The easy way to read a catalogue

So, the day of the sale arrives and it’s cold and muddy and the bulls are everywhere and rumbly….. Where does the would be purchaser start???

First has he picked his stud breeder! He should look for the one whose breeding policies are along his lines and who he believes he can trust.

Then the best place to start is probably with his catalogue in his chair at home, crossing out the bulls with traits which he does not like.

Every one is different.

A buyer that wants to finish his own cattle will be looking for traits that are different from the high country man who never sights his cows till calf marking and sells at the calf sales.

A buyer with fewer cows may only want one bull, and just back up with an old boy, so a high service capacity may be essential.
Maybe a buyer wants a bull specifically for heifer mating. Then he will sort out all the safe birth weight bulls, preferable with low GL’s, and try to add the growth in the 200 and 400 Weights as well.

A buyer running cows in cold hard country may see fat cover as paramount in his bull. A big EMA is probably for the downlands farmer. Great if you can combine both these traits!

And so on….

All the information on these traits can be found in the Breedplan EBV’s. The year’s average of bulls for the breed in all the traits is printed so that the buyer can make comparisons.

There might be a perfect bull if only his birth weight was just that bit lower. Then check his GL(gestation length). If that is low then the birth weight will be under control.

The EBV figures are only as meaningful as their accuracies. The stud with low accuracies has either not been breeding for long, has not been putting in raw data such as birth weights, scanning data etc, or has bought in sires with low accuracies. The accuracy figure is the indication of how predictable a trait is. Progeny tested sires have accuracies of up to 99% which means if you use them they are guaranteed to produce animals with the particular trait. Un-progeny tested two year old bulls inevitably have lower accuracies, but anything over 70% is getting closer and far safer to utilise than one of 50% to 65%

We all know that what looks good on paper is often not what you want to see in the paddock. Maybe he is too heavy in the shoulder, a bit small, a bit big, looks like a shrimp or a lump of butter.

The buyer needs to see the bulls in good time before the sale.

If he lives near the stud, a visit to see bulls in the paddock is a good idea.

In any case, it’s a good thing to have a plentiful supply of ticked bulls to look at so that he can cross off the ugly ones, and maybe get out bid on a few.

Our aim is for our clients to be able to buy the bull they like at the price they like, with the only complaint

“The bugger is lasting too long”

Which brings me to the next point.

Bull Care - You can help them last an long time