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Anonymous
Good grief Frankie. She is not the only one that should be ashamed. There is ABSOLUTELY no genetic worth because an animal has a certain epd.They may not breed as their paper says. For that mater they may not even be fertile.Frankie":17bn85m2 said:Michelle said:
"For the person who made the comment that you can compare animals of the same breed from different herds, you are full of poo"
I'm the person who said that and I'm not full of poo. You are not knowledgable about EPDs. If you're raising seedstock, you should be embarrased to post something like this.
"Yes within a breed there are many simmilarities, but there are huge differences as well"
Agree. And EPDs are the best tool to indentify the animals that will work for an individual breeder.
"Animals that are raised by different methods, ie. forage v grain development, this is a huge factor that needs to be considered when you look at over all performance,"
But that has nothing to do with EPDs. Ever hear the term "contemporary group?" When performance data is reported to the AHIR (Angus Herd Improvement Records), calves are grouped into a contemporary group. They are within 90 days of each other and managed the same.
"you also need to be able to take age into consideration, the fact that 18 month old bulls are sahedding their disiduous teeth plays a factor in their ability to eat and maintain their body condition"
Weaning data on a contemporary group is adjusted to a common endpoint (205) days. Yearling weights are adjusted to 365 days. Frankly, I don't care how an 18 month old bull performs and don't know of any breed association that collects data on 18 month old bulls. My goal is to produce bulls that will sire calves that will be dead long before they're 18 months old!
"A bull fed out on high concentrates will also fall apart when turned out on cows on forage if not adjusted to a farage based diet"
So what if he falls apart? His genetics don't change. As Dun pointed out in his post, his looks have very little to do with his ability to produce good (or sorry) calves.
"Yep EPD's will give you an idea of average performance expected from an animal based on his initial performance and the predictable performance produced from their parrents and other relatives"
No, EPDs don't tell you anything about "average performance." Your entire post shows you are totally missing the point of EPDs. EPDs take performance data on thousands of young animals, run it through a complicted math program which includes heritability estimates, [and gives you the EXPECTED genetic worth of that animal.] If you breed bull A with a WW of 40 to your cows, you would EXPECT those calves to weigh 40 more pounds at weaning than if you bred those same cows to bull B with a WW EPD of 0. That's what EPDs do. It has nothing to do with how those two bulls were managed or how old they are. It has to do with their genetic potential, based on performance data from thousands of relatives.
I get the message.
