Breeding polled cattle in Australia

Abstract

Economic losses in beef cattle due to bruised meat can be largely attributed to the presence of horns. While dehorning practices can provide some economic improvement, it is more labour intensive and is likely to be subject to renewed animal welfare legislation in the future. Breeding naturally polled animals is the long term alternative to reducing economic loss while maintaining best practice animal welfare. The haplotype Poll test is aimed to estimate the Poll genetics of an animal, given the alleles observed at 10 microsatellites in the vicinity of the Poll locus on chromosome 1. The following provides a summary of the genetics of polled cattle and the test used to estimate Poll probability of beef cattle.