Choosing a Herd Sire
Welcome to Open Range, I’m Susan Allen. Stay tuned because after the break I’ll check in with our field reporter, Greg Martin for the AgriBeef Minute.
I’m Greg Martin with today’s AgriBeef Minute. Andrew Davis is a cattleman who has some good advice for choosing your next herd sire using EPD’s and a visual inspection. EPD stands for expected progeny differences.
DAVIS: Basically it’s a way to look at bulls by their different traits based on the accuracy for a particular trait; weaning weight, yearling weight, calving ease, birth weight and so on.
The visual inspection according to Davis is extremely important.
DAVIS: You know you want to make sure they are structurally sound so a visual evaluation is inevitable. You can tell a lot about an animal by how they walk and whether their structure is sound or not. For instance, testicle size is a determinate of fertility. Your bull is your future. One bull can breed 25 or 30 cows so he is spreading his genetics over 25 or 30 of your animals.
Davis has set up a website with a lot of good information for producers.
DAVIS: Basically what I’ve done is built a website that I give information away about the cattle business because when I first started out in the cattle business I had to learn everything by doing it myself and I made a lot of mistakes.
Check it out at beefcattlebiz.com. I’m Greg Martin and that’s today’s AgriBeef Minute.
Thanks Greg. Don’t forget Greg will be back each Wednesday with the AgriBeef Minute. Agri Beef Co - Real Families, Great People, Exceptional Beef. I’m Susan Allen.
