Parentage verification
Meat & Livestock Australia May 10, 2024
Parentage verification allows beef producers certainty regarding parentage of an animal.
Parentage misidentification can occur in many situations, even when producers are following best practice. For example:
- Multiple sire joinings and AI programs:
- Which bull sired the resulting calf?
- Was there a mix up of straws when insemination was taking place?
- Other reasons:
- Did the neighbours bull jump the fence?
- Did the young bull calf get to the cows?
- Did dams swap calves at birth?
There are multiple levels of parentage verification:
- Sire verification – the sire of the animal is verified via DNA testing
- Dam verification – the dam of the animal is verified via DNA testing
- Parentage verification – both the sire and dam of the animal are verified via DNA testing
Parentage verification involves the analysis of multiple (usually hundreds) of DNA markers in both the progeny and potential parents
- Each DNA marker has two variants
- An animal will inherit one variant from its sire and the other variant from its dam
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