Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for tonight's BCVA webinar. My name is Sarah, and I'll be chairing the webinar tonight. Our speaker, Jenny is happy to remain online for questions after her presentation.

So please type any that you may have during her presentation into the question and answer box during the webinar, and I'll save your questions for the end. If you have any technical difficulties, you can also let us know using the Q&A box, and we'll do our best with our panellists, Dawn and Rich, to assist you. If you can't see the question and answer box, if you move your mouse, then you should see the task box appear on the bottom of your screen.

So it's my pleasure tonight to introduce Jenny Hull as our speaker. Jenny qualified from the Royal Bet College in 2007 and has worked predominantly in beef and sheep practise in Northumberland ever since. She has a keen interest in proactive beef and sheep health planning and driving an efficient beef and sheep and beef and sheep industry that is sustainable, which is particularly important as we enter a post-subsidized area of livestock production.

She is currently studying for a certificate in sheep health and production. And outside of work keeps active and tends to her growing flock of pedigrees warble sheep. So now to hand over to Jenny, who is talking about understanding estimated breeding values, a simple practitioner's guide.

Great, thank you very much, Sarah. I shall, I shall just jump straight in, really. .

This is gonna be a very simple, guide just to be able to have a really practical, sort of, guide for use on, on farm, etc. So, first question is, and, and have a think about it, yourselves is what, what factors influence this, this bull's physique, you know, what, what leads to this bull looking like this? And and the list I came up with was obviously nutrition, a good a good giveaway is the, the feed pail in the front of this pool here.

His age, sort of how old he is and how big he's got to. At the age of his dam, that's maybe more relevant in in sheep, but still relevant in, you know, heifers won't we wean as heavy a calf as as cows, as, as fully grown adult cows. Its health status or whatever, what other disease is going on.

And, and his genetics. But the thing we need to remember is The only way any bull can influence his offspring is through his genetics. Nothing else can be passed on.

So it's only his genetics that's passing on how, how, how good his offspring are gonna look. And, and the way to look at this, is, or the way to quantify genetics, it can be what, you know, estimated breeding volume. So what are EBVs?

What are estimated breeding bios? Maybe these are measures of the genetic potential of an animal for individually recorded traits. And we'll go through a lot of the traits a little bit later on.

So breeding potential is, is, is we, we take the pedigree data, and we take performance data. And, and that's what makes up our EBDs, our estimated breeding values, and we can divide them into two separate traits, terminal side traits and maternal traits. and then, that also can lead to breed, indexes as well.

So we'll, we'll, we'll come on to that in a minute as well. So how are EBVs calculated? Well, we use the, the data from the animal itself.

And if that's just a newborn calf, then obviously there's not a lot of data to start with. We take the, data from the animal's contemporaries, so who it's, it's age group and who it's living with. Data from the animal's relatives and their contemporaries as well.

So that's, say if we had 50 AI straws that went on to 50 different farms and that lived with, they lived with, with, you know, were reared with calves and, and, and cattle of different genetics. You can take all that data and look at all that data and feed that all into EBVs and estimated green values. And then the correlation between, between traits, and we'll come on to that as well.

And also the heritability of the traits as well, so how, how inherited it is. And so heritability is it describes the strength with which traits are inherited so passed down through the through the generations with the genetics, and it varies depending on the trait in question so. Generally, traits associated with your reproduction and survival have low heritabilities.

Milk production and early, body size and, and, and therefore, you know, growth rates, medium heritabilities, but later growth rates and carcass traits are relatively high heritabilities and especially carcas traits such as fat depth and . And and and most eye muscle depth, etc. Now genetic correlations are basically describes the, the, the direction and strength of the association between two traits, how two traits are related.

So some traits are really very positively correlated, very related, such as 200 day growth rates and 400 day growth rates, but others are negatively correlated, such as 400 day growth and calving use. And when something is known of one trait but not another, a prediction can be made based on what is known about the correlation between them. So that's, again, that's, that's to feed into that, that, that breeding value.

So how are EBV calculated? So we take the performance data of all recording animals in a population, so a breed, and you add that together with the data of all known relatives of that animal. And so in a, a, a, a breed stud book, etc.

And that, that, that's what feeds into this, this EBV figure that we get. Now this is put through a, a blur to, to compare it with, with other animals and, and, and, and, and compared animals in different herds. So what is blur, you ask?

Well, this is a bl machine. Or more, more specifically, it's blo stands for best linear unbiased predictor. And this is the calculation that you require.

And, and it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't make much more sense to me upside down, in fairness. But in short, bluff is, a calculation that takes into account the, the, the environmental differences, with, you know, different animals on different herds, to allow us to be able to sort of add that data together and be able to, I use that data and crunch it to, to get an EBV. So With any EBVs we've then, we've got various maternal and terminal fire characteristics or traits.

