Page 15 - MWC 03-11-2021

Let’s Talk Matter: I’ve been around the has not been The Midwest Cattleman · March 11, 2021 · P15
Feet, Legs, and Docility chase a bull who

stockyards long enough that semen
tested,
Bulls! young bulls get culled for two unless they have
main reasons; either they have a surplus of bull
poor foot/leg conformation and power for every
have become lame, or they are group of cows.

breeds have added EPD’s re- profit drain for
By Garth Ruff, Beef Cattle Field a too crazy to manage. Some Open cows are a
Specialist, OSU Extension garding these traits. Keep in every cow-calf
mind that undesirable traits are operation. Even
Being that breeding season also passed down to the next if buying a bull
for most of the region’s cow herd generation just as easily as de- from a neighbor
is just around the corner, let’s sirable ones. or friend, make
talk bulls. Making a bull pur- Semen Testing: Not many continued on
chase is a herd management de- producers can afford to pur- page 31
cision that should not be taken
too lightly as selecting the wrong
bull for your operation could re-
sult in missed opportunities for
increased calf revenue for sever-
al years.
When discussing bull selec-
tion, it is important to set some
goals for your cow herd in terms
of performance, efficiency, and
marketing. Often calving ease
and performance are the first
two criteria that come to mind,
because ultimately nobody
wants to pull calves, (less of a
concern if only breeding mature
cows) and here in Ohio most
calves are sold at or post wean-
ing across the scales. If you don’t
know what selection criteria are
important to your operation, it’s
quite possible you may never
find the right herd sire. Consid-
er the following when gearing
up to purchase your next bull.
Understand and Utilize
Genetic Information: EPD’s
are a great tool in estimating the
performance of progeny (calves)
of a given sire. When buying
young, unproven sires, look at
the accuracy of the EPD’s. EPD
accuracies improve if a bull has
been genomically tested, using
a DNA analysis test. Accuracy
values represent the relation-
ship between the “estimated”
EPD and the “true” EPD of the
animal. Values will range nu-
merically from zero to one. An
EPD with an accuracy value
approaching 1.0, is more likely
to represent the true genetic po-
tential of the bull in question.
Evaluate the Bulls: I like
my bulls to look like bulls. Ge-
netic information can be an ex-
tremely useful tool when used
in conjunction with visual ap-
praisal. If the bull doesn’t have
the conformation, growth, per-
formance, toolbox, and skeletal
structure to match what the sale
catalog says, or visa versa, there
is a risk for losing adaptability
and value within a production
system.
Good EPDs + good visual ap-
praisal = a potential purchase.