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West Central Iowa | Time after time sires epds are inflated when they are in heavy use, even as high accuracy bulls, to later deteriorate when they fall out of vogue. The angus association at one time posted that the yearling height epd had higher correlation to yearling weight than the yearling weight epd. Weaning weight is highly based on milking ability and as angus turn into the other milk breed, weaning weights make massive gains. Calving ease mature relies too heavily on birth weight, when everyone just wants to use it for pelvic size and it’s hard to fine heifers with acceptable pelvic size. The carcass epds are worth using, but there are definite breeder biases so it’s better to use as more of a high, medium, low sorter. Also, you are seeing a lot of excessive seam fat which may be the real downside of imf ultrasounding. There are many more examples of flaws in the system, a lot of them could be fixed, and it will be dependent on the breed association. The formulas to make epds make certain assumptions on improvement. You can effectively select cattle for many traits and make progress with out epds, and the truth is having to cull for everything else is what usually will cost you the most in the cattle industry. If your calf comes in half of 30 lbs short you still may get the same money at the sale barn. | |
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Terminal vs maternal breeding