So EBVs are divided into Into lots of different characteristics. So we've got direct carbonies, and this is something the farmers struggle with a little bit sometimes in terms of, of, you know, what does direct and indirect carboniesse mean? Well, Direct is, is that calf coming out of that cow, that direct descendant calf, that, that's, that, that cow's going to give birth to that, that's direct.

Now, indirect is the calvingies of that bull's daughters. So they're, those calves, those heifer calves that are born, they grow up and, and, and get served and, and carve themselves. And it's how, How, how easy those, daughters have.

And then birth weight, and a lot of the figures are actual genuine figures. So, so the birth weight EBV is, is, is in kilos. Gestation length is in days, and then 200 day milk production is in kilos.

So again, it's a little bit, some people ask, you know, how do you, how do you calculate that? And it is based on looking at some of the other traits or looking at 200 day growth rates of calves, etc. And then mature size so that adult cow weight as well.

So how big is that adult cow? And then scrotal circumference. So scrotal circumference, the, the, it's, it's inversely proportional or inversely related rather to, the, time at which heifers reach puberty.

So it can be an indicator of, of how early, calves, heifer calves will start cycling and, and hit puberty and, and therefore be fertile. So, a lower scrotal circumference score. Means that, heifers will be, take longer or be older before they hit, hit puberty.

And then terminal characteristics are, birth weight again in, in a way. So, you know, how big the calf is when it starts, before it starts growing, carcass weight, and then growth rates of 200 day growth rate, 400 day growth rate, eye muscle area, so that's carcass, and fat depth, intramuscular fat. And then retail beefy, which is basically the, the killing out percentage, you know, how much of that, car, how much of that animal, is, is, is salable kilos of beef, you know, how much of it is, is good, how much of it is, is legs that, and bones that get boned out.

And, and we can sort of, we can almost group these into, the EBVs that, that lead to a characteristic. So gestational length carving and birth weight can all, you know, lead into a characteristic of, of easy carving animals. And then efficient growth is the 200 day, 400 day growth rates.

And then, the khaus quality, what feeds into that is the muscle, muscle, muscle depth, muscle area, fat depth, etc. And then a little bit, I know with BCBA we know, we, we're doing cows, but I just wanted to, to show that the, the, the EBV principles that apply to cattle can apply to, to sheep as well. So, and if anything, there's almost more EBVs, looked at for sheep.

And so for sheep, you've got little size, how many lambs they have, maternal ability, and so that's, you know, kind of, how well she is at, how good she is at, at rearing her lambs, and an eight-week wait, which is the, the key data for, for, for lambs and then a scan weight, and so that's the ultrasound scanning of the, of the backs to see sort of, you know, how good a caus quality, so it's the muscle depth, fat depth, and then mature size. So this is, this is when we're talking about, you efficiency. So, so in sheep, we talk about efficiency, we talk about a A 70 kg ewe should wean her own body weight in lambs.

So a 70 kg ewe should wean 2 35 kg lambs, and that makes her 100% efficient. Now, with, with cattle, we're only ever going to be, or usually only ever going to be 50% efficient. So you're aiming for a 600 kg cow, weaning a 300 kg calf.

But again, this is, you know, with this, this, you know, this can feed into this, the, the, this, you know, this all this efficiency. And then we've got carcass lean weight, and, and, and, the sheep guys are using sort of CT scanners to, to, sort of, you know, record a lot of this. And then giga is the, is the leg, so, so, you know, how much leg meat, and then there's a, an EBB sort of going forward for, for worm resistance, etc.

And again, same as cattle, we can, we can sort of group these into, litter size, and maternal ability. So that's maternal performance we're looking at. 8-week waits down weight is efficient, you know, how efficient the growth is.

And thenAus quality and then and then you know, you mature size to efficiency. And like I was saying before, it's a, the EBV is an actual figure. It's an actual, so a birth weight EBV enables size to be selected for smaller calves at birth, so it's expressed in kilos.

So an example, so an EBV of -4 means that the bull will produce calves 2 kg lighter. Than a ball with an EBV of, of zero, so the average. Now, you got to remember that, you get half the genes from the sire and half the genes for the dam.

So it'll only ever be that genetic potential will only ever be halved. So that minus 4 becomes 2 kg in the calf because you're only getting half of your genetics from that bull. And then for gestation lengths in days, so that you're looking at, being able to, select a shorter gestation length.

And use that to, you know, kind of, calves are in the cows cooking for less time, so they're potentially not getting as big, but also she's got calved and she's, getting herself straightened out and get ready to get back in calf again to produce one calf per 365 days of the year. And so an example of that would be a bull with an EBV of -6 will produce calves with a gestational length 3 days shorter than a bull with an EBV of, of 0 to the average. Again, that's, so you have of your genetics are coming from your bull.

