding dominance critically impacts the genetic makeup of a herd.

In addition, breeders often overlook a herd’s ability and willingness to travel long distances to graze, water and breed. If an animal has always lived in a 30-acre trap or, worse yet, in a barn on feed, how are they going to do their job in the desert southwest or the tropics of the Gulf Coast? We operate our herd in expansive and totally external environments with minimal pampering. This approach ensures they know how to forage, breed and thrive, regardless of their circumstances. This hardiness is one of these reasons our customers like our cattle so well—our cattle make it work under any difficult circumstance. Cattle are very adaptable—as long as we work to keep them that way.

Another related element of selection is mature size. Cattle have gotten increasingly bigger through the years. Continually selecting for the heaviest weights and highest gains easily increases size, but at what cost? In the end, the females must do a difficult job, often in challenging environments. Making them all giant grain-eaters is not the answer for the ranchers raising calves on grass. Again, a balanced approach should keep mature size in check and cattle fitting their environment, but the easy availability of feed and money has compromised our industry’s willingness to seek moderation.