Page 17 - Storth Oaks Angus Catalogue ebook

Herd Completeness of

Performance Rating

One useful and often overlooked search option been castrated. will increase the level of accuracy across EBVs.
is the Herd Completeness of Performance The third trend identified is those males sub- Last year’s sale trends saw the demand for bulls
Rating. This metric is provided for all herds ject to recording and registration have higher with higher accuracy EBVs, and this is predicted
contributing data to BreedPlan. The rating is levels of recording than females. Boyd de- to continue. Lifting the overall herd complete-
based on a five-star system and is designed to scribed this as a situation that was unavoidable ness rating is one simple step towards increas-
quickly show how much data a breeder has for some traits, like scrotal size, but for many ing buyer confidence ahead of sales.
been contributing to BreedPlan from their other traits there were reasons why this wasn’t
herd. The actual rating is calculated on the ideal. “For example, data from ultrasound car- For producers seeking bulls, adding herd com-
proportion of calves within the herd born in a case scanning of heifers can actually be more pleteness to a search can eliminate those herds
fixed five-year period that have performance valuable for genetic evaluation than that from which are likely to have lower accuracies or less
recorded for each trait. recording of traits that are of importance when
bulls,” he said. cataloguing their sale bulls.
As not all breeds report the same EBVs, the “As heifers mature and lay down fat earlier than
criteria used within a breed to allocate the star bulls, they typically have more variation in the However, there will be occasions where suit-
rating is made within the breed. So the rating scan traits which is valuable to the analysis. able bulls may be available in herds that may
system should be used only to compare within And secondly, heifers typically represent a bet- have lower ratings. This could be for various
a breed, and not between breeds. Herds are ter cross section of the herd, as they are subject reasons, and so it is essential that if there are
rated with a star (including half stars) from 0–5 to less selection pressure than bulls. This those occasions, make time to talk with the
which summarises the relative “completeness” reduces selection bias in the data submitted to breeder and gain a sense of their program and
of their performance information. how their bulls may suit specific programs.
BreedPlan,” Boyd said.
The value of herd completeness recordings lies There are two messages to take from these Developing relationships with seedstock
within the increased level of accuracy from ad- comments. For seedstock breeders, the oppor- breeders is as essential as selection pressure
ditional data. Using sires with high accuracy is tunity to increase completeness of recording on replacement females or choosing high ac-
one part of a selection process – the other is to curacy sires.
identify a breeder who is able to demonstrate
a level of commitment to data recording to
ensure that accuracy is maintained.
At last year’s conference of the Association for
the Advancement of Animal Breeding & Genet-
ics (AAAGB), Boyd Gudex of SBTS presented a
paper highlighting the current levels of perfor-
mance recording across Australia.
While there were herds with high levels of
completeness in recording, there were also
herds with very low ratings, indicating a
low level of data recorded and submitted to
BreedPlan.

Three trends for data recording
Within his presentation, Boyd also noted three
trends for data recording and submission.
These were firstly a reduction in performance
recording as animals get older.

Secondly, there are about 15pc more females
registered than males. This trend has been
observed since 2004. One suggestion Boyd
made for this trend was a reluctance among
breeders to register males that will be or have