West Central Iowa | blacksand - 3/16/2017 07:27
The thing I've seen with CE is that unless CE is a breeders priority, you can't guarantee CE. Here's what I mean: if you breed a 17 CED angus bull to a cow with lots of 1 CED in her background, that calf could end up anywhere between 1 and 17. Many breeders focus on low maintenance traits and those cattle have been bred to calv on their own. All calves have 50% of their genetics from their dam and 50% from their sire. If the Sires has poor CE in their background somewhere, there is a possibility that he can still throw big calves, same with the dam. Furthermore, if you take a dam who's sire was a cow bull, and breed her to a heifer bull, that calf is not guaranteed to come out easy, it's got a 50/50 chance. Furthermore, if the EPD accuracy of the site is very low, his EPDs can change dramatically in a years time.
You could end up on either side of each parent also. I see calving ease as an issue with many parts, you have birth weight and the distribution of birth weights, calf shape and distribution of shapes, and flexibility of calves and the distribution of this, etc. You could also get higher birth weights due to hybrid vigor when crossing unrelated animals. |
Heifer bull numbers . Carlson
