herf folks, too much BW

[Alan]

For anyone with Hereford EPD knowledge. You have sale catalog, have a pic, assuming you like about everything else about a heifer. What BW EPD number do you consider too high for a Heifer?

Now how about just in general, heifer sight unseen, until sale day. BW EPD too high? In other words you have a few hours to look at 70 heifers, some you didn't get a pic on just EPD's.

I like to go into a sale with a list of possibles, getting rid of the obvious ones that won't fit my program.... such as horned.

Thanks,
Alan

 

[S&S Farms]

I guess on heifers I have not worried to much about the BW epd I always figured if I was using a calving ease bull then the heifer would have the calf. If I were buying I guess I would say 5.5- 6 as a cutoff. Depends how they look when you see them in person. I am more interested in milk scrotal, and YW along with carcass traits. Just my opinoin.

Jeff

 

[Aaron]

For the heifer and the service sire, I wouldn't go any higher than 6. Have bred many heifers to bulls with BW EPD of 5.4, 5.5 etc. All had no problems. But when some on here start freaking out about cows having 100 lb+ calves, I realize that there must be a lot of cattle out there with terribly small pelvises and hips. We have calved out a half dozen 130 lbers, and have friends who have had calves between 140 and 152 lbs. Our average calf is 90-95 lbs, either heifer or cow.

I guess I would much rather have pelvic measurement data then EPDs for heifers I am interested in buying.

 

[KNERSIE]

I am probably going arse about face, but I look at the heifers and eliminate on my eye until I have my few top picks and only then start looking at breeding values.

Even then I will only avoid extremes, I don't pay much attention to breeding values with almost zero accuracy as in the case of virgin heifers. Type, phenotype and pedigree plays a bigger role in my selection process. I do pay close attention to bulls' breeding values especially those with higher accuracies, but only after he met my other criteria. I will never buy only EPDs, they can change too much.

 

[smnherf]

First of all, the pedigrees have to appeal to me. I like to have cattle that have been proven out over time in the pedigrees.

Next I look at production ratios. Her and her mother and grandmother. Is that heifer out of a top producing cow or a bottom ender? A lot of purebred breeders don't sell their top end heifers in theri annual production sale. How many calves has her mother had? her grandmother and her great grandmother. I don't like to see two generations back to back with 2 or 3 calves and then gone. I ask the breeder then why if there is one of further interest. Some of the best cows I have bought over the years weren't the best looking cows the day of the sale, but the ones that stayed around 10 plus years were the ones out of older cows that had good production ratios.

Same thing for the bull. I like for him to have daughters in production and its nice to see them in person. How many herds has he been used in. The more the better. He needs to have some ultrasound ifnormation behind him too. I like to see the REA/cwt figures. EPDs don't consider it.

Then the heifer herself needs to be an easy fleshing heifer. She needs to be sound on her feet and legs too. Then I rate for phenotype, ie. thickness, balance, femininity, length, depth etc. and then I may let the epds make the final choices for me.

I am not too afraid of them if the bw epds are 4 to 5, over 5 is questionale and over 6 not at all. l prefer them under 3.5. If they are too high, it limits my options on what I can breed them too. When looking at bw epds, many breeders are able to do the math and aren't producing many 6.0 plus epd heifers. Be carefull of the low bw sire and high bw dam and granddam. BW quite often follows the maternal side and even the moderte bw epd heifer out of such a mating could be trouble.


Hope this makes sense. Just my .02 worth.