And Kane direct, then that's expressed as a percentage, and, and, it's scored in terms of not would be carved with no assistance, and I think it's up to 6, which is a born by caesarean section. And a bull with an EBV of + 6 is estimated to produce 3% more unassisted carvings compared to a bull with an EBV of, of zero. So, so there's, you know, sort of, express as a percentage, more unassisted carbons.

And so for EBBs we've got, we've got two main recording bodies, really. We've got Breed Plan and we've got, Cignet, and they both do different, the different breeds. So when you're looking at EBVs and you're looking at the graphs, etc.

They do essentially the same thing, but they do present it a little bit differently. So you've kind of got to get your mind around the, the two different sets of graphs. And for sheep, the, again, Cigna are the main guys looking at doing the sheep work.

And there's quite a lot of, sheep breed societies recording. And, and there are EBVs out there for them. And a lot of that's done through Cigna and the, the, the, the scanning and the CT scanning and such is done through Cignet.

So accuracy levels. So this is something that, that, that farmers get a little bit hung up on about, as well, so. The accuracy of an EBV is based on the amount of information there is that you can feed into this, this, this estimated figure, if you like.

And, and it's available or it, it, it, it's, it's, you know, how many, how many close relatives are we, feeding into this, this data. And, and indicates confidence levels. So, you know, how confident are we that that EBV isn't going to change over time.

So the, the, the idea that a bull, a, a, a young calf as more and more data becomes available, as it, it sort of gets older, are, are its EBV figures gonna change? And yeah, so several things affect the accuracy. So the amount of information there is, on the animal itself and on its relatives, how heritable, how, how, how inherited is that right?

Heritability of the trait, and the amount of information from the animal and its relatives and traits correlated. So how, how much information we've got all from all the different traits, and, and how related all they are, how much they correlate. And then how many contemporaries there are as well.

So how many, sort of recorded herd mates in the same management group that we can sort of compare how well they're all doing in the same management group being managed the same. The main thing to remember with EBVs, and this is the, a key sort of take home message is that EBVs allow you to compare animals within a breed. But they do not allow you to compare, one breed with another.

So you can't compare the, the results of the EBBs of a, a Charolet with an Angus. You can only compare a Charolier with a shower, another Charolet. So how is this information presented?

Well, this is what you tend to get. This is the graph, and then these are the, the, the figures and the, and the tables, and then I'll come on to, breeding indexes later. But it depends how you work.

I mean, I'm quite a visual person and, and, and the graph works well for me because I can, I can look at that, but. Some people just like to be able to sit and, and, and sort of crunch through the figures. But that's what you tend to get.

And all your different traits, are listed along the, along the top. And then for the accuracy, you've got the accuracy levels. So for here, for this ball, this particular ball, there's a lot of data going into this.

You, and these are pretty accurate figures. And this is the breed plan, this is how breed plan, present their data. And for Cigna, slightly, slightly different, but essentially the same downsize, you've got all the different traits, and then again, this is your graph.

So this is your breed average, and anything this way is going to be above average and anything this way is going to be below average. And just to point out for the sheep, the sheep data, presented very similar in terms of this is your breed average, and this is an above average and that's below average. So we've got litter size, return ability, 8 week wait, etc.

And this is, I, I'll show you how to find this later, but this is a percentile bands for 2015 calves born. So, so when we talk about the breed average, that's kind of, that's what we're comparing stuff to at the moment. So, so if you think these calves are born in 2015, they're 2 year old now, so we've got a lot of data from, for them.

We've got 200 day, 400 days, 600 day growth rates for them. We've, we've done the eye muscle scanning depth, etc. So there's a lot of There's a lot of data.

So this tells you, you know, what the, what the figure is for the top 1%. So if we go back to the, this one here, so if we have a look to the calving y figure for this, this ball is plus 0.7, and we go and have a look at the, the percentile bars here.

So he's in what the top 1% of, of the breed for his, his carving yeast direct. And this was just, I've just taken a couple of, these out of, an online catalogue. For, just showing how it's presented.

Gareth, he, he is a very good ball. So, you know, above average, well above average, but pretty much everything there, top 10% of the breed, for calving yeast, gestation length, birth weight, top 1% of breed for, for a lot of the, Carcass traits, and, and his friend here as well. Again, you can just have a quick look at look at that and look that there's some good, he, he's got some good above average figures.

Yeah, this guy here, so he's below average for his caring he's both direct and his daughters. His gestation length is longer, and his birth weights are heavier. So you wouldn't want to be putting this lad on your, on your heifers.

And this lad, he's, he, he'd be better for your heifers, but his, his growth rates aren't fantastic. They're only a little bit above average, whereas this guy, 200 day, 400 days, 600 growth rates are, are good. They're, you know, they're, they're, looking at that, they're sort of top, .

