Even the RA breed is contaminated by number manipulation. EPD's are IMHO a marketing tool, Use a high accuracy AI bull, put his calves in the same contemporary group as the progeny of the bull that you are trying to promote - trash the AI bulls calves data that you turn in and turn in exceptional data on the other calves. Eventually if other breeders use your bull the truth will come out but it will take several years for the accuracies to get high enough to kill him. As far as EPD's in the show ring - the RA's have taken that to the extreme as much as the steers have taken hair to the extreme. I have seen excellent animals with just decent ( and probably honest) EPD's get beat badly by animals that were of far lesser quality but politically correct EPD's. I think we are in a trend away from that now as there are fewer and fewer breeders that are putting much faith in the computer generated and manipulated EPD's. I know of a few people that sat in front of their computers and stacked the numbers when making their breeding decisions, never giving a second thought to soundness, body type, etc., most ended up with EPD's thaty were off the charts but the cattle couldn't back up the numbers. RW
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As ususal RW you are spot on with your analysis of EPD's. I love going to bull sales and finding the bulls that actually look like bulls and have everything we are looking for and being able to pay half the price of these supposed next great ones. I look through so many sale catalogs and see these bulls at the top ends of the sales being promoted cause they have great numbers and great pedigree's yet they look like they got a little extra shot of estrogen. No masculinity, no bone, no muscle, yet because they have the hot new pedigree and their numbers say they are awesome people pay outlandish amounts of money for a bull that should have been steered a long time ago. When EPD's were first created they were an amazing tool to use. Unfortunately over the years, EPD's have made way too many "Multipliers" and we've lost a lot of "Breeders". Hopefully there will come a point in time in which we get back to actual "Animal Breeding" and steer away from chasing the fads that have led us down so many different paths.