Cow-Calf Commentary for Iowa Cattleman Magazine

By Randie Culbertson, extension cow-calf specialist

March 2024

It’s Bull Buying Time: What should you be looking at?

The Iowa Cattlemen’s Association Symbol of Excellence bull sale is just around the corner, which means it’s time to spend your evenings thumbing through bull catalogs, trying to decide which bull is suitable for your operation. Purchasing bulls provides an opportunity for genetic change in a herd and for improving profitability through calf performance. Bulls are the genetic bedrock of your herd, and choosing the right bull for your operation can have long-term consequences. When daughters from a bull are retained, the genetics from that bull will remain in the herd for generations. Bull selection is an important decision and should not be taken lightly. With so many bulls and tools for selection, how does a person choose the right bull? Addressing the following questions should help you determine the right bulls for your operation.

Step 1: Where are you at today? And where are you going? Have a plan!
Genetic improvement in cattle is a slow progress. The decisions you make today will impact your herd for years to come. As a result, you need to have the long game in mind and establish a breeding plan. The first step is to critically examine your herd's current performance. It is important to consider both the herd revenue and the cost to appropriately determine the strengths and weaknesses of your herd, and determine whether the herd is performing adequately for the management level or genetic changes need to be made.

Once you've determined your herd's current performance and identified weaknesses and strengths, it's time to establish a breeding plan. Which traits need improvement, and which ones don't? (For a more in-depth discussion on developing a breeding objective, please refer to the February 2024 ICA Magazine issue’s cow-calf column.) By establishing breeding goals and objectives, you can start to identify bulls that will contribute to obtaining your breeding goals, and ultimately contribute to your economics goals.

Step 2: What is the breed composition of your herd?
If you are a purebred breeder, this is a no-brainer. But if you have a crossbred herd and try to capitalize on hybrid vigor, then the breed composition of your herd could be a determining factor for the breed of bull you want to use. One of the challenges to maintaining a crossbreeding system is the complexity of keeping levels of hybrid vigor. In crossbred herds where the cow herd is 75% or greater of one breed, consider changes in bull breed to optimize the hybrid vigor of the herd.

Step 3: What tools are in the toolbox?
You have identified the breed of bull you need and established a breeding objective; now it's time to get to work and dig into those sale catalogs. Catalogs present bull data, including expected progeny differences (EPDs). When it comes to genetic improvement, EPDs are the gold standard for selection. And remember, bulls are your genetic bedrock, and their value is in the genetics they can pass on to their progeny. EPDs remove a trait's environmental influence and report the genetic component that can be passed on to progeny. An EPD provides cattle breeders a tool for selection based on an animal's genetic potential.

A dilemma with EPDs is that breed associations report dozens of EPDs for growth, maternal ability, feed intake, and carcass. How do you choose which EPDs to focus on? If your goal is to improve profitability, multiple traits will contribute at varying degrees depending on their economic significance. Economic indexes were developed as a tool for simultaneous, multi-trait selection, and it is the economic merit of an animal as a parent. Economic indexes are the summation of economically relevant EPDs by their economic contribution to profitability and are commonly referred to as a $ value. For example, carcass traits such as marbling have a more significant economic contribution in terminal indexes where all the bull's offspring are finished in a feedlot.

Some do’s and don’ts of EPDs and indexes: First, always understand the definition of the EPD or index you intend to use. Second, these are tools for comparison between animals. Third, if you are using indexes, make sure you know what traits are included in the indexes and whether those traits fit within your breeding objective.

So, if EPDs and economic indexes are the tools for genetic selection, why performance-test bulls? The estimation of EPDs is driven by data. The more data, the more accurate the genetic prediction. Accuracies published along with EPDs tell us how much data is included in the EPD and how accurate the EPD is. The information in genetic predictions is pedigree, genetic markers, the animal’s own performance, and progeny performance. The progeny performance is the ideal data for EPDs because that is what we want to measure. Still, in most cases, a bull is purchased as a yearling before there is an opportunity for progeny records to be included in his EPDs. Genomic-enhanced EPDs have revolutionized genetic prediction by increasing the accuracy of young animals, and for some traits, it can be the equivalent of over 20 progeny records. The bull's own performance also contributes to providing more accurate EPDs as well as providing prospective buyers an indication of how the bull himself will perform.

Step 4: What does the bull look like?
Once you have your list of bulls based on EPDs or indexes, now its time to take a look at your perspective bulls. How the bulls look on paper is one thing, but if the bull is a natural service bull, he needs to be able to deliver and physically get cows pregnant. Take the time to walk through the pens and examine your potential bulls. Examine the bull's soundness and evaluate feed and leg structure. Ensure the bull has passed a breeding soundness exam. The bull may be the best on paper and physically, but if he is infertile, he cannot pass those qualities on to the next generation. Let's not forget about docility. This bull you will need to be working around and frankly, nobody likes to have to run up a fence every time you work a bull. Bulls going through a performance test can provide information on docility, and the bulls are accustomed to being handled.

Step 5: Time to buy your bull
Purchasing a bull is a big decision for any operation with long-term effects. Do your homework and use the tools available to help you decide to buy the right bull for your operations. Go into the sale armed with a list of bulls that will work for you. Always have more on the list than you need. We have all had our top pick go for more money than we are prepared to spend. I take that to mean we have good taste in bulls.

Bull Buyer Behavior

In December, the Iowa Beef Center held our inaugural Genetic Symposium. One of the events was a mock bull sale. Drs. Troy Rowan and Charles Martinez from the University of Tennessee have been researching bull buyer behavior and helped us develop a questionnaire to further explore bull buyer behavior. The mock bull sale results showed that participants prioritized calving ease direct, yearling weight, terminal traits, and docility, with only 35% using indexes. Deal breakers for bull buyers were horns and low EPDs for docility, and calving ease direct. After the mock bull sale, 84% of participants could purchase a bull within their price range, and 16% were unable to buy bulls as the bulls were out of the price range. When asked why a specific bull was bid on, most participants responded that the bull met the EPD profile and was in the correct price range. A handful of bulls were bid on due to time running out and the available bulls to bid on. Overall, 83% of buyers were satisfied with the bull "purchased." Dr. Martinez and his graduate students are currently analyzing the data, and we look forward to what they conclude.

 

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