EPD's

[Anonymous]

How do you begin the process of accumulating epd's. I have registered heifers that have epd's, but they were not weighed at birth, weaning, or yearling. So epd's from them will not be passed on? If the bull does or doesn't have epd's, do I begin weighing and recording data anyway? Or will it matter? How long will it take for this accumulated data mean anything?



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[Anonymous]

> How do you begin the process of
> accumulating epd's. I have
> registered heifers that have
> epd's, but they were not weighed
> at birth, weaning, or yearling. So
> epd's from them will not be passed
> on? If the bull does or doesn't
> have epd's, do I begin weighing
> and recording data anyway? Or will
> it matter? How long will it take
> for this accumulated data mean
> anything?

EPD's are measured against the entire breed that you have chosen to purchase. EPD's are only good to compair the animals of a breed. They cannot be used to compair breeds. Your heifers have EPD's and the breed association will keep the EDP's recorded regardless of what you do for those heifers. If you want to breed registered cattle just purchase a registered bull (with good EPD's)of the same breed and use him to produce calves which will have EPD's based on the past performance of their parents as compaired to the rest of the entire breed. You should weight and send in information on your herd if you want to raise registered cattle. By doing so you will help build the data base used to create the EPD's on each cow within the breed.



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[Anonymous]

If either parent of an Angus calf has Interim EPDs, the calf will not have EPDS. You can tell if the animal has Interim EPDs by the "I" in front of the EPD number. If you breed a cow with Interim EPDs to a bull with "real" EPDs and report the BW, WW, YW, of the calf, the "I" will be removed from the cow's EPDs and the calf will probably have Interim EPDs. It works the same way with a bull, report calves sired by him and the "I" will be removed from his EPDs. All this only works if the animals have other relatives already in the EPD database. Does that make sense? If not, ask again. It would be very difficult to build EPDs on just your herd of cattle. You need to be involved in the Herd Improvement program of whatever breed you're raising. Your information is added to info furnished by other breeders and produces much more reliable data. Good luck...

> How do you begin the process of
> accumulating epd's. I have
> registered heifers that have
> epd's, but they were not weighed
> at birth, weaning, or yearling. So
> epd's from them will not be passed
> on? If the bull does or doesn't
> have epd's, do I begin weighing
> and recording data anyway? Or will
> it matter? How long will it take
> for this accumulated data mean
> anything?