You have to assume care is up to par before any of the following would apply.

This is a big issue on fescue, but can be a problem anywhere. I do not follow Herefords anymore than I have to, but I know Jared Decker at MU was working through a hair shedding research project and he probably still has a few Herefords. I believe the breed is well represented in his work, so he should be able to share some lines that shed correctly if you want to get that into it.

There's been quite a bit of work done showing the obvious. Hauling genetics all over the country via trailers and semen tanks has put a lot of bloodlines where they do not belong and there is room to improve the bottom line if you're willing to correct it and can connect the dots well enough to do so. On the other side of the coin, hair shedding and fescue tolerance are connected to daily gain so some of the work has revealed sources of both in locations you wouldn't expect to find them simply because a breeder was selecting for gain. Some of the research on both is also revealing the bell curves within individual breeds can vary greatly. Some are rather narrow, which causes problems when breeders want to try to move a trait in a certain direction. This info generally doesn't get promoted to point cattleman actually see it, and for obvious reasons.

I find it rather humorous that adding more numbers to the equation is always the answer, as if breeding by numbers wasn't a big part of the cause. Breeders who know the actual bloodlines in depth, and their history, can often explain to the researchers why their projects found what they did. They tend to get their panties in a bunch when you do this, but it's nice when research proves out the old assumed knowledge. Unfortunately, AI and ET have allowed genetic progression to move at such a pace in certain segments of the industry the generational rollover happened so fast we can't really connect the dots anymore because no one watched those cows function in the real world long enough to even come to a conclusion. At that point you either have to rely on the numbers or do as some are and go back in time and use the older cow makers who were proven to function in your area.

I have cows that require a spring shear in order to thrive running right along side very slick daughters of the bull I believe has the highest fescue score found. Both phenotypes are very predictable and easily explained if you know what most of the names in the pedigree actually bring to the table.