An ISU beef breeding project is beginning to reap the rewards of the research it has been conducting on bulls.

Research performed with Angus cattle is not only improving meat quality, but also providing improved genetics within the industry at a cost to help cover the expenses of the project, Doyle Wilson, affiliated professor of animal science, said.

“Our research began in 1997 initially to find the most accurate measures of body composition using real-time ultrasound,” Wilson said.

According to the ISU animal science Web site, www.ans.iastate.edu, researchers have developed an ultrasound image capturing device called the Black Box to simplify the image capturing process and to minimize the frequent problems encountered with a regular portable computer in the field.

Professor Wilson expressed the importance of the ultrasound results.

“Using the real-time ultrasound, we set out to develop two distinct lines with our research. One was more specifically about the meat quality in general, dealing with marbling and tenderness,” Wilson said. “The other was about retail, dealing more with the total meat quality and the consumer.”

Matt Spangler, graduate assistant in animal science, said more progress has been made in the quality line of the research project.

“As an assistant in the project, I work more with growth patterns of the animal,” Spangler said. “The size of the ribeye area is also a key point of interest in the research in the quality of the meat.”

A big success for the project was an Angus bull born in 1999, Wilson said.

“Q 9111 is the name of the bull that was born with great marbling,” he said. “Marbling, or intramuscular fat, is the ratio of the flecks of fat that are in the muscle. United States Department of Agriculture graders grade these flecks of fat to correlate with the juiciness and general quality of meat for the consumer.”

Semen from the bull recently went on the market for sale, Wilson said.

“We figured that the good genetics that we are achieving [with the cattle] should be used to improve meat quality, much the same as selling good seed corn genetics,” he said.

While some of the research is done in Ames, much of the actual results are found on the Rhodes research facility, located about halfway between Ames and Marshalltown. This makes it necessary for those involved in the project to travel around 35 miles, said Jennifer Minick, graduate student in animal science.

Minick has been helping to conduct the research.

“I travel to the facility usually around twice a month to ultrasound and weight the 300 calves that are born each year that we study,” Minick said.

The money grossed from the sales of the semen will help to cover the costs of the project, Wilson said. He said this is the first time semen from a beef bull has been sold by Iowa State.

“Although I don’t think much semen has been sold as of yet, the future holds a lot of promise,” Wilson said. “The sale of embryos may even be a future possibility.”