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Artificial Insemination (AI) for Cattle
EPD Followers What's Your Priorities
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<blockquote data-quote="SPH" data-source="post: 1441592" data-attributes="member: 20580"><p>The thing I don't get from those who rant constantly about EPDs is if you don't care about EPDs then why does it frustrate and consume your thoughts so much? Some people seem to be too caught up into what others are doing and lose focus on what they themselves are doing and believe in. Are there people out there who rely on EPDs too much or promote underwhelming cattle with high EPDs - of course there are but if you aren't into EPDs or into buying high EPD cattle with obvious performance and structure flaws then why let it bother you so much? Those selling and buying mostly off of EPDs and ignoring other factors will learn their lessons soon enough when the results aren't to their liking.</p><p></p><p>We do use EPDs as 1 of many tools but I can tell you the first thing we look at when we are going through the calf crop in the fall is which calves performed the best where it matters then after weights and phenotype/structure has been looked at then we finally start looking at their EPDs. We aren't going to start with EPDs and throw an underperforming or flawed calf in with the replacement heifers or sale bulls just because they have a nice set of numbers on paper. That still won't hid their actual appearance and performance and I think most knowledgeable people in the business probably make decisions the same way, the EPD only crowd is not as prominent as some probably think it is. When it comes to extremes with EPDs that is where we use some caution, especially the CE and BW because even though the subject animal may have an acceptable actual BW, if they still have a high EPD they probably have some animals in their immediate pedigree that are known to have higher BW and those traits are still part of that animal and can come to surface. </p><p></p><p>Our prime example was a bull we bought that was on the upper end of what we are usually comfortable with for BW EPDs. He had an actual BW of 85 which by most people would find no issue with that and he met what we were looking for at the time in phenotype. Well it didn't take long to realize he was not a low birthweight and easy calving bull when we started getting several calves over 100 lbs and many more in the 90's than we would like. We only run 1 herd bull with 20-25 females and that includes heifers so we don't have the luxury of erroring on a bull that most mature cows probably could calve OK with him but that's not ideal with heifers to take that chance. Bottom line is if there is a fair amount of accuracy with a BW and CE EPD there is probably enough reported births from the animals in that pedigree that factored into that EPD calculation to put some meaning behind why it may be high.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="SPH, post: 1441592, member: 20580"] The thing I don't get from those who rant constantly about EPDs is if you don't care about EPDs then why does it frustrate and consume your thoughts so much? Some people seem to be too caught up into what others are doing and lose focus on what they themselves are doing and believe in. Are there people out there who rely on EPDs too much or promote underwhelming cattle with high EPDs - of course there are but if you aren't into EPDs or into buying high EPD cattle with obvious performance and structure flaws then why let it bother you so much? Those selling and buying mostly off of EPDs and ignoring other factors will learn their lessons soon enough when the results aren't to their liking. We do use EPDs as 1 of many tools but I can tell you the first thing we look at when we are going through the calf crop in the fall is which calves performed the best where it matters then after weights and phenotype/structure has been looked at then we finally start looking at their EPDs. We aren't going to start with EPDs and throw an underperforming or flawed calf in with the replacement heifers or sale bulls just because they have a nice set of numbers on paper. That still won't hid their actual appearance and performance and I think most knowledgeable people in the business probably make decisions the same way, the EPD only crowd is not as prominent as some probably think it is. When it comes to extremes with EPDs that is where we use some caution, especially the CE and BW because even though the subject animal may have an acceptable actual BW, if they still have a high EPD they probably have some animals in their immediate pedigree that are known to have higher BW and those traits are still part of that animal and can come to surface. Our prime example was a bull we bought that was on the upper end of what we are usually comfortable with for BW EPDs. He had an actual BW of 85 which by most people would find no issue with that and he met what we were looking for at the time in phenotype. Well it didn't take long to realize he was not a low birthweight and easy calving bull when we started getting several calves over 100 lbs and many more in the 90's than we would like. We only run 1 herd bull with 20-25 females and that includes heifers so we don't have the luxury of erroring on a bull that most mature cows probably could calve OK with him but that's not ideal with heifers to take that chance. Bottom line is if there is a fair amount of accuracy with a BW and CE EPD there is probably enough reported births from the animals in that pedigree that factored into that EPD calculation to put some meaning behind why it may be high. [/QUOTE]
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