Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is talking with Bob Weaber, beef extension specialist at Kansas State University, about how EPD values can help cattle producers make breeding decisions.
As a tool, Weaber said selection indexes provide a useful way for commercial and seed stock producers to make aggregate selection decisions.
“The goal of an index is to provide economic information that weighs individual EPDs appropriately, given their contribution to profitability,” Weaber said. “So, it provides a more concise way for produces to make selection progress across all range of traits that are associated with farm-level profit.”
The recommendation Weaber said he usually gives producers is to pick the index that aligns best with their production objective.
“If you sell calves at weaning time, use a weaning endpoint index,” Weaber said. “If you sell calves on the rail and don’t keep any replacement heifers, you can use one of the terminal type indexes. Making sure you get the right index is as important as anything because it provides the right weightings for the traits.”
Those who have put these indexes together, Weaber said, have spent a lot of time making sure the parameters are correct along with the response to selection.
“A lot of times there is a tendency for folks to do that ‘look under the hood’ thing, which is okay, and I am a proponent of transparency, but the selection index weights also account for how much variation there is genetically in those traits to provide some emphasis,” Weaber said. “Sometimes the pure economic weights don’t make a lot of sense.”
The amount of selection progress made over the years, Weaber said, is a great indicator of how well these indexes work. Looking into the future of the cattle industry, Weaber also talked about the role these indexes will continue to play.
“As we look forward, maybe another 20 to 30 years, it will be interesting to see the other traits we have built out that particularly describe cost,” Weaber said. “As an industry, we are pretty good at describing revenue streams into our business but not a very good job of accounting for the cost.”
Weaber said he looks forward to seeing improvements in some of the drivers of profitability on the cow-calf level, such as response to vaccination, dry matter intake, and more.
“Producers need to make a good self-assessment of what their herd does really well and what they need to improve on,” Weaber said. “The other thing is a good understanding of what limitations are in your production environment.”
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