Dairy Bulls and Beef Bulls

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Missy

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Hi all,
Wasn't sure how to word the topic but anyways,
I was looking up AI bulls and their information and i am a tad confused.
Just wondering how i read the dairy bulls sheets?
Also the beef bulls,they are both completely different.
Please excuse my ignorance but we have alway ran bulls with the cows and now that i have completed my AI course i am wanting to learn all i can
Thanks in advance
Missy :D
 
I'm heading off-line now but... could you link to some of the examples you've found?

Each country has a different way of reporting traits, and dairy bulls are scored on different traits to beef bulls. And sometimes getting good information from the breeding companies is like milking a stone.
Some idea of what you're looking at would be a starting point.
 
If go to the specific breed association web set that breeds EPDs (beef) and PTAs (dairy) will be explained.
 
And now I want to give up on understanding these things too...

The second Jersey link has a conversion clicky. Use that, and you're looking at both bulls with a US-proof. I get the impression there's some accuracy lost in a conversion, but at least you're not trying to compare an actual average with a deviation from breed average (or however the furrin place writes it out).
Daughters/herds/reliability - that's one of the first things to look at. 20 daughters/18 herds means you can use the numbers as a guide, but as more daughters are tested the numbers can change considerably. A first proof run in NZ is usually 70 2-yr olds completed their first lactation and gives a reliability of 80 - 85%, ancestry information only is about 30% and several hundred daughters with production records gives right up to 99% - meaning you can have faith in the numbers.

Some-one no doubt will correct me if I'm wrong on this - US dairy proofs are standard deviations within breed. So the average Jersey cow is 0 and the bull is expected to throw daughters that deviate +/- as indicated - so Kwartz is taller and stronger than average, higher volume with a slight negative on components and is expected to earn you $US517 dollars more than the average Jersey milking today... but with a reliability of 77% you needn't place any bets on him.
I'm making the presumption that the '0' value is a rolling (up-to-date) average. In both Britain (historically - I'm not up-to-date) and NZ we use a base year, and in NZ we're currently comparing bulls to cows born in 1995 (and across breeds, the comparisons aren't within breed for a NZ dairy proof).

On the USS Angus bull, note how the accuracy drops for maternal traits. The calving ease, birth weight etc can be measured nine months from using the sire, but maternal traits I'd guess are based on this bull's older female relatives, and take at least three years from first use to obtain from daughters.

We have this: http://www.aeu.org.nz/page.cfm?id=15 which only applies to bulls with daughters tested in NZ.
Hmm - I just looked at that and I'd say it's next to useless for explaining. I'll need to try googling up some of those sites Dun mentions. Another source is the pdf-files of the actual catalogues the breeding companies send out - hidden away among the glossy pictures there's some times an explanation of what the various traits mean.
 
Missy":1a7yarqq said:
Hi all,
Wasn't sure how to word the topic but anyways,
I was looking up AI bulls and their information and i am a tad confused.
Just wondering how i read the dairy bulls sheets?
Also the beef bulls,they are both completely different.
Please excuse my ignorance but we have alway ran bulls with the cows and now that i have completed my AI course i am wanting to learn all i can
Thanks in advance
Missy :D

I'm not sure this is what your looking for, Missy, but here's a link to the American Angus site that explains Angus EPDs.

http://www.angus.org/sireeval/howto.html

Every beef breed's EPDs are different. So if you're interested in a breed other than Angus, you'd need to go to their website and look for this same information on that breed.

I know dairy bulls have different traits identified, but don't have a clue on how to read them. Perhaps you should investigate the semen company sites and see if they have the info you need.

Congrats on the AI course. IMO, it's the best way to improve your herd. You can use some of the top bulls in the breed at a very reasonable cost. Good luck....
 
Australia uses APR & ASI for dairy bulls the APR (Aust Profit Ranking) this is the 1 you should be looking at as it indicates which daughters are going to earn more $$ over natural or lower APR herd mates. For eample the current apr no.1 Jersey bull in Aust is CSCNAVARA he has an APR of 150 compared to NZGMINSTREL who has a apr no.7 ranking & apr 107. This means that Navara daughters will earn $150 over their lactation compared to Minstrel daughters who will only earn $107 for their lactation thats a $43.00 loss if you only went with Minstral. This doesn't anything though if you are wanting a house cow or something to rear a calf off each year.
Beef Cattle are selected using EBV's & EPD's
 
For the beef breeds that have EPD in the U.S., there is a chart that gives you numbers to add or subtract to compare them evenly. Angus is the baseline of the chart, so you use Angus EPD "as is". The other breeds, you have to do a little math to compare the major traits where they have EPD in common.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/sp2UserFiles/Pl ... 08News.pdf

You would think there would be something similar for dairy??
 
Missy I still find dairy semen proofs easier to understand than beef and like what was said each country is different. For the semex link to BRIDON EXCITATION SAMBO X RENAISSANCE it is pretty self explanatory..He has 128 daughters in 97 different herds thus 93% reliability but it looks like only 106 herds classify their cows or have had his daughters classified. However this is still a very new bull as far as dairy semen goes so I wouldn't put too much faith on reliability for milk and calving ease yet until his is more proven.

Now when choosing a cow to breed him to you can go down the list on his confirmation and cross reference all traits to your cows. He is poor on rump and dairy strength so do not use him on a cow with those same qualities. All in all his conformation is quite strong as well as his functional features..
 
Thanks to all , i am very slowly starting to pick it up.The more i read them the more i am understanding :D
I am looking at bulls to breed over my foster cows at present so beef breeds as calves will be slaughtered fairly early on.
Eventually i would like to breed my best cows to a dairy bull to keep replacements.
But will look at that later on.

Thanks once again,im learning lots by looking at the different bulls and their EPD's etc :D
 

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