$EN/Milk Epds

[Air gator]

Do you have experience with $EN and milk epds?
What is your ideal milk epd for a productive cow with good weaning weights?
What's a good number for $EN so you have balance...enough milk without going broke with feed?
This may be more complicated now that they changed the epds.
Thank you!

 

[Son of Butch]

Ideal milk epd 29 max
How did I arrive at 29 milk?

I ran AAA search using minimums of doc 10 then HP 10 (Breed Average) $EN -5 and $B 80
I used hp 10 for fertility as I don't want milk so high that they don't breed back on time and $B 80 for growth.
Search came back with over 100 bulls and the highest milk epd any had was 29.

Including Connealy Reflection 14528330 a grandson of EXT
I believe Reflection gets overlooked as to how good a cow maker he is and he's still available at Accelerated Genetics.
ced 11 (top 15%)
bw .5 accuracy .95
doc 14 (45%)
HP 12.4 (top 20%)
CEM 14 (top 3%)
Milk 26 (30%)
$EN -2 (breed average)
$W 58 (top 20%)
$B 102 (60%)

I know he's old genetics with both his sire and dam being born in the last century, but he was and still is a good one.

 

[Air gator]

I actually Googled Reflection yesterday and didn't get his old Accelerated page.
He must have gotten lost in the transition to Select sires. Thanks for your help.

 

[Son of Butch]

Reflection died and I just saw he's no longer listed in the current line up.
I remember Connealy Trooper (Calvalry x Game Day) and Thunder also came up on the search.

 

[Chocolate Cow]

I find a +10 on milk is perfect for my environment and management. Most of my foundation cows have an $EN of +$30.00 to +$45.00. Maternal lines can be traced back to when they stepped on the boat from Scotland with not one designation for a genetic defect. I'm raising my own bulls out of some of these females.
I fence line wean and one week into the weaning, the cows were gone from hanging around the pen. The calves were loaded on semi's and brought home. They averaged 525 across the scale. I calve March 1 to April 30 every year.

 

[Chocolate Cow]

I was told it's "the quality of her milk not the quantity". The milk EPD doesn't take that into consideration. You can have a cow with a +32 milk and if it's thin and watery with little butterfat, her calf won't gain quickly. If she's a +5 but has high butterfat--

 

[Ebenezer]

Run cows a few years and see which ones that are decent come in open. Have your max milk EPD below that. See which ones raise dinks. Have milk EPD above that. Know the size cow you want. Don;t get them too much bigger or too much smaller. MW is tied into $EN. Know the size calves you want to wean. It will link back to cow MW. Cull for bad udders, poor feet and legs, bad disposition and poor mothering. Check and keep/cull for environmental fit. By then you are 40 years older and much wiser. If you bring in new genetics every year or follow the annual fad, restart the 40 year clock annually and begin again.

If you have neighbors that have similar environments, visit them, see what works, and save 25 to 30 years. Read stories of great cows and bulls from over 250 miles away, buy their greats and shift out 10 to 20 years. There is an interesting article here on CT somewhere about inbreeding in dogs that Jay put up. At least read the end of the article to understand the general unspoken of animal breeding. Numbers do not make or define the cows for everyday economic reasons.

 

[SchenkAngusFarm]

I generally stay away from cows with milk below 20. They just don't seem to get the job done with what I like.

I have one with a +32 milk right now. I was worried about her but her calf looks awesome. The calf is out of Baldridge Command and is thriving. Absolutely love her. Growing great and great disposition. It has made me re-think my prejudice against too high of milk.

 

[Air gator]

SchenkAngusFarm,
You may need to change your number for milk since the new epds have changed....it seems the milk numbers have gone down on a lot of bulls.

Chocolate Cow,
Not sure how you could find out the fat in a beef cow's milk.
Guess you would have to go with word of mouth.
Although it is curious that the $EN number is different for cows with the same milk epd. Connealy Right Answer has a milk epd of +26 but his $EN is -$4.40 which isn't bad...and he's had a yearling frame of 6.0 so he isn't a lowline.

 

[Katpau]

I was told it's "the quality of her milk not the quantity". The milk EPD doesn't take that into consideration. You can have a cow with a +32 milk and if it's thin and watery with little butterfat, her calf won't gain quickly. If she's a +5 but has high butterfat--

The EPD for milk is not a calculation of the pounds of milk she produces, but the extra pounds of calf she weans. In my opinion a high accuracy milk EPD would include the quality of her milk and also her mothering ability. In many cases a high milk EPD would indicate she produces more milk and therefore is likely to require higher maintenance, but that may not always be the case. Two cows with a milk EPD of +32 may include one who produces lots of milk, and another who produces significantly less milk but that milk is of better quality and she is much more attentive to her calf.

 

[Son of Butch]

I was told it's "the quality of her milk not the quantity". The milk EPD doesn't take that into consideration.
You can have a cow with a +32 milk and if it's thin and watery with little butterfat, her calf won't gain quickly.
If she's a +5 but has high butterfat--

Over 30 yrs ago a small dairy farmer with a 50 cow herd showed me his DHIA records to prove his belief that milk
solids, butterfat and protein were genetically fixed, while volume produced was feed and management.

His main point was his herd of Holsteins consistently produced 650 lbs of butterfat per year while the pounds of milk
would vary based on his feed ration.

At the time his production from a corn silage based ration was...
18,000 milk 3.60% bf = 648 lbs butterfat per year

previous year pushing a heavy shell corn ration
21,000 milk 3.10% bf = 650 butterfat

prior to that he was feeding a heavy alfalfa, haylage ration and he noticed the more corn added the more milk
production increased but % bf dropped and his butterfat rolling herd average always held within a few lbs of 650.
16,500 milk 3.90% = 645 butterfat

His production over feed cost was highest feeding the corn silage based ration.
I found it all very interesting.

 

[Ebenezer]

A lot of cattle EPDs have to do with feed and management. Unless we mirror the environment of the trucked-in genetics we will all experience different results from the knows and then add in the unknowns of the genetic re-scrambling from line crossing.

Bonsma describes visual ways to select individual cattle with higher butterfat.

 

[hornedfrogbbq]

We use bulls with Milk epds berween 20 am5d 32. Several bulls we have used had their milk epd drop with the new one step process so we may expand that a tad. We are in Texas and too much milk is a recipe for open cows amd struggling to maintain BCS in the 5 range.

 

[Bird]

I prefer bulls with a milk epd of at least mid 20's

 

[LSAngus]

I really don't think the milk EPD does a very good job of quantifying quality vs quantity. I try not to get too crazy in either direction but if I have faith in the udder quality and they have a good HP EPD I'm not convinced there's really a negative to a high milk EPD if they're achieving that through quality.