Top 10% of the breed. And then, again, so this, I think this one, if anyone who's had a rummage through the, genus catalogue, I think this guy Dust is in the genus catalogue. Again, a good, you know, really easy carving ball, not so great on its growth rates.

It depends what you want, you know, if you've got a, a farmer that is, sort of selling wean 6 month old calves, then, that's pretty good figure at 200 day, you know, well above average, but someone who's fattening something right through his 600 day wait isn't fantastic. And, just going back to in terms of accuracy, this, if you have a look at the bottom here, the statistics, so you can see just how much Data has gone into these figures. So they've analysed 106 herds, they've analysed 389 animals.

They've scanned 72 of them, and there's, there's 12 daughters running around. And and that sort of that feeds into this accuracy, these accuracy figures. So what is the breeding index?

So EBVs look at specific traits. So some, you know, very specific be 200 day, milk yield, or 200 day weight. Indexes combined several EBV traits to get, to create a figure and that it is pretty much divided into two.

It's either maternal or terminal. So it depends. Are you buying a semen for an Angus bull to breed some homebred heifers, or are you buying some Charolais semen to, produce some, some fat calves?

calves to be, to be sold. So the, the, the indexes can produce a, a figure to meet a specific breeding objective. And it's an overall score of genetic merit and combining the relative economic values of several EBV traits.

And, and again, the two different recording bodies, presented slightly differently. Soyet to have a beef value, a carbon value, and maternal value, breed plan have a terminal index and a self-replacing index. A terminal is your, all your, carcass quality, everything else, and your self replacing index is your maternal traits.

So, so breeding new replacement, heifers. And this is the Cygnet one. So this is Cygnet, use these figures to get their beef value so that they add up their, their birth weight, their growth, their 400 day growth, their, muscling scores, the depth, and their fat depth to get their beef value.

For the calving value they add a gestation length and a carving yeast, and then for the maternal value that add up their longevity, age at first carving, 200 day milk maternal calving yeast, carving, so that's all your, your maternal scores. And then adult cow weight is, is the sort of maintenance buy. And again, it's all sort of, this all feeds into the, the breeding index, indexes that we look at.

So this, these are the ones that, that breed plan, produce. So this is what you can see, you can, again, if you're, if you're sort of quite, visual like me, you can have a quick look at the graph and see that actually, this is a really good ball, so. The breed average is +29 for the terminal index, and he's plus 46, the self-replacing index, the breed average is plus 39 and he's plus 70.

So he, he's up there. And actually, if you look at here, he's in the top 1% by the looks of that. So, so this is breed average, and he's all the way up here for both his terminal index and his self-re replacement index.

That's a good ball. And this lad, this lad's below average, so the breed average is +29 again, and, he's plus 25, so he, he's sort of down there. So he's below average for his overall index values when you add all those traits together.

So when do we use EBV? So potentially we don't use them enough, I think. We, we may use them when selecting new stock and so farmers will look at them for either buying a bull or, or, you know, maybe buying some, see for AI.

We, we use EBVs when we're troubleshooting as well when we've been, seeing a cow again at 3 in the morning. To his new bull he bought, bought last year. So we, we, we should, we should use them more, I think, you know, because we could potentially use them to correct the weakness in performance.

So, so, homebred cows that aren't very milky, you know, we could potentially look at selecting for, you know, EBD, a very milky, milky bull or, and improved performance as well. We'll come on to a bit of work that AHDB have done with Harper Adams. So how do we access figures?

So this is my quick sort of how do you actually get . Get into these figures. So, well, go to Google, obviously, and then just put online EBU inquiry.

We're gonna do the preplan here with this one. So, so put, if you put online EBV inquiry and then put You know, whatever breed, that'll get you somewhere near. Sometimes it's easier just to go through the breed Society website.

Somewhere it's often hidden somewhere on the breed Society website will be a link to the to the EBBs. But this is how I tend to get the anger stuff up anyway. Top of your list is the, it, it is actually, I think the .

The New Zealanders sort of run the bleed breed plan sort of online stud book. So, so don't be lying is a, is a New Zealand Australia website. And, the, then click on EBV inquiries.

And then you can, you can basically, if you've got, the simplest thing is to take the tag number off the farmer, but even if you haven't got the tag number, if you've got a, a, a name, and if you can put the, put the percentage in to use the wildcard to, to get you somewhere nearer. So I just put a, a random bull in, Robin transformer, see what we get. And here he is.

So you can see him there. Sometimes it's amazing how many balls if you go for something, something like Maximus or Titan, there's, there's quite a lot of balls with those sort of big, manly, strongly names. But click on, click on that rawburn Transformer, and that brings everything up.

So, you know, who owned him, who bred him, how old he, is or was. And then down here is the EBB graph. I'll come back to that.

