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<blockquote data-quote="Brandonm22" data-source="post: 641474" data-attributes="member: 7645"><p>I am not suggesting NOT looking at phenotype. If a bull is flawed.....bad temperment, lite muscled, pallet headed, flat ribbed, poor tracking, bad feet & legs, or he is the runt in the herd he doesn't need to be promoted as a registered sire. Depending on the degree of his problem he probably shouldn't be sold for $1500 as a commercial bull either even if he was a $2000 ET calf or a $7000 clone. BUT good phenotype without documentable and repeatable performance is just as big (or BIGGER) flaw than a pinched heart girth, cow hocks, open shoulders, a feminine head, or poor eye set.</p><p></p><p>But let's be completely honest here, Angus has emphasized performance much more than Hereford has. They have more EPDs, they have more accuracy in the EPDs, they have more cattle with high performance EPDs, they were quicker to promote carcass EPDs, they have promoted performance and EPDs where many Hereford breeders have sat on their hands. We still don't have a $EN or maintenance energy EPD even though people like Pharo, Duff, and Ohlde have carved out a nice niche for themselves promoting Angus cattle that are documented strong for that trait.......a lot of the old Victor herds could PROBABLY do the same if the breed would ever give them the tools. Since ~1984, about 85% of the American Hereford herd has gone commercial (and usually black) or went straight to MacDonalds and most of them were owned by linebreeders, the phenotype freaks, and old dudes who couldn't tell you the difference between an EPD and an ERA. The commercial cattlemen have demanded low birth weight cattle that grow with a minimum of trouble and they want all of that documented with a number attached to it. If anything it seems like we have MORE highly promoted sires in the bottom 20% of the breed for birth weight NOW than we did 20 years ago. I am not knocking anybody here; but I am listening to the same old tired arguments about the EPD system that we have heard in Hereford circles for 20+++ years........'you can rig the system', 'my best cow doesn't have my best EPDs', 'I prefer to use actual numbers', 'EPDs are only averages, 'I want a rifle, instead of a shotgun', 'the EPDs are for somebody else's environment;, 'His EPDs will go up', 'EPDs can't predict what the calf will perform like if I breed bossie to bad boy billy bull'...... A lot of that is even TRUE.</p><p></p><p>If you can design a BETTER statistical model go ahead and do it Harley. Until you or somebody else does it the EPD system is the best, most scientific, and most widely understood and accepted way to achieve documentable, repeatable performance and genetic improvement in the history of cattle breeding.</p><p></p><p>I don't claim to be a master cattle breeder or the greatest mind of our times and nothing I have said here has not been said before by much smarter, more educated, more experienced persons than myself. All we are saying is that the breed needs to listen to the bull buying public and perhaps emulate what is working instead of sending 90% of our bull crop to the stockyards, registering less heifers each and every year, while watching Angus register another 3 or 400,000 cows a year.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Brandonm22, post: 641474, member: 7645"] I am not suggesting NOT looking at phenotype. If a bull is flawed.....bad temperment, lite muscled, pallet headed, flat ribbed, poor tracking, bad feet & legs, or he is the runt in the herd he doesn't need to be promoted as a registered sire. Depending on the degree of his problem he probably shouldn't be sold for $1500 as a commercial bull either even if he was a $2000 ET calf or a $7000 clone. BUT good phenotype without documentable and repeatable performance is just as big (or BIGGER) flaw than a pinched heart girth, cow hocks, open shoulders, a feminine head, or poor eye set. But let's be completely honest here, Angus has emphasized performance much more than Hereford has. They have more EPDs, they have more accuracy in the EPDs, they have more cattle with high performance EPDs, they were quicker to promote carcass EPDs, they have promoted performance and EPDs where many Hereford breeders have sat on their hands. We still don't have a $EN or maintenance energy EPD even though people like Pharo, Duff, and Ohlde have carved out a nice niche for themselves promoting Angus cattle that are documented strong for that trait.......a lot of the old Victor herds could PROBABLY do the same if the breed would ever give them the tools. Since ~1984, about 85% of the American Hereford herd has gone commercial (and usually black) or went straight to MacDonalds and most of them were owned by linebreeders, the phenotype freaks, and old dudes who couldn't tell you the difference between an EPD and an ERA. The commercial cattlemen have demanded low birth weight cattle that grow with a minimum of trouble and they want all of that documented with a number attached to it. If anything it seems like we have MORE highly promoted sires in the bottom 20% of the breed for birth weight NOW than we did 20 years ago. I am not knocking anybody here; but I am listening to the same old tired arguments about the EPD system that we have heard in Hereford circles for 20+++ years........'you can rig the system', 'my best cow doesn't have my best EPDs', 'I prefer to use actual numbers', 'EPDs are only averages, 'I want a rifle, instead of a shotgun', 'the EPDs are for somebody else's environment;, 'His EPDs will go up', 'EPDs can't predict what the calf will perform like if I breed bossie to bad boy billy bull'...... A lot of that is even TRUE. If you can design a BETTER statistical model go ahead and do it Harley. Until you or somebody else does it the EPD system is the best, most scientific, and most widely understood and accepted way to achieve documentable, repeatable performance and genetic improvement in the history of cattle breeding. I don't claim to be a master cattle breeder or the greatest mind of our times and nothing I have said here has not been said before by much smarter, more educated, more experienced persons than myself. All we are saying is that the breed needs to listen to the bull buying public and perhaps emulate what is working instead of sending 90% of our bull crop to the stockyards, registering less heifers each and every year, while watching Angus register another 3 or 400,000 cows a year. [/QUOTE]
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