The discussion below about bull EPD's reminded me of a question. My main bull has excellent EPD's except his WW & YW Epds are less than the breed average and don't look very good compared to some new bulls that have low birthweights/calving ease but still yielding big weaning weight and yearling weight EPDs.

I'll attach his spring EPD graph.

But then one of the things I like about my bull is his smaller frame size (listed as 5.2 by AHA).  IF we want to move to smaller, more efficient (=wean more pounds of beef per acre) cows and steers that put weight into muscle rather than frame size, aren't bulls like mine always going to have smaller WW & YW EPDs? 

A 5.2 frame size bull - which is what I am looking for - is not going to sire calves with huge WW & YW.  My bull's calve look great. They are solid and growing rapidly. They were in the 600 lb range ww. and most were very "beefy". His calves generally were near or above the 50% of cow weight at weaning I am looking for. But then again I have culled most of my very largest cows already....

Are the WW & YW EPD's corrected for frame size or would that even make sense?   Or are lower WW & YW EPDs just a function of moving to a smaller frame size herd?

Something I had not thought of before.  Maybe having all EPDs in the graph way to the right is not possible nor desireable when moving to smaller frame size cattle?

TIA for any help.

Jim at Dawn

Here is my bull's spring 2011 EPD graph from the American Hereford Association to illustrate what I am talking about.

(U070 SPRING 2011 EPD GRAPH.gif)

U070 SPRING 2011 EPD GRAPH.gif (8KB - 131 downloads)