Shorty hf bulls

[jaimiediamond]

Here is probably a bull to look at with "total improvement" :  High Acc  ( above 40% )  and more then  51 total progeny  REg # 4078267  ....  Good topic Dan !

Your such a lovely lady sue!!! It's always good to post plenty of ce options.

Now to address Prophecy for you  as I know you have gone to a lot of trouble to discredit him as a bull to a number of people.  In over 8 years he has had more than 51 calves check clrc. Have you ever seen prophecy or his offspring in the flesh? Have you calved to him? Aside from seeing Diamond Regal Legend 4R or Diamond Helena Dottie 12H have you seen cattle from our program?

 

[trevorgreycattleco]

Why would someone promote a bull but not his offspring? If the offspring didn't work for that person, why keep promoting a bull? Oh, must have some more semen to peddle. And I'm not referring to you Jamie.  O0

 

[jaimiediamond]

Koulee sent me a pm asking for my heifer bull list so I thought I would post it for everyone.  This list has the initial EPDs I recorded in spring 2011 and the EPDs for spring 2014 I have found it very interesting to watch the EPDs change with the accuracies going up. 

I have not included the list with more recently recommended bulls just the initial recommendations of 2011 excluding bulls that have not had calves in the last five years.

 

[justintime]

Thanks Jaimie for posting this. I guess when I read through this listing of EPDs I struggle to understand some of them. My problem is that when I compare one of the easiest calving bulls that I have ever used, to one of the hardest calving bulls on this list that I have used, I do not see much difference in the numbers. I guess that can be explained by personal herd situations, but it just seems a bit odd to me.
Yesterday afternoon, I received a phone call from a guy who owns a couple of the bulls mentioned in this list. He was telling me that he has a very good bull who had a BW EPD of +2 last spring, but he just noticed a few days ago, that his BW EPD is now +5. The dam of this bull has two of the easiest calving sires he has ever used as her sire and grand sire. She calved as a two year old unassisted with the bull calf in question here.
He said that he called the ASA to ask why the BW EPD had changed so much in a few months. The answer he was given was that when he submitted his data, he sent it to the ASA office in two separate batches. The first batch was a small group of calves that he wanted to get registered right away and he did the rest of his calves at a later date. He was told that when this bulls data was compared with the others in his contemporary group ( the calves included in his first submission) he was one of the heaviest BW calves and this made his BW EPD move from +2 to +5. He also said that he probably made a mistake when he only submitted the data on the calves he was registering as he lost some calves in a spring snow storm and he did not include their data when he submitted it. I expect many breeders are doing the same thing. He also said that he asked if he had submitted all the data from his 2013 calf crop at the same time, would the BW EPDs on the calves change? He was told that it is quite possible that they could have been different, if the contemporary group was different. Now I may not be the brightest bulb in the room, but this makes little sense to me. If this is true, how much merit can you put in just the numbers? This man was told that his bulls BW numbers would probably change once he had data from his offspring submitted. He said before that could happen, he would have to find someone brave enough to use him but he thinks many breeders will not buy him because they are concerned about his BW EPD is now, NOT what it might be in a few years.
My question to him was, is a +2 EPD in my herd not supposed to be very similar to a +2 BW EPD in someone else's herd. He replied that he was told that it would depend on the data submitted from each herd.  I am still thinking that there is really something missing in this explanation as this bull has as his sire. a bull that has been used on heifers very successfully, and he has two of the easiest calving bulls as his grand sire and great grand sire. If the explanation he was given by the ASA is indeed fact, then I really question the validity of any of the numbers.
The breeder who phoned me was really wondering what this all meant. I could not answer his questions. This guy has been in the breed longer than I have, which is a long time, and we both agreed that if there was any truth in what he had been told, then these EPD numbers must really be in question.
He said he would not even hesitate to use the bull that now has a +5 BW EPD on heifers, as his personal experience indicated that his pedigree had some of the best calving ease genetics he had ever used, but many people would never even use him because of his higher BW EPD now.  In my opinion, it is stuff like this that confuses many breeders including myself. And now I read through this list of sires, I get even more confused when I see similar numbers on bulls that I think there is a world of difference in, in regards to their calving ease and BWs from my experience in my own herd.

 

[jaimiediamond]

From the calves we have been getting our bulls are very accurate in this batch.  I will touch on the bull in previous times you have talked about being the easiest calving sire you have ever had.  Your initial example earlier in the thread  was 75F as a easy calving option but his EPDs at the time did not represent that.  In the last 3 years I believe the 75F bull is starting to show himself as a CE bull through EPDs as well as through your experience, I would be more interested in seeing what happens in another few years.