But yeah, so then you've got all these, all the genetics, you know, kind of, who the sire was, who the dam is, etc. And if you click on the view graph, that gets you to, to the stuff you want to look at, that gets you to the EVP. Scores.

And, and you can start having a look and, and if you switch, if you switched graph, you can have it look in another the way. It depends what you get your head around. I quite like, I, you know, I find this one quite, straightforward to, to look at.

And then click for percentile. So this is your breed average for 2015 born cast. So that's, that's where you get this chat.

If you want to sit and have a, a, a look through that chat and compare it and just be, you know, circle what, what its figures are, that's how you, you get that chart. And so what are these, what are these superior genetic worth? Well, the work done with AHDB, has shown that the, using a bull, either buying a bull or buying sort of AI straws or whatever, that have superior genetics is worth £40 a calf.

And a bull over 40 cow cows over his working life, it can potentially worth the farm, 5000 pounds. And this is the trial work that Harper Adams, did through AHDB. So they took, they took two Angus bulls out of the, stud book.

Laura Bar Mighty Prince, he was in Genius, this genus, book for quite a while, top 10% of the breed, and another bull bottom 40% of the breed. They were both easy carving. But Laura Bar Mightyris had better daily live weight gain, heavier final weight, and, EBV and a tax weight confirmation.

And they found that the sons of Laura biomittorin were worth on average 60 pounds more than the, the, the, the sort of bottom 40%, terminal beef index, bull. And the, the stabilisers have done some work as well again through AHDB and this sort of basically shows that the, The Better sort of the, the, the higher, the top 10% highers, basically the, the, the progeny did, did better. The, the, the, there was better, genetic merit for growth and, and there were 42 kg heavier by 350 days, .

Of age and were 56 kg heavier by 500 days of age. So the work's been done to show that, that, that using ABV EBVs can make a difference. And, and with suckler cows, you know, what do we want from our suckler cows?

Well, they need to, they need to reach puberty at a desired age and calve without difficulty. So you, for me, I'm a big fan of, of serving at 15 months and calving at 2 year old, and we don't want to be seizinging cows at 3 in the morning. We want them to, to just cough and spit a little Labrador out that's going to get up and so in a way.

And we want one calf for 365 days of the year because that's what's, that's what's profitable. And we want, a suckler cow that adapts the resources on the farm. So, you, you know, a, a hairy ling hill cow that, that'll do well on hill ground, etc.

And, but have low annual maintenance costs, so to not take a lot to feed, but also have a long productive life. And so if we can use EBB's news figures to, to, Feed into that, and, and improve that, then, then more's the better and, and kind of what Zara said in my bio that, I think there's a real change to the, to the industry coming and, and there will be a well, you know, post subsidy, production and the, the most efficient farmers, not necessarily those that make the most money, but the most efficient. And therefore, the, the lower input costs are gonna, are gonna survive.

Quiz time, here we go. All right, Sarah, are you ready at your end? Sarah, yeah, ready to go.

Sorry, just unmuting myself. Yes, OK. Grand.

So, right, so quiz time. So this is just, just to have a look, you know, we'll have a look through a few different balls and, and, and compare them. So this is question one, so which is the, better ball, Bull A or ball B?

So we'll just, we'll have a look at their figures. thank you very much. So, Can we, can, can we see the screen?

Can I move that? Does everyone see that? The polling?

So for, so, so let's have a look. So if, if vote A, if you think the, the ball A is a better ball based on his figures or ball B, if you think that, ball B is, is a better ball based on his figures. So have a look here.

So you can have a look at the accuracy, that's, you know, there's a very accurate, EBV figures there. And, less accurate here, but if we have a look, we've got a, so the, the breed average for 2015 is -1.8 for calvinies.

And the, the, the EBV there is, is plus 7, and then, for EBVs for the bull B. So again, the, the breed average is -1.8 and the calvinies, his figures minus 10.6.

So if we just look at that one, even if we look at sort of, you know, that with them two alone, I think we, we can, we can, you know, kind of. Decide which one, which one do we want to put on our heifers. Has that given is that given everyone enough time to vote?

Yeah, just waiting for a couple, couple more. I'll just give you a couple more seconds. OK, so we have the results of the poll.

Answer A, we have 97%. We have 3%. Right.

Fair enough. That's great. Right, we'll go on to question, question two.

So we'll go on to the graphs. The the graphs are a bit rather than being able to, having to fiddle through all the, all, all the figures. So, so with, with having a quick sort of glance at the graph, for these two, these are Angus balls, but having a look at these two Angus balls, which is the best of all?

Which do you want to put on your heifers? Bull A or bull B? OK, and we'll end polling.

