ollie?":3jlwabv6 said:Hey, congratulations , you got it right this time. It doesn't say bull A or bull B will sire calves very heavy or very light does it. You keep studying those epd's brandon and some day you'll have them figured out.
Lets get serious on this topic. Most bulls bred to 1000 different cows around the country have real numbers reported ranging anywhere between 54 pounds and 120 pounds. If bull A is beating Bull B by a full two pounds (on AVERAGE) when bred to the same set of cows in every possible herd, level of mgmt, and environment, why would anyone who cares strongly about birth weight ever choose to use Bull B over Bull A? Bull A has him beat by a country mile. If bull A were a Hereford and he were AT breed average for birth weight (3.8) and bull B's birth weight EPD were 2 pounds heavier than A that would put B in the bottom ~12% of the entire breed with the culls and some of the show ponys. There is only a 6.1 pound swing in birth weight EPD between the top 5% of the Hereford breed and the bottom 5%. 2 pounds better than avg would put you in the top ~14 % of the breed. 2 pounds is a massive difference in the birth weight EPD. I would have to see a MOUNTAIN of actual imperical evidence to ever believe that Bull B sires less "too big" calves than does Bull A. I concede that is is "possible" and there are almost certainly a handful of such examples; but statistically duplicating that very often is enormously improbable and even in the freak example where that were true, bull B's EPD probably still sucks too badly for most people (who look hard at that EPD) to ever actually use HIM. They would just have to find a Bull C.