New Beef Registry

[knabe]

Look at what has happened to cow size. The Angus breed has increase cow size while most of the Continental breeds have reduced cow size.

aren't most people trying to meet somewhere slightly south of the middle for cow size and is a function of selection?

no one currently wants 2000 pound cows unless they are selling them to market today.  with those animals out of the gene pool, cow size will moderate.  once eliminated, getting bigger is supposedly harder than getting smaller, though i haven't seen a good explanation why since size fits in a normal distribution and moving the median while retaining a distribution should happen easy.

 

[oldcowpoke]

Breed Association EPD’s / BIF / Multi-Breed EPD’s

As we have said in previous posts, with our genetic evaluation, an Angus can be compared to a Hereford, and likewise these two animals can be compared equally with any other breed such as Simmental, Brangus, Shorthorn, or even a Composite animal with more than one breed such as an Angus/Hereford, Angus/Shorthorn/Simmental/Gelbvieh, and the list and combinations can go on and on.

There was a question posted about the Angus bull Mytty In Focus. So we answered with what his WW EPD would be if we used the BIF adjustments with his EPD's that were from Angus, Simmental, Gelbvieh and Limousin Associations as an example those adjustments were +54 - Angus / +63.1 - Simmental / +42.7 - Gelbvieh / +58.4 - Limousin. The same bull but over 20 lbs difference between the lowest adjusted and highest adjusted WW EPD's.

Look at what has happened to cow size. The Angus breed has increase cow size while most of the Continental breeds have reduced cow size.

Simmental    1353 pounds
Hereford      1348 pounds
Angus          1342 pounds
Charolais      1339 pounds
Limousin       1330 pounds
Gelbvieh       1282 pounds

The system used by the Composite Beef Cattle Registry, is truly multi-breed in all aspects (meaning Angus, Shorthorn, Charolais, Red Angus, Hereford, Brangus, Gelbvieh, Simmental, Maine Anjou, Composites, etc.) , which makes it globally unique. Our model has extensive central test data, which many breeds do not include in their evaluations.

The most recent genetic evaluation that ran last week included 2.5 million animals. The animals in the database are a mixture of purebred (different breeds), and Composite cattle of various breed compositions.

There are other multi-breed models out there (e.g. run by the American Simmental Association as developed at Cornell University), but they are applied to data bases from a single Breed. These data bases will have crossbred cattle if used by that breed, but are not really multi-breed because they are mostly limited to a single breed. AGI and a small handful of others (using the model as developed at Cornell University), and BreedPlan offer evaluation services to breed associations. We are not aware of any joint analysis of data from more than 1 (or a very small number of) breeds at a time.

Seedstock producers have been asking for true multi-breed evaluations, which so far has not happened.

The biggest obstacle in the way for a true multi-breed evaluation to happen is for ALL Associations and Registries to share data. But because of politics within Associations and Registries this will be an almost impossible task.

So I can report the weaning weight on a single calf and his pedigree and get an EPD?  Do I understand that right?

 

[cbcr]

So I can report the weaning weight on a single calf and his pedigree and get an EPD?  Do I understand that right?

To get EPD's and indexes on calves you need a minimum of 5 calves born within 90 days of each other to create a contemporary group (raised together, treated the same, weaned the same day).  If your calving season is longer than 90 days, it's better to split the group as evenly as possible, rather than having one large group, and a second group of only 5 calves.

The contemporary group is used to estimate the environmental effect on the performance of the calf.  The environmental effect is included in the model (as contemporary group) so that the genetic effect can be estimated.

 

[cbcr]

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