So for answer A, again, we have 97% and for answer B, 3%. OK, good stuff, and so someone, someone wants to be Caesaring potentially Caesaring cows at 3 in the morning, . Hang on, sorry, wrong way.

Question three then, which is the, which is the better ball? OK, the results are in and it's unanimous bull A. Could you just go through why, why bull A is the, is the better bull?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So looking at these figures, so the, the basically, this is your breed average right down the middle, and everything to the right is better. And and so his his direct descendants, those those direct calves are going to be born easier, so easier carving.

The daughters of that bull are going to carve easier as well. So they, they're above average, so better figures. Gestation length, much shorter, so shorter gestation lengths, you can get calved, she can get herself straightened out, cleaned out and back in calf again to produce that calf, that one calf every 365 days.

And lighter birth weight, so we, we all know that the number one cause of dysuria is foetal oversize, is, is, is heavier, bigger calves. So the, the lighter that calf, the better in terms of, of, of, of, of calving ease. And then these are all your, sort of your growth rates if you like, your 200 a day, 400 a day, 600 a day, and they're all heavier, so they're faster growing at them key dates, and much heavier.

So they're, they're, they weigh more, having, having been tested with contemporaries. Of the same age, in the same pen fed the same, they've done better. They've, they've grown the same disease status, having been fed the same amount of food, they've grown better and they are bigger, heavier animals than the average, so they're above average for that.

And then the, the scrotal size, so bigger, so what what we were saying before, that the, the biggest scrotal sizes of that size relates to, the, the age at which heifers reach puberty. And, and therefore, the biggest growth sides, the younger they, the younger they are in terms of aiming for that, that 15 month service to carve a 2 year old. And then, these are all the carcass qualities.

So the, the carcass weight, the eye muscle area, so how good that carcass is, how much lean meat is on, on that animal, how much, how much fillet steak we've got to, to, to be able to retail, to be able to produce. And then here are the indexes down the bottom here. So that's your terminal index.

So that's higher. So again, that must be what we're looking at that top, top 4, top 5% of the breed, in terms of the terminal index, and then. The self, self replacing index to that, that maternal, index and those maternal values, again, that's looking like top one, you know, one of the best bulls in the herds, the top 1%.

So all of, you know, just putting it simple, because I'm a very simple practitioner, things need to be simple for me. Everything's to the right there. And then with this slid, it's sort of, some figures are missing.

You do get balls like this, so you, they're just, they haven't been recording gestation lengths, and those figures just aren't, available, mature cow wait again, they haven't been recording. But he's, he's still a good ball, you know, he's above average, he's not. Sort of horrendously very hard to carve and, and, you know, the, the, the really producing really heavy calves or anything, he's still above average, but, the, the, this, you know, this is a better bull.

He's in the, the top 1%, top 10% of the breed, and, they do. EBVs with less accuracy do change over time. You know, this, this is Laura by our Mighty Prince.

This was the guy that at one time a day was in the top 10% of the breed, but he's now over time. And looking at the more, sort of up to-date figures, he's not as good as some of the balls that have been produced. The question.

Question 4. So here we go. So which, which ball has, which is a better ball?

Which ball has better figures? Bull A. Or Boy.

OK, so we have 3% for bull A and 97% for bull B. Spot on, spot on. So yeah, so, so, this, this bullet here is, really, sort of bottom, bottom 10% for Calvin he's, both direct and indirect to his daughters, his, it's got a longer gestation length, one of the longer gestation lengths.

In the, in the breed and much heavier calves. And then, you know, he's, he's above average for his 600 day weight is below average, but he's, he's, he's, his growth rates for the other, traits are above average. But this particular bull, so this bull was a bull called Robin Lord Ross, and this was the bull that, so, a farm client of mine had bought two pedigree Angus bull cows, Angus cows, and he bought some semen and served them.

One of them had a had a bull calf, which he then kept reared and served his cows with. He thought, this is great, this is, you know, this is, this is the ultimate, this is, we've sorted the, the problem with biosecurity and buying stuff in, we're going to breed our own bulls. And we seasoned 11 out of 40 autumn carving cows and 10 out of 40 spring carving cows, to the son of this bull.

So this bull, this is Rober and Lord Ross, and he is probably, I think he still is one of the worst bulls for carving figures in the stud book. And his, his son was the 2nd worst calving. And, and yeah, so we, we did see a, a lot of progeny from this bowl.

Yeah, just a couple of more questions. So, so yeah, this, this is a, this is a tough one, is this. So, so this is, so which is the, which is the better ball, which is the, which ball has better figures?

Bull A or ball B? So we're gonna, we're gonna put this ball on some big, Some, we're gonna put him on some, we're not gonna put him on some heifers, but we're gonna put him on some big roomy cows, but which, which is the better, which is the better bull out of, out of these two? OK, so we'll end polling there, and we have 22% for Bull A and we have 78% for bull B.

