EPD Followers What's Your Priorities

[Allenw]

EPD followers what's your priorities when it comes to selecting cattle? The animal, the breeder, the pedigree, or the numbers?

I've been on the sidelines for a while and have been surprised by the emphasis on EPD numbers.

 

[Midtenn]

When selecting sires, first priority is the animal himself. If he passes phenotype then I use epd's accordingly.

 

[TCRanch]

I don't AI but agree with Midtenn. Pedigree means nothing to me but I'm commercial.

 

[Bright Raven]

I only run 15 to 18 mature cows. 100 % AI. Fire Sweep Ranch (Kris) does all my sire selections. I execute the plan.

She selects the sire to the cow using all the tools, information, etc.

It all has equal value - phenotype, genotype (same as pedigree in function), desired traits to improve faults in the cow, EPDs, etc.

 

[Nesikep]

I guess it's a combination of all of the above.. I do like to take a good hard look at the animal, and the other animals from that breeder, when I've got a short-list of the animals I like, I'll look at EPD's.. I don't know pedigrees by name well enough to matter.

 

[Air gator]

I look at eye appeal first, then pedigree and look at epds for fertility and red flags. If the bull is out of a bull that I don't really care for I would be inclined to pass. I would want to avoid extremes. There is such a thing as too much growth. I think I would be concerned about daughters if you keep breeding for growth. I think extreme growth females don't make the best mama cows.

 

[kd4au]

I would say if your buying an Angus bull you better start by looking at his feet.

 

[FlyingLSimmentals]

I'll say for 1st I'll check the animal looking for his or her faults, appearance and disposition. 2nd the Epd's CE, BW, API, Milk mostly. 3rd the pedigree, how will it mix with mine. Lastly I guess the breeder. Guess I'll try and buy from different breeders to mix the pedigrees better how I like.

 

[Nesikep]

I look at eye appeal first, then pedigree and look at epds for fertility and red flags. If the bull is out of a bull that I don't really care for I would be inclined to pass. I would want to avoid extremes. There is such a thing as too much growth. I think I would be concerned about daughters if you keep breeding for growth. I think extreme growth females don't make the best mama cows.

Eye appeal will differ for different people, but I agree on principle!.. Eye appeal to me means a proud stance, head held high, good feet, udders, etc and I'm not a fan of blockheads

About extreme growth, I think it depends on HOW they grow, I don't like extreme frame females, but this year I have a heifer that's 50 lb's heavier than the next heaviest steer, she's not taller, she's just very meaty and wide from the shoulders all the way back, her mother was born 2 months later than the rest of the calves, and had the same build, by a year old (10 months for her) there was no difference between them and she's repeatedly made the best calf of the year, and isn't a big honking cow.. So she, if nothing else, is the exception to the rule.. I have other heifers this year that are taller, and are not slouches in the weight department, but just lack the meat and "look" I am going for

 

[Allenw]

I guess it's a combination of all of the above.. I do like to take a good hard look at the animal, and the other animals from that breeder, when I've got a short-list of the animals I like, I'll look at EPD's.. I don't know pedigrees by name well enough to matter.

That mirrors my thoughts closely. Looking at the pedigree for me would be looking for how much of their own genetics they are using and how much out side blood. I would be looking for line breeding for constancy, or is there a continual stream of outside blood coming in.

 

[Son of Butch]

I only use EPD of A.I. sires and I don't trust them until .70 accuracy or higher
When buying bulls phenotype first. Price 2nd and price does eliminate a number of breeders, as does location.

 

[boondocks]

They have to pass phenotype first. Then I look at EPDs, and eliminate any bulls that are low accuracy for the traits I look for most: calving ease, docility, marbling. Looking at growth a bit more too now.
As a fair-newbie, that's my simplified plan. I have an experienced buddy (retired AI tech, Cornell ag school guy) who helps select for traits where we need to tailor something specific. Milk, eg.
I don't get too deep in the weeds as to outcross, etc. Try to mix up the breeders a bit but do tend to favor Conneally bulls so far. Seem to get better conception, may be luck.

 

[Jake]

Pedigree first, I always have in mind the genetics I want to use and the ones that I want to stay away from. Phenotype next, then EPDS. Only time I really care about EPDS are picking heifer bulls.

 

[SPH]

EPDs are just 1 of many tools to use when making selection decisions, no one should be using them as their only criteria for selection. Phenotype/structure, actual animal performance, and the pedigree and performance of those animals in the pedigree all factor into our decisions as well as looking for some higher accuracies with EPD criteria. Found over the years that CE and BW EPDs if enough accuracy behind them can be good predictors so that is 1 thing we are careful about as we have taken gambles on higher end BW EPD bulls before and regretted it. A live calf sure beats a dead one and the older you get the less you want to mess with pulling calves.

I actually like to go back through pedigrees and look at performance data if available. Like to see some dams with longevity and above average WW and YW performance ratios, that can be tougher with younger females because they just don't have enough calves on the ground yet to have that data but their dam hopefully does. I know a lot of our better young cows you usually only have to go back 1 generation to see their dam is/was a good performer as well.

Everyone has their ways and priorities of selection or what they are selection for so there is no "only 1 way is the only way" when it comes to genetic selection but it is short sighted not to use all the tools available to you in some form or another too.

 

[dun]

EPDs are just 1 of many tools to use when making selection decisions, no one should be using them as their only criteria for selection. Phenotype/structure, actual animal performance, and the pedigree and performance of those animals in the pedigree all factor into our decisions as well as looking for some higher accuracies with EPD criteria. Found over the years that CE and BW EPDs if enough accuracy behind them can be good predictors so that is 1 thing we are careful about as we have taken gambles on higher end BW EPD bulls before and regretted it. A live calf sure beats a dead one and the older you get the less you want to mess with pulling calves.

I actually like to go back through pedigrees and look at performance data if available. Like to see some dams with longevity and above average WW and YW performance ratios, that can be tougher with younger females because they just don't have enough calves on the ground yet to have that data but their dam hopefully does. I know a lot of our better young cows you usually only have to go back 1 generation to see their dam is/was a good performer as well.

Everyone has their ways and priorities of selection or what they are selection for so there is no "only 1 way is the only way" when it comes to genetic selection but it is short sighted not to use all the tools available to you in some form or another too.

Pretty well sums it all up.
Every few years we will try a young unproven on our older well proven cows. If he doesn;t work out we'll dump the semen. Takes a few years to see if he works for us but there have been several bulls that I finally got around to using towards their end of life and I had wished I had used them earlier. So far in the past 10 years we have had 1 bull that didn;t work out but we didn;t know it till his daughter was 10 years old and her udder fell apart.

 

[Chocolate Cow]

Pretty much exactly what Jake just said. It's a hard & fast rule for me that there will be no GAR in the pedigree.
One question I ask is: If 'you' have been buying registered bulls, lets say Angus, for the past 10, 15 or 20 years,,,why hasn't your cow herd improved enough that you can save a bull or two from your own cows? it's just a question. Maybe 'you' do but it seems like most attend several Spring bull sales, spending a lot of money on a yearling and are disappointed later on.

 

[dun]

Pretty much exactly what Jake just said. It's a hard & fast rule for me that there will be no GAR in the pedigree.
One question I ask is: If 'you' have been buying registered bulls, lets say Angus, for the past 10, 15 or 20 years,,,why hasn't your cow herd improved enough that you can save a bull or two from your own cows? it's just a question. Maybe 'you' do but it seems like most attend several Spring bull sales, spending a lot of money on a yearling and are disappointed later on.

If they are sticking with terminal bulls that would be a good reason to not keep any of your own.

 

[SPH]

The thing I don't get from those who rant constantly about EPDs is if you don't care about EPDs then why does it frustrate and consume your thoughts so much? Some people seem to be too caught up into what others are doing and lose focus on what they themselves are doing and believe in. Are there people out there who rely on EPDs too much or promote underwhelming cattle with high EPDs - of course there are but if you aren't into EPDs or into buying high EPD cattle with obvious performance and structure flaws then why let it bother you so much? Those selling and buying mostly off of EPDs and ignoring other factors will learn their lessons soon enough when the results aren't to their liking.

We do use EPDs as 1 of many tools but I can tell you the first thing we look at when we are going through the calf crop in the fall is which calves performed the best where it matters then after weights and phenotype/structure has been looked at then we finally start looking at their EPDs. We aren't going to start with EPDs and throw an underperforming or flawed calf in with the replacement heifers or sale bulls just because they have a nice set of numbers on paper. That still won't hid their actual appearance and performance and I think most knowledgeable people in the business probably make decisions the same way, the EPD only crowd is not as prominent as some probably think it is. When it comes to extremes with EPDs that is where we use some caution, especially the CE and BW because even though the subject animal may have an acceptable actual BW, if they still have a high EPD they probably have some animals in their immediate pedigree that are known to have higher BW and those traits are still part of that animal and can come to surface.

Our prime example was a bull we bought that was on the upper end of what we are usually comfortable with for BW EPDs. He had an actual BW of 85 which by most people would find no issue with that and he met what we were looking for at the time in phenotype. Well it didn't take long to realize he was not a low birthweight and easy calving bull when we started getting several calves over 100 lbs and many more in the 90's than we would like. We only run 1 herd bull with 20-25 females and that includes heifers so we don't have the luxury of erroring on a bull that most mature cows probably could calve OK with him but that's not ideal with heifers to take that chance. Bottom line is if there is a fair amount of accuracy with a BW and CE EPD there is probably enough reported births from the animals in that pedigree that factored into that EPD calculation to put some meaning behind why it may be high.

 

[SPH]

Pretty much exactly what Jake just said. It's a hard & fast rule for me that there will be no GAR in the pedigree.
One question I ask is: If 'you' have been buying registered bulls, lets say Angus, for the past 10, 15 or 20 years,,,why hasn't your cow herd improved enough that you can save a bull or two from your own cows? it's just a question. Maybe 'you' do but it seems like most attend several Spring bull sales, spending a lot of money on a yearling and are disappointed later on.

That bolded part right there is a big one for anyone selling seedstock. If a bull in your sale pen isn't good enough to be using in your own herd then why are you selling him? We prefer to retain bulls we raised if we can which is why we do some AI to bring in some new bloodlines but there are occasions where we have had to go out and buy from another reputable breeder and we'll use the same selection criteria we'd use if it was one of our own bulls we were looking at using. It is nice when you can trace back an animal and their is several other relation to them on the farm to view in person too.

 

[Jake]

Pretty much exactly what Jake just said. It's a hard & fast rule for me that there will be no GAR in the pedigree.
One question I ask is: If 'you' have been buying registered bulls, lets say Angus, for the past 10, 15 or 20 years,,,why hasn't your cow herd improved enough that you can save a bull or two from your own cows? it's just a question. Maybe 'you' do but it seems like most attend several Spring bull sales, spending a lot of money on a yearling and are disappointed later on.

Not sure if this is directed at me or not but we historically have kept a lot of our own bulls and do occasionally now. I would say we are only 10 years in on really working at improving the herd so there is still enough in the "wood pile" that I can't account for within our own herd. I have a steadfast rule that we don't buy bulls out of cows that wouldn't be in the top 5% of our herd. This year I was able to buy bulls that were out of considerably better cows that anything we have on the place at the moment.