Although it continues to be dry in some areas of the nation, most have received beneficial moisture that is helping to produce forage for the entire beef industry. This has certainly encouraged cattlemen to hold back more replacement heifers for rebuilding the nation's cowherd. This is good news for everyone in the cattle industry -both seedstock and commercial. This is also good news for IBBA members as Brangus genetics produce the perfect replacement female, a profitable stocker calf, an efficientfeeder calf and an exceptional carcass that exceeds the current industry standards for high quality beef.Purebred breeders continue to be counted on by the commercial cow/calf industry to provide genetics that meet the demands of the feedlot industry, packer and consumer. Phenotype will always play a role in the bull buying decision process. However, commercial cattlemen understand the value and importance of data used in the calculation of all selection tools. With that said, I complement the board for releasing the newly calculated genomic enhanced EPDs. This will automatically improve the accuracy valuefor every trait on young, unproven genotyped animals. Thus, the advantage of genomic enhanced EPDs (GE-EPDs) is the increase in reliability of calculated EPDs without having to wait years for the production of multiple progeny to reach the same accuracy levels. I encourage everyone to perform a 30K SNP (or greater) profile on all cattle. This is more important for breeders with fewer animals than it is for breeders with large contemporary groups.
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