Yeah, fair do's. I can, I can, I can, I can live with that. I, yeah, I, he has definitely got some if we were going for terminal figures on some big roomy cows, he's, he's better for, for figures up here.

the, the better growth rates in here and, And, you know, kind of better, certainly, certainly better growth rates, but it's a bit of a difficult one. Both of them are kind of all over the shop. The, the only thing I would say is if the, and I can't quite explain why the, sort of the terminal indexes differ so much, but, but if we look at the indexes, so the, the, This downline cruise ball, this, this has very, sort of, you know, low, scores for, for both the terminal index and the self replacing index.

Whereas this lad, I'm not quite sure what's fed into this. I assume it's this fantastic retail, yield, and, fantastic carcass trait eye muscle area that's fed into this slightly above average terminal index. But that was definitely a toughie.

That was definitely a toughie. I think there's just one more, how are we doing for time? Just one more quick one then, quick, super fast pole.

Which, which ball has the better, better figures? We'll just cement our looking at looking at our figures, OK. So for Bull A, we have 11%, and Bull B, we have 89%.

Fair dos, fair do's. It depends what you, again, it depends whether you're wanting maternal or, terminal traits, I suppose, doesn't it? But, this, this is definitely, you're going to get, you're more likely to get these calves out alive, and definitely easier calving, but then this bull does have some better growth rates here.

Both have good terminal index and self-re replacement index, you know, above average. This guy's probably better in terms of, a top, probably top one, top 5% for, for terminal indexes. But, but anyway, yeah, we'll crack on.

So there we go. That's, it's just a case of getting used to looking at the graphs and getting your head around it. But, but opportunities for that.

So I think troubleshooting on farms like my farm. That we started seeing lots and lots of cows and and started looking into it and had a look at the EBVs of the, the, the bully used and, and really horrendous calving figure EBVs and farmer education as well, and, and advising farmers and be able to look at sale catalogues like I've got farmers that would, sort of bring this in, you know, they're going to buy a new Angus bull and I'll bring the sale catalogue in for the upcoming Carlisle sale and I'll just go through and cross, cross out all the big really bad figures. And improving production on beef and beef suckler farms.

And, and being able to get involved in farms and if you, if it's your thing in getting involved in genetics, and the, the dairy vets out there will probably understand genomics far more than I do. But genomics, and there's just a couple of quick slides on it, really. Genomics rather than selecting for the effects of the gene, why not select the gene directly?

And that's kind of what genetics, the genomics are doing. So the, the cost of, of gene genome mapping and everything else has come down to the last, you know, 20 odd years and it's now And it's really been embraced by the dairy industry and the beef industry is a little bit behind, but it, it's coming, it's definitely coming. So, so we can look at individual genes of importance, so muslim genes, and myostatin, are they cold?

Have they got horns and, and colour as well. And, and genome, looks at all the DNA and, and tests, parentage and, and ultimately leads to GBV, which will be the genomically assisted breeding values. So the test the DNA sequence, which delivers that phenotype, it's potentially a quicker progress process, but it's built on good prediction records as well, and it does vary between, you know, within the breeds, between the breeds.

But the the future potentially will be a combination of EBDs and genomics. But if something, if genomics sound like your thing and you're into sort of the genetics of breeding and everything else, there is an upcoming course. If you just Google venomics, there's gonna be some CPD coming for vets through, I think it's through agrimetrics and and SIUC as well.

So that's just a, a bit of a, a heads up for that. So in summary, EBVs are measures of the genetic potential of an animal for individually recorded traits. And we've gone through the traits, we've looked at the different traits.

And key take home message is it's able, we're able to compare individuals within a breed. We can't compare individuals between breeds. So, You can only look at those graphs, and compare with the, the 2015 born calves or, or whatever calf crop that they were comparing the breed that makes up the breed average, and, and looks at the breed average, you can only compare, animals, you know, two animals, that are within the same breed.

You can't, compare two bees because they're. A -7 calving-y score on a Charolet will mean something completely different to a -7 just score on an Angus, for example. And you can look at, you can select from maternal terminal traits.

You can use these figures to, to do what you want them to do in a herd if, if you're wanting to AI heifers for, producing placements. If you, or if you're wanting some sort of, you know, really good high-end, . You know, cattle to sell, good kus quality, fat cattle to sell, and ultimately improve production and improve efficiency on beef farms.

And all of this data is all on Google. It's all freely available online for anything that It's pedigree registered. If someone buys a ball and it's pedigree registered, there will be EBV figures for it.

You just need to go look in and, and either through the just putting into Google online EBV inquiry or going direct to the breed Society websites. And finding the link to the, to the EBBs, online inquiry through there, and having a look at, at, at, at the bull's figures. And, and you can, as I say, it's all sort of there, it's all in the public domain.