Shadybrook Optimum 75F *x4006647 spring 2011 -0.4 -0.4 5 5 0 2 1 red polled n/a
                                                  spring 2014 1.1 -0.8 3 3 1 2 1.5

 

[sue]

Speed reading but you should see the real value in Shorthorn epd's change when ASA switches to Multi breed Evaluation and WHR members receive epds and TOC members do not. WHR will mean more in the near future and for the breeders that report everything vs the ( TOC ) members not interested. In Montie's words : every cow in your inventory is accountable for a calf each year... this is long awaited to many .

 

[justintime]

In regards to the EPDs on Shadybrook Optimum 75F changing to suggest he is an easier calving sire than his EPDs suggested in the past, I would say it is about time!  Optimum was born 18 years ago and he is still considered to be in the top 2 calving ease bulls I have ever used. I used him on heifers for several years and I never assisted a single birth from him. What I also liked was that his calves were all polled, dark colored and saleable. Every bull calf I had from him was sold as a breeding bull. It just seems to have taken far too long to start to see his numbers move in the direction I think they should be moving. I don't think any breeder can wait a decade or more to see accurate numbers depicted. I will agree that the EPDs shown for Optimum are probably fairly close to correct, but the fact that remains is why did it take at least 15 years to see this happen? It is 17 years ago that I first used him on heifers and I know he was used by several other breeders as well back then, yet everyone who used him was impressed with his calving ease but his EPDs barely moved.

Also in regards to the situation I wrote about above, I guess I don't understand enough about how these EPDs are derived, but the answers this man was given by the ASA of why his bull moved from a BW EPD of 2.0 to 5.5 in a few brief months, makes little sense to me. I looked up his pedigree and there are NO animals in his pedigree, that have a BW EPD of 5.5. There is NO animals with a BW EPD of more than 3.8 in the first 3 generations of his pedigree. His sire has a BW EPD of 3.4. His dam has a BW EPD of 2.8, both of which are quite aways from a 5.5. If the way the data was submitted can affect what the EPD number is, I truly think there is far too many ways to manipulate the system then.

Last week I had a heifer calf born out of a first calf heifer that is sired by a bull listed in Jaimie's table. The sire is considered to be a calving ease sire. This was an AI calf and there was no clean up bull used for about 2 months after this breeding, but this heifer calf weighed 126 lbs at birth. From the AI date, this heifer actually calved several days early, and I was not expecting her to calf. It was -38 C the morning she calved and I pulled the calf as I was not sure how long she had been working at calving. It was an easy pull( I pulled it by hand) and I am pretty certain she would have calved unassisted if I had left her alone. The fact remains that this calf weighed 126 lbs. I have told the owner of the sire but I am not going to mention the bulls name. That really should not matter as this discussion is about the EPDs. This sire has a Calving ease EPD of -1.0. His BW EPD is -1.1. The two year old dam has a calving ease EPD of 2.9 and a BW EPD of 2.2. When I look at these numbers I would never expect to get a 126 lb heifer calf from combining these two animals. This is the biggest BW I have had in at least 5 or 6 years here, and I know that if this had been a male calf, he would already be a steer.

I guess I am just looking for someone to give me some answers that make some sense. I don't understand how a bull calf that was born unassisted from a two year old female with a BW EPD of 2.8 and a sire with a BW EPD of 3.4 can have a BW EPD of 5.5 and the only reason the owner is given is because he did not submit a large enough contemporary group when he submitted his data. To me, that makes no sense... absolutely none. In fact, It makes me question virtually every number I look at.

I started these remarks after looking through the list of sires that Jaimie posted. I am pretty sure some of them are probably pretty accurate. My problem is if there is others that look suspicious, then how do I trust the numbers when I make any selection? Again, I am not going to mention sire names, as I do not own some of the sires that made me scratch my head. One of the sires I was referring to, is in my opinion, one of the easiest calving bulls I have ever used, and I would not hesitate to use him on heifers. When I saw another bull listed here, that I consider to NOT be a calving ease sire in my experience with him, and then see that both these bulls have very similar CE and BW numbers I again question the validity. I understand that there can be differences in calving ease between herds, but it makes me also wonder how I ( or anyone else) can use these EPDs with some confidence.  I see more and more people ( especially younger breeders) selecting breeding stock by the numbers and I only ask the question, " are they doing the right thing"?  I would love to be able to put my trust in computer generated numbers like these people do, but I continually run into things that I cannot explain, and make little sense to me. I am thinking somewhere there should be a common sense EPD generated.

When the owner of the bull who moved from 2.0 to 5.5 is told that if he had submitted his data differently, he may have had a different result in the bulls EPDs, just how on God's Green Earth am I supposed to know that when I go to a bull sale and look at his numbers in a sale catalog. There are some things in life that seem to make sense in theory but don't seem to when they are submitted to reality. I hope these EPDs are not one of these, as they are driving most every breed out there.

