Page 23 - Red Hill Farms Annual Bull Sale – March 18, 2023

ASA EPDs and $ Indexes

CALVING EASE (CE): Percent of unassisted births when used on heifers. COLOR
BIRTH WEIGHT (BW): Pounds of birth weight. Red: Red
WEANING WEIGHT (WW): Pounds of weaning weight. BB: Homozygous Black
Bb: Heterozygous Black
YEARLING WEIGHT (YW): Pounds of yearling weight. BLK: Black
MATERNAL CALVING EASE (MCE): Percent of unassisted births in BWF: Black White Face
first-calving daughters. POLLED STATUS
MILK (MILK): Pounds of weaning weight due to milk. PP: Homozygous Polled
Pp: Heterozygous Polled
MATERNAL WEANING WEIGHT (MWW): Pounds of weaning weight due to PLD: Polled
milk and growth. P/S: Polled/Scurred
DOCILITY (DOC): Percent of docile calves from one sire compared to
calves of other sires.
STAYABILITY (STAY): Percent of daughters remaining in the cowherd at 6 years of age.
YIELD GRADE (YG): Yield grade score.
MARBLING (MRB): Marbling score.
RIBEYE AREA (REA): Square inches of ribeye.
ALL-PURPOSE INDEX (API): Dollars per cow exposed under an all-purpose-sire scenario. (See below for
more details).
TERMINAL INDEX (TI): Dollars per cow exposed under a terminal-sire scenario. (See below for more details).
BACK FAT (BF): Inches of back fat.
$ INDEXES: Though EPDs allow for the comparison of genetic levels for many economically important traits,
they only provide a piece of the economic puzzle. That’s where $ indexes come in. Through well-conceived,
rigorous mathematical computation, $ indexes blend EPDs and economics to estimate an animal’s overall
impact on your bottom line. The same technology that led to the dramatic progress in swine, poultry and
dairy genetics over the last several decades was used to develop the following $ indexes:
AL-PURPOSE INDEX (API): Evaluates sires for use on the entire cow herd (bred to both Angus first-calf
heifers and mature cows) with the portion of their daughters required to maintain herd size retained and
the remaining heifers and steers put on feed and sold on a carcass grid basis.
TERMINAL INDEX (TI): Evaluates sire for use on mature Angus cows with all offspring put on feed and sold
on a carcass grid basis.
USING API AND TI: First, determine which index to use; if you’re keeping replacements, use API. If not, then
TI. Just as with EPDs, focus on the unit difference between bulls. (As described above, index units are in
dollars per cow exposed.) The difference can be used to determine how much a bull is worth compared
to another. Or, put another way, how much you can pay for one bull compared to another. For example,
when buying an all-purpose-type sire, you can quickly figure a bull scoring $140 for API is worth an
extra $6,000 over a $90 bull if both are exposed to 30 cows over four years ($50 diff. x 30 hd. x 4 yr. =
$6,000). A percentile-ranking chart is required to determine where a bull’s index value ranks him relative
to other bulls in the breed. For percentile rankings or more detailed information about EPDs and $ indexes,
visit www.simmental.org.

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