At Glenwarrah Herefords and Brooksby Angus we are commercial cattle producers who breed stud bulls. We hope you find this bull buying guide information useful.
With the permission of fellow Angus breeder Richard Post, below we are republishing the TACE and EBV’s – A basic understanding in plan simple English, TIPS FOR THE COMMERCIAL CATTLEMAN from a past sale catalogue.
Bull Buying Guide. Buying bulls to match your breeding/marketing programme:
1. Breeding Vealers for the Local/Domestic Trade:
This market requires a slaughter age of 9-15 months, milk teeth with liveweight of 250-320 kgs.
For this market, you should be selecting bulls with high 200-400 day growth EBV’s. Also if you have a self-replacing herd look for higher milk EBV’s for your replacement heifers.
2. Breeding Yearling and/or light feeder steers for Supermarket/Hotel & Restaurant Trade
This market requires 320 – 400 kgs liveweight (MSA and CAAB) yearling and 2 tooth cattle for the South Korean market.
For this market, you should be looking for bulls with high 400-day EBV’s and increased EMA value, and adequate Fat cover. Note – if aiming at MSA or CAAB market select for higher IMF%.
3. Breeding Cattle for the South Korean Market
Steers and heifers up to 6 teeth.
For this market look at the Bulls 400-600 Day EBV’s and increased EMA value and adequate fat cover.
4. Breeding Cattle suitable for the Japanese Market Long Fed & Grassfed/Shortfed
(a) Long Fed
For this market, you need cattle with good structure to be able to stand up to the 200-300 days on feed.
In this market, Angus, and British breeds are preferred to produce the high level of marbling required. Select bulls with excellent structure, above average 600-day weight, good EMA values, and select for Positive (High) IMF/”Marbling”.
(b) Grassfed or Shortfed
Access this market requires producing a finished beast from 550-700 kgs liveweight, with a maximum of 6 teeth or 3 years of age, marbling is not a requirement.
All breeds and/or crosses are acceptable. Select bulls with above average 600 Day Weight that have good EMA values.
General Hints & Tips
* Buying Bulls to put over 1st calf heifers:
Avoid high birth weight EBV’s and select for short gestation length EBV’s. Above all avoid big shouldered, short necked bulls.
* Bull buying guide for self-replacing herds:
In buying bulls for any self-replacing herd, you should generally avoid negative milk EBV’s.
* Buying your bulls using EBV’s
EBVs = BUYER TAKE NOTE, BUT BUYER BEWARE
Beware of misuse of EBV’s when accuracy is not considered.
It is important that buyers should be made aware of the misuse of EBV’s when accuracy is not considered. Eg. A bull with a birth weight of +4.5 with 70% accuracy will have 96% of his calves with a birth weight ranging from +2.8 to +6.2, or a bull with a 600 day weight of +80 with only 70%, then it is suggested that 96% of his calves will have a 600 day weight ranging from +66 to +94.
We have noticed two full ET brothers given the same midparent EBV’s and then eventually end up with a completely opposite set of figures. Some “High accuracy” EBV bulls have had very misleading and drastic changes to their EBV’s, one popular, widely used bull with over 600 Day weight, over a three year period 600 day weight crashed from +70, to +49, then went back up to +70. One now wonders what his 600 Day figure will be next year?
EBV’s are a useful guide and a good management tool, but unfortunately, these mid-parent “paper” figures are being misused by many studs and promoted as a high-tech marketing tool with little explanation about their accuracy.
Basically EBV’s tell us that if the father is 7 feet tall and the mother is 5 feet tall then we expect the children will be an average of 6 feet tall. This may be correct but there is usually little emphasis on the fact that they will also range from 5 ft to 7 ft.
We hope that you have found this Bull buying guide information of use.
If you have any questions or would like more information please contact Stephen or David:
Glenwarrah Cows & Calves 
Brooksby Cow / Calf unit. 
Glenwarrah commercial breeders Brooksby Angus Heifer with Glenwarrah Hereford heifer behind her Glenwarrah Hereford cow and calf