 

[RyanChandler]

Speed reading but you should see the real value in Shorthorn epd's change when ASA switches to Multi breed Evaluation and WHR members receive epds and TOC members do not. WHR will mean more in the near future and for the breeders that report everything vs the ( TOC ) members not interested. In Montie's words : every cow in your inventory is accountable for a calf each year... this is long awaited to many .

Please elaborate

 

[coyote]

This is Muridale Hero 31Z , we used him on a group of heifers last year. His sire is from the 1960's.
              x2921415 TH-F DNA-Y HILLDALE COMMANDER
          x3148703 DNA-N HD COMMANDER'S HERO
                        2910824 DNA-N HD COLLYNIE W C CLARIBEL
Sire: xC424708 DNA-N BONNYVIEW HERO 7Z
                      xCB381571 DNA-N NUPAR CHERRIO
          xC555338 DNA-N NUPAR RIDGEMAID
                        C398006 DNA-N RIDGECLOUGH GEM 8TH

                      xC468295 TH-F DNA-N SASKVALLEY ULTRA 12J
        x4144181 PHA-F TH-F DNA-Y SASKVALLEY BONANZA 219M
                      xC675680 DNA-N SASKVALLEY BRENDA 218K
Dam: xC683027 DNA-N MURIDALE MOCHA 37S
                      x4060983 PHA-F TH-F DNA-Y MURIDALE BUSTER 14K
        xC678037 DNA-N MURIDALE MADDI 94M
                        xC673225 DNA-N MURIDALE MAGGIE 3J

 

[jaimiediamond]

it's only a loose tool based on a number the bulls recommended by others.  Accuracies are going up which is always neat I had actually not planned on posting these sheets anymore as I had been doing them for personal research and don't enjoy negative backlash.  The bull JIT mentioned had sired the 126 lb calf for me on numbers this bull would not be a heifer bull he was only included as he was highly recommended in 2011 by other users and almost every bull has outliers.

Whereas the Coalpit Creek Leader bull for example has gone up in CE and dropped in BW as well as improved in 6 out of 7 traits. Where another popular advertised heifer bull has out of 7 traits have become worse in 5 over the 3 years the 3 of which I believe are most important CE, BW, and MCE.  The information is there, but honestly selecting a bull on just numbers would never be a good option

 

[justintime]

Jaimie.... I agree on everything you have said here. But why would anyone  be told his BW EPD was higher than anything in his pedigree would suggest, simply because he did not submit all his data at the same time. That just reeks of being able to fudge your EPDs if you want to take the time to figure out how to do it. I like to believe that almost all of them are as accurate as humanly possible, then a few situations appear that make you with no explanation for why they are were they are.

BTW, we just had our second calf from the sire that produced the 126 lb heifer calf. This time it is a 72 lb bull calf . I have one more due soon, so we have a tie as to whether he is a calving ease sire or not. I'm thinking the first calf is a genetic strange event.

 

[Luke Bowman]

I was asked to skim through these posts and I did just that.... skimmed so if i am completely off target, sorry.
In order for a bull to gain accuracy (Acc) for any EXPECTED(nothing is guaranteed) PROGENY(not him, his calves) DIFFERENCE (subrated one from the other to find the comparable number) he has to be sampled in multiple herds, of varying pedigrees and genotypes, and preferably against proven sires-- to make it solid.
Today's cattle (without using Genomic trait tests) has 3 ingredients that go into making an EPD. 1) average of its parents, 2) his performance in comparison to the contemporary group in which he is raised, and 3) the performance of his progeny in comparison to how they perform in their contemporary groups, preferably against sire progeny of sire lines that have proof/Acc. Right off the bat, a calf gets an EPD based off of his pedigree through the performance/records of his parents within their particular contemporary groups. Lets go with BW EPD for example, if the cow is +4 and the bull is -2, the calf should be around +2. Once his data is turned in in comparison to the other calves of that group, (must all be turned in together at the same time in the ASA's system to keep contemporary groups (CG) )you will get CG ratios that then are computed into the factor, as well as how those sire lines did in other herds, yadda, yadda, yadda, when the new sire summary comes out you get an EPD (which is likely to have changed) with added accuracy.

More Acc is added if the CG is larger and cattle of proven sires (.80 BW EPD Acc) are in the same CG group for comparison. Cattle within breeds that does not AI much are highly likely to see bulls's numbers fluctuate over time. However, with the benefit of EPDs, liars are caught eventually and EPDs don't gain much Acc unless animals come out of (again) larger CG's, are used in multiple herds, and are compared to cattle with proof.

It is about like herding cats if you only use young sires against each other, then the following year use a new set of all new sires, etc. You may have EPDs, but they certainly are not accurate.

With this all in mind, cattle will come out of cows not as expected, but remember, the cow plays a role and environment has a 70-75% of weight on a measurable phenotype (BW, WW, YW, REA, IMF, etc.). meaning the DNA only plays a 25-30% role!

 

[Shady Lane]

What this breed, and what this business needs as a whole is more Cattlemen and fewer mathematicians, politicians and excuses.

I do believe in performance data collection and the formation of EPDs. I think they can be a valuable TOOL.

I also have little faith in many of the current  numbers and EPD's as a whole.

I wish that the association could come together and black out all EPD's for 10 years, which would only be a maximum of 5 generations in any instance and then publish the real numbers, hopefully this would relate to honest numbers being reported and a more accurate databank.

This would have little impact on the majority of the breeders since statistics tell us that few of them will be in the business after 10 years. (almost like an EPD eh?)

Our Grandfathers and before them didn't argue about this kind of nonsense, they knew cattle by eye and could read them.

We need more people in the business that still have this skill, and then can combine it with accurate and honest data.

 

[turning grass into beef]

What this breed, and what this business needs as a whole is more Cattlemen and fewer mathematicians, politicians and excuses.I do believe in performance data collection and the formation of EPDs. I think they can be a valuable TOOL.

I also have little faith in many of the current  numbers and EPD's as a whole.

I wish that the association could come together and black out all EPD's for 10 years, which would only be a maximum of 5 generations in any instance and then publish the real numbers, hopefully this would relate to honest numbers being reported and a more accurate databank.

This would have little impact on the majority of the breeders since statistics tell us that few of them will be in the business after 10 years. (almost like an EPD eh?)

Our Grandfathers and before them didn't argue about this kind of nonsense, they knew cattle by eye and could read them.

We need more people in the business that still have this skill, and then can combine it with accurate and honest data.

(clapping) (clapping) (clapping) (clapping) (clapping) (clapping) (clapping) (clapping) (clapping)

 

[RyanChandler]

I'd agree with that- good post.  I wouldn't even mind simplifying it where actuals were just indexed against breed average. And then just leave it up to us to take into consideration the management and environment in which they were raised.

 

[RyanChandler]

I'd agree with that- good post.  I wouldn't even mind simplifying it where actuals were just indexed against breed average. And then just leave it up to us to take into consideration the management and environment in which they were raised.

Just a little update. I've had five calves in the last three days out of my bull HC Vanguard 22Z: Two bulls 84, 77lbs and three heifers 83,74,72lbs. All unassisted out of second calvers. If he continues this, I don't see any reason why I won't use him on my heifers this summer. Obviously it's too early to tell for sure, but not too bad for a bull with a -1.2 CE and 4.8 BW EPD  :

 

[coyote]

Do you think JIT might of been falsely reporting higher BW on his calves just to get a rise out of AJ?

 

[knabe]

Do you think JIT might of been falsely reporting higher BW on his calves just to get a rise out of AJ?

yes, yes, and yes.

 

[Duncraggan]

I'd agree with that- good post.  I wouldn't even mind simplifying it where actuals were just indexed against breed average. And then just leave it up to us to take into consideration the management and environment in which they were raised.

Just a little update. I've had five calves in the last three days out of my bull HC Vanguard 22Z: Two bulls 84, 77lbs and three heifers 83,74,72lbs. All unassisted out of second calvers. If he continues this, I don't see any reason why I won't use him on my heifers this summer. Obviously it's too early to tell for sure, but not too bad for a bull with a -1.2 CE and 4.8 BW EPD  :

X-Bar, in my opinion, early days still!

The EPD measurement, unlike the Australian BreedPlan EBV measurement system, lacks a vital measurement, namely, Gestation Length.

Last Spring, August/September in the Southern Hemisphere, my first bull calf from JSF Gauge 137W weighed 27kg (59lbs), 272 days after insemination on a CIDR timed AI programme, I had a 41kg (90lbs) outlier bull calf at 284 days and otherwise they were incrementally heavier until the last bull calf was born at 294 days and 40kg (88lbs).  Same goes for the other AI sire I used but had less calves to compare.

I believe nutrition and gestation length are huge influences, I moved farms about five years ago and my birthweights jumped about 20lbs.  Same herd sire!

It seems as though a lot of USA breeders use AI and maybe the inclusion of a Gestation Length EPD would be a usefull tool.

BTW, I have never heard the Australians complain about data manipulation!

 

[RyanChandler]

I gestation EPD could be pretty useful.  Based on 283 days, one was born on due date but others have been 2-6 days over. Ironically the 289 day calf was the smallest: 72lb heifer. Here's a cpl pics of her-