Cattle Rack Rancher
Well-known member
I have no EPD's for the bull I bought. However, I have EPD's for both his Sire and his Dam. If I average them out, will that give me the EPDs for the bull I bought or is there more to it than that?
EPD's ?
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Cattle Rack Rancher
Well-known member
I see on another post that it has to do with heritability as well. How would one determine that given the standard EPD's?
Adding them and dividing by two will give you rough ballpark. It should be enough to either give you some confidence or scare you.
The thing to keep in mind is that EPDs for a given animal change as more data is compiled. When the accuracy is very low the variation could be plus or minus the EPD by a pretty large percentage. As the accuracy goes up the amount of varability goes down.
dun
The thing to keep in mind is that EPDs for a given animal change as more data is compiled. When the accuracy is very low the variation could be plus or minus the EPD by a pretty large percentage. As the accuracy goes up the amount of varability goes down.
dun
typically an animal's epd's can be predicted by averaging the parents' epd's. this will give you a pretty good estimate.
on the other hand, if the epd's are calculated after the animal in question has performance data (for example, most animals have birth weight information submitted when registering), and the performance data is skewed to one side or the other (really high birthweight which wasn't predicted by the epd's), the epd can also be shifted from just an average.
hope this helps you without creating more confusion.
on the other hand, if the epd's are calculated after the animal in question has performance data (for example, most animals have birth weight information submitted when registering), and the performance data is skewed to one side or the other (really high birthweight which wasn't predicted by the epd's), the epd can also be shifted from just an average.
hope this helps you without creating more confusion.
greenwillowherefords
Well-known member
Txag is right. The bull I recently purchased was assigned EPDs that were actually better than his sire even though his dam's EPDs weren't as good as the sire. Jack Ward himself told me that it was due to his actual performance.
Cattle Rack Rancher":2ux318so said:
Are his parent's EPDs from the same breed assn? If so, as the others said, averaging them will give you a rough EPD because their EPDs should reflect all the heritablity estimates, etc. The only problem is that one or the other grandparent might "bust the bank" on a particular EPD that would hurt you. For example, if you're planning to use him on heifers, even though both his parents might have reasonable BW EPDs, I'd do some research on the grandparent's BW EPDs, just in case.
If he's a crossbred bull, IMO, good luck....
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Cattle Rack Rancher
Well-known member
Frankie":36pht1ab said:
Yes, he's a purebred Black Angus. All EPD's for both parents are available off of the Canadian Angus Association web page. BW EPD's are a little above average but I have another bull to put on my heifers this year so it should give me one year to try him out and see what his calves come out at.
