It’s bull sale season, which means sale catalogs are starting to show up. If you’re like me, there’s something fun about getting a new catalog and flipping through the pages of bulls, pedigrees, performance information, EPDs, accuracies and selection indexes. But after a few pages, all those numbers can start to look a little overwhelming.
And that’s where I think we sometimes make bull selection harder than it needs to be.
When I open a sale catalog, I don't want to start by looking for the bull with the biggest number. I want to start by asking a much simpler question: What do I need this bull to do?
The answer is going to be different for every operation. Maybe you’re buying a bull to breed heifers and need to put a strong emphasis on calving ease. Maybe you’re producing calves to sell at weaning and want to emphasize growth. Maybe you’re retaining ownership through harvest, or maybe you're building a cow herd and need to think about the traits that will influence the daughters that bull leaves behind. Your breeding objective should determine what you’re looking for before you ever start comparing individual bulls.
Once you’ve identified what you want the bull to accomplish, the information in the sale catalog becomes much more useful. Selection indexes can help narrow the list to bulls that fit your overall production goals. From there, you can look more closely at the individual EPDs that matter most to your operation. Accuracy gives you additional context for those predictions, while actual performance, pedigree and phenotype can provide other pieces of the selection decision.
The important part is that you don't have to use every number in the catalog. In fact, trying to do so can make the decision more difficult. A sire summary is a tool for helping you make a decision—not a test you have to pass by comparing every value on the page.
I think this is especially important as the amount of information available to cattle producers continues to grow. We have more ways than ever to describe an animal's genetic merit, but more information doesn't automatically make selection easier. The key is knowing which information is relevant to the job you need the bull to do.
That's the idea behind the updated MU Extension publication, Using Beef Cattle Sire Summaries: A Practical Guide to Selecting Better Bulls. The publication walks through a practical approach to using the information in a sire summary, starting with your production goals and working through selection indexes, EPDs, accuracy and phenotype.
So, the next time you sit down with a bull sale catalog, don't start by circling the biggest number you see. Start by thinking about the kind of calves, and ultimately the kind of herd, you are trying to produce. Then use the information in the catalog to find the bulls that fit that job.
Read the MU Extension publication: Using Beef Cattle Sire Summaries: A Practical Guide to Selecting Better Bulls — G2032
