Real World Data VS EPDS

[SMN Herf]

I sent all of my steers except for 3 down to a feedyard in KS. I collected data on all the steers both commercial and the ones out of registered cows.

My old Mac 0232 bulls data was very interesting. He had 9 steers in the bunch, mostly out of first calf heifers. He has epds of only 64 on YW and .15 REA and -.13 IMF which would rank him in the bottom 3% for IMF of the breed. But his steers outgained the pen average and 7 of the 9 steers graded choice. The pen was comprised of a Boudler son I own, and AI sires such as M326, 19D, H33, 24F, and Predestined. All of these have much higher epds than 0232.

I have to admit that his epd profile has held me up on how much I have used the bull, but judging from the real world data, its apparent the epds aren't accurate for him. I am curious how often this happens with the epds not matching the ultrasound data. Anybody on this board have any experience with this too?

Brian

 

[Shortgrass]

I remember what an old cowboy told me years ago, "EPDs were invented by some college professor, and college professors are just some rancher thats gone broke." I feel they are too easily manipulated to put too much stock in them. You can just not weigh that calf that was 110 pounds at birth, or leave that light weaning steer off the bunch when you figure the average. They are no better than the man who submits the data. They are just one tool, that may or may not be reliable. Thats what my 2 cents worth is :wink: .

 

[turning grass into beef]

My brother know a purebred breeder that when asked about epd's he replies "naw, we don't have them, we vaccinated for them years ago" :lol:

 

[Northern Rancher]

EPD's are more a marketing tool now than a device for 'breed' improvement. Before long we'll be seeing bulls promoted for being average-instead of the overhyped outliers that capture the imagination and $ of everybody today. It would be ok to keep breeding more milk and performance into cattle if we were garanteed an extra three inches of rain every summer-sunny days during haying and a foot less snow in the winter-farmers would donate their corn. unfortunately we live in a dry summer-cold winter-grasshopper laden where farmers want to make a living too-cows eat more brown hay than green some years-I might believe carcass data from breeders who've actually read a close out and paid a feed bill!!!

 

[leanin' H]

While EPD's try to give you information based across the particular breed they fall short in some areas. They are Expected numbers and how many times does the UN-Expected happen? Throw in what Northern said about differences in climates, habitat, feed values and supplements and lots of different things can happen to folks using the same bull. MARKETING is the key word. It allows breeders another tool to show off thier product. And it pays to remember that a cow has a lot to do with the equation. You could breed a great bull to garbage and you'd have 1/2 a calf of garbage. Do we use EPD's? Sure. Do we take into account lots of other factors? Absolutely! And tracking calves through the entire process will only give you more data to use in improving your bunch of cattle! :wink:

 

[RobertMac]

EPD's?????!!!!!! :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :wink:

 

[Justin]

i for one, do feel EPD's are important. like H said, the unxpected can always happen. but a person can use those epd's to help decide if particular bull will work in thier area/climate. or use those numbers to help improve a certain area in your cow herd at a faster rate. i do feel when looking at and trying to decide what bull to use(when AIing), use bulls with high accuracys. that will help eliminate some of the unexpected. when choosing yearling bull, i think the best thing you can study is his Momma. but there are many producers that could care less about epd's and do just fine...so as far as this topic goes, everyone may have to agree to disagree.

 

[Anonymous]

EPD's are more a marketing tool now than a device for 'breed' improvement. Before long we'll be seeing bulls promoted for being average-instead of the overhyped outliers that capture the imagination and $ of everybody today. It would be ok to keep breeding more milk and performance into cattle if we were garanteed an extra three inches of rain every summer-sunny days during haying and a foot less snow in the winter-farmers would donate their corn. unfortunately we live in a dry summer-cold winter-grasshopper laden where farmers want to make a living too-cows eat more brown hay than green some years-I might believe carcass data from breeders who've actually read a close out and paid a feed bill!!!

AMEN-- and it is already happening that more and more are waking up to the "average" and not the high performance....

I use EPD's more to rule out certain bulls than anything...If I see a +30 milk or a -15 EN $, I don't look any further....

Finally a lot more emphasis going back on the maternal traits- and what kind of momma cow maker they will be- something that was almost totally forgotten in the angus breed during the era of trying to build the biggest beast - with the biggest carcass...

 

[per]

EPD's are more a marketing tool now than a device for 'breed' improvement. Before long we'll be seeing bulls promoted for being average-instead of the overhyped outliers that capture the imagination and $ of everybody today. It would be ok to keep breeding more milk and performance into cattle if we were garanteed an extra three inches of rain every summer-sunny days during haying and a foot less snow in the winter-farmers would donate their corn. unfortunately we live in a dry summer-cold winter-grasshopper laden where farmers want to make a living too-cows eat more brown hay than green some years-I might believe carcass data from breeders who've actually read a close out and paid a feed bill!!!

AMEN-- and it is already happening that more and more are waking up to the "average" and not the high performance....

I use EPD's more to rule out certain bulls than anything...If I see a +30 milk or a -15 EN $, I don't look any further....

Finally a lot more emphasis going back on the maternal traits- and what kind of momma cow maker they will be- something that was almost totally forgotten in the angus breed during the era of trying to build the biggest beast - with the biggest carcass...

Amen to OT's amen and Amen to OT's comments

 

[SMN Herf]

It gets more interesting as I look more into the data.

I have a Boulder son here that has 26 scans all from my own herd with a top 35% ranking in the breed for IMF epd. Their is a fair amount of data collected on his sire and half sibs in other herds. He had 7 calves in the group and 2 graded choice. 3 of the 7 of these were out of half sisters to 0232 and 2 more of them had 0232's sire as their mgs.

Now on 0232's calves, 5 of the 9 had his sire as the maternal grandsire. So they were fairly tightly bred back to the old Mac 117D bull but still graded choice, whereas when bred to the Boulder son, they reduced the % choice.

Brian

 

[SMN Herf]

EPD's are more a marketing tool now than a device for 'breed' improvement. Before long we'll be seeing bulls promoted for being average-instead of the overhyped outliers that capture the imagination and $ of everybody today. It would be ok to keep breeding more milk and performance into cattle if we were garanteed an extra three inches of rain every summer-sunny days during haying and a foot less snow in the winter-farmers would donate their corn. unfortunately we live in a dry summer-cold winter-grasshopper laden where farmers want to make a living too-cows eat more brown hay than green some years-I might believe carcass data from breeders who've actually read a close out and paid a feed bill!!!

I don't look at a lot of semen sales catalogs anymore other than for just curiosity's sake just for that reason. They have been one of the biggest promoters of the higher the number better they are crowd. Are you saying that theyare ready to change as that would be a huge change in their current business model?

I am not willing though to just throw away all the epd numbers though either. Just don't put too much emphasis on them and understand what the numbers mean and what the relationship of the numbers to themselves actually mean. Like beware of the huge spread between the WW and YW epd. Real world data still will rule for me though.

 

[High Plains]

Oh, I'd sure say they're a useful tool. It's a matter of balance. Just like most everything. You've got to be a cattleman/woman first, and then use the numbers as a guide. Gotta be smart about it. One incident of results doesn't make a trend, nor does it negate a trend.

Shooting for average doesn't seem like much of a goal. I just can't get excited about that. Always trying to get a better combination of traits is what I'm shooting for.

The numbers are certainly not entirely flawed, and they're not the bible either. The bull of the month club will probably remain an exciting club to be a part of. The results will be a surprise :!: Use known facts and build on them with new information. Doesn't really seem that difficult. No reason to shun the numbers if we can figure out how to use them without losing our heads. I can point to several ranches that have targeted the kind of cattle that they're after through using EPDs and phenotype together.

There again, sometimes the home-raised cleanup bull creates some very pleasing results. Just my two cents, since you brought it up.

HP

 

[Grassfarmer]

I confess to not having a great knowledge of EPDs, our breed gets along just fine without them. I'll paste below an interesting extract by Larry Leonhart from a discussion on the 5barX website regarding EPDs. See what you folks that are more knowledgeable about EPDs think of it.

".....marketing-wise we can see that the top selling Sitz bulls were sired by a bull named UPWARD, pedigree-wise Upward was sired by a bull named ONWARD. So going backward, Dunc mentioned the long standing contribution of the cow herd. First by tracing any change in the Connealy maternal side of Onward over a period of 30 years back to a "Craigie cow", the combined economic values of his maternal lineage changed to require $65.77 more EN$ to produce $20.19 more W$ plus $47.15 more B$ per animal .... .. indicating nearly a wash. On the Sitz maternal side of UPWARD we generally find the same trend. Upward's dam changed from her 1976 lineage with 6.6 more BW EPD, 122 more YW requiring $55.66 more EN$ to produce $14.43 more W$ plus $25.79 more B$ .... indicating the economics of Upwards maternal lineage is going backward instead of forward, upward or onward."

 

[rancherfred]

Any breed that doesn't require whole herd reporting has useless EPDs. Statistics aren't worth anything if the sample isn't complete. I think that is one of the problems that people have in properly utilizing EPDs. EPDs are simply a statistical measurement of probabilities. The bigger the sample the more accurate the measurement, however it doesn't matter how big the sample is if it is incomplete. Allowing selection of the content of the sample will result in an inaccurate measurement regardless of the size of the sample. If throwing out the outliers is allowed you can make an EPD say anything you want it to. You might sell a bunch of semen but it is being sold under false pretenses regardless of the accuracy. Every breed association ought to be insisting on whole herd reporting. At this time there is no reason for not having whole herd reporting unless the goal is to provide the seedstock producers the ability to create their own EPDs.

Having said that, we do utilize them as one of several tools to pick our future sires. I think any selection has to start with the acceptable phenotype. It doesn't matter how good the EPD looks, if we don't like the look of the animal we don't bother with any more consideration of the bull. By the same token, if we look at the bull and like his looks but the EPDs show a glaring problem then we don't bother with any further consideration of the animal. Relying solely on an EPD as the only decision making tool will get you in all sorts of problems.

 

[Northern Rancher]

I confess I use the staff appraisals on feet and udders etc as much as I do EPD's. Most of my customers cull more cattle on soundness than they do on extrapulated growth traits or perceptions of carcass perfection. We've fed our own calves for 20 plus years in my experience just about any run of the mill Angus bull will give you adequate marblimg-we average 95% AAA or better-conversely most exotic bulls will help out the yield when used on a Angus cowherd. It's when we try and make Angus marble like a jersey and yield like a limousin and milk like a holstein that we run into troubles. To properly use EPD's you have to have an idea where your at in your cowherd-using carcass epd's as a selection criteria when you aren't retaining ownership is really not great business.