EPD of Purebred Angus

[Lucky_P]

I've not registered an animal since about 1990. Simmental Assn. has (had?) an open herdbook, allowing 'breeding-up' to purebred status. I had several halfblood heifers, sired by registered fullblood & purebred sires, out of commercial (unregistered) Angus cows, Holstein cows, and a nondescript black horned cow that probably had some Jersey back behind her. IDK how ASA assigned EPD values to those unregistered 'foundation' commercial cattle, but I guess there was some baseline or average value incorporated into the formula.

 

[Trixie Club Calves]

Not necessarily. They usually post the registration numbers from other associations under the Simmental one if they were provided or exist. You need to ask the breeder for her AAA number clear this up.

He's calling to make sure she has her AAA number.

 

[simme]

I've not registered an animal since about 1990. Simmental Assn. has (had?) an open herdbook, allowing 'breeding-up' to purebred status. I had several halfblood heifers, sired by registered fullblood & purebred sires, out of commercial (unregistered) Angus cows, Holstein cows, and a nondescript black horned cow that probably had some Jersey back behind her. IDK how ASA assigned EPD values to those unregistered 'foundation' commercial cattle, but I guess there was some baseline or average value incorporated into the formula.

I think I have the answer about epd's for unregistered cows used in a breed-up program. When you "registered/recorded" a calf from that mating of a registered simmental bull to "any old commercial cow", the breeder of the 1/2 blood calf was asked to list the breed composition of the commercial cow. Could be that the breeder knew exactly the breed composition or could be he made a wild guess of what that sale barn cow was. But the breeder could list that the dam was 1/2 Angus (AN), 1/4 Jersey (JE) and 1/4 South Devon (DS) for instance.

From that information, the ASA would use the BREED AVERAGE epd values for each of those breeds, weighted by the listed breed % of the dam. First each breed average epd would be converted to a simmental epd basis. Then add up (in my example) 1/2 of the breed average AN epd's, 1/4 of the JE epd's, and 1/4 of the DS epd's. (After each breed average epd was converted to a simmental basis.) So, if the 1/2 angus cow was sired by the highest epd angus bull, the cow only got credit for an average angus bull. If the Jersey bull had bottom of the barrel epd's, the cow got credit for an average jersey bull.

Not very accurate and the accuracy numbers for those calculated epd's for the old cow would reflect that. But you got to start with something based on what you know or what you think you see. From there, accuracy increases as simmental % increases over the generations and the effect of old mixed up Bessie gets smaller with each generation.