In the early years of the Canadian Charolais Association a group of forward thinking individuals developed and refined the concept of testing a Charolais bull's genetic merit through performance testing of his progeny. The difficulty in finding purebred animals and the prohibitive costs involved led to the use of commercial stock in the testing program. The other driving force behind the use of commercial cows on the program was the belief that Charolais would only be a success if they were widely accepted within the commercial industry. Cattle breeders all over the world use the information obtained on the C to C program in their everyday selection decisions, and the program provides a springboard for many other Charolais activities such as various research projects and advertising materials.
Test bulls are nominated by progressive breeders, who pay a fee to participate on the program. The numbers change from year to year, however the technical aspects of the program have changed little since the inception of the program in 1968.
The 2003-2005 Edition of the Conception to Consumer program summary has been released. Included for the first time are Residual Feed Intake values on the bulls tested. Also for the first time the bulls, cows and their progeny were tested for twelve single nucleotide polymorphisms. This data although not included in the summary will be evaluated to help determine the appropriate use of these tests in our genetic evaluation practices. Once available a summary of these results will be presented here. For the complete C to C summary follow this link.