And, and there for you to, to, to, to see, as I say, you just need either it's tag number or potentially its full name to go look at. So there's, there's an awful lot of, of, lords and titans and maximuses and, and, and, and, and so forth. But you can, you can, you can certainly just go searching for the figures with a, with just the name.

And for the resources, AHDB so they do, so the be from AHDB.org.uk.

They have some really good online training tools, so kind of similar to what I've we've gone through today in today's webinar. And it's a really good resource for sort of built for farmers and, and just sort of takes you through the sort of step by step guide to, to EBVs. And then again, if anyone's, interested in the, the genomics and such, there is, there is sort of CPD coming if you like the stuff coming in terms of, of genomics for, for vets.

And that's the end. Thank you very much for, thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much, Jenny.

That was an absolutely brilliant presentation, and I'm sure that everybody who's joined us has found it very, very useful. I certainly learned an awful lot, and you, you simplified, some of those charts very, very well. Thank you.

Just quickly before we go on to some questions, just wondering if everybody could spare about 30 seconds just to complete the feedback survey that will have popped up, in a new tab in your browser. Some of you may not have received this depending on which device, you're using to watch the webinar. So if it doesn't present itself to you, you can feed it, send in your feedback through directly to the, the webinar vet office on office at the webinar vet.com.

If you're listening to a recording of this webinar, you can add comments on the website underneath the recording or email the, the office. So, on to questions. We have first one from Katie.

She says, hi, Jenny, how accurate are the farmer produced figures data? Heard horror stories of very hard carvings classified as natural. Yeah, good question.

I, I asked the same question, as well a long time ago, and I think the, the response was that there's so much data and so many individual data, or so much individual data feeding all into all the different traits and all the different traits then correlate to all the different other traits. That in theory, a few, a minority within certain breeds and such that are writing down, you know, scoring bad carvings is easy and stuff like that and trying to manipulate the data. The theory is that there's so much data going in that it should be drowned out.

If everyone's lying and everyone's putting that, Caesar's ended up, really easy, then, then, then presumably that will skew the data. But my, what I was told, was that there is so much data going into these individual figures and, and scores that, that, that, some individuals. Not recording as accurately as they should be, should, should, should be sort of diluted out.

And I mean, a lot of the traits, a lot of the, the ones are, you know, they're just, they, they're, they're a weight, you know, they're, they're a weight that the, or the, the ultrasound scan, of the back, muscle depth that, that, an independent, scanner has gone out to do. Does that answer? That question.

Yes, that's great. Thanks, Jenny. One here from Alex, he asks, on the, the graphs, the EBV graph ques that you're showing the quiz questions, some of the traits were blank.

What does this mean? Obviously, there's no data, but what are the likely reasons for this? Right, yes.

As far as I know, it's simply that the, the data hasn't been recorded, so there isn't enough data to, to create that score. Like the mature cow weight size is often one that, that isn't, that isn't recorded and isn't sort of put into that . Sort of displayed in that, that figure.

So yeah, if it's blank, it just means there isn't a score. It doesn't mean they're so horrendous that they couldn't record it or anything like that. It is, is simply that the data isn't there.

And so gestation length would be another one that if there's, there's so few progeny. Been fed into it that they, that they, that, that, and no one's actually, you know, if it hasn't been done by AI or whatever, you can't be sort of accurate recording those figures. So it just means that the data isn't there.

I mean, the only thing with, and you do get that with, with sheep as well. There's less recording and we've been recording she data for, for, for not as long. So there is, there is bits meaning.

But the only thing to say is the more, the more we, we record and the more data and the more progeny and the more, genetic information production data that goes into these figures, the, the more figures we'll get and the more accurate will become. Mm. OK, great.

One interesting question here from, from Nick. He asks if herds or flocks are feeding young calves or lambs to maximise growth rates to 200 days or 8 weeks, and these offspring then become very common size throughout the breed. Do you think that this is actually selecting for grain-fed genetics by default rather than grass-fed or lower cost systems?

He says he accepts that EBVs and measures of potential, but could this potentially over time select for grain-fed potential rather than more grass-based systems? Yeah, good question. and so beyond, me, I think.

So if we're selecting, goals based on EBVs based on hammering and full of barley, are we simply selecting the genetics and away from grass-fed, probably more, important and sheep, I, I would say in terms of, you know, grass fed. Grammes per day, daily live weight gain. I don't know is the honest answer.

Really good question, and, and, beyond, beyond my realms, I think. OK. Yeah, I suppose it would skew the data potentially as well, you know, they, if they're all these, these, pedigree guys are stuffing these calves full of, full of feed, will that, Will that change the 200 day?

You know, all the guys that are recording, will that change the if they be, will that change the, the, the, the growth rates, etc. Yeah, I don't