Everything Horses and Livestock® Magazine February 2018 Vol 3 Issue 1

Everything Horses and Livestock Magazine ®

number feed source for the cow will make this number vary some. Total maternal (TM) is measured in pounds of calf weaned by an animal’s daughters. They account for average differences that can be expected from both weaning weights, as well as from milk, and measure a sire’s ability to transmit milk production and growth rate through his daughters. It is calculated by adding an animal’s Milk EPD to one-half of its weaning weight EPD. Calving Ease Maternal (CEM) predict the average ease with which a sire’s daughters will calve as first-calf heifers when compared to the daughters of another sire in the same evaluation. Expressed as percentage of unassisted births. In addition, there is (SC) which is scrotal size, which directly effects how many cows a bull may be able to successfully cover in a herd. This number also has an effect on pelvic measurements in your replacement heifers. This is all tied to the time, which the animal reaches puberty. Because we like to breed heifers to calve at about two years of age early puberty is important. Each of our replacement heifers are pelvic measured at a year to insure the best chance of a first calf with no problems. For my program, nothing is kept with a score/measurement less than a160, higher than some farms. Stay ability (SA) is the age of how long the cow or bull will be active in your herd. This

Understanding EPDs Ge-EPDs on Bulls By Alan Eggenberger

If you have picked up any farm or livestock magazines lately, you have probably seen a bull sale advertised. Late winter and early spring is the most common time for bull sales. Most cattle operations are calving now and will want/ need a good bull to put in with their cows in the spring. Ge- EPDs or even EPDs (I personal will never buy another bull without Ge-EPDS) on cattle help us understand the bull’s or cow’s “genetics” and how he/ she probably will produce in the future from data collected. A short explanation EDPs in general are as follows. There are 15 collected points where this EPDs data comes from. This helps cattlemen improve their calf crop and guide them in the right direction. By looking at the charts, I will explain briefly, what they stand for. Reported data starts at birth, was there a problem? Did we need to pull the calf or was the birth totally unassisted. (What we all hope for) Then the calf is weighed to get the actual birth weight. Calving Ease Direct or CED is the ease of birth and the actual birth

weight is (BW). A bull that is used on heifers should be high in CED and have a low if not a negative number BW. The bull I use in my Limousin herd has a birth weight of -2.9, which is in the top two percent of the Limousin breed. This will help the heifer with her first calf. Next at weaning time, the calves are weighed. The weight is calculated for a 205-day weaning period. For myself I like big weaning weights (WW) as the majority of my caves are sold after thirty days after weaning and that helps with a bigger check. Heifers and bulls that have no visible conformation or EPDs issues are kept as replacements, while the others are sold. We also reevaluate as yearlings to make sure we only have kept the best. Our replacements heifer or bulls, or ones I’m going to sale as replacements are then weighed again at a year old, for the yearling weight (Y. A 365- day formula is used at this point. From there we go to milk production (MK) where weaning weights can help give us an idea on how well the cow milked, how nutritional her milk was in helping her calf to grow. Remember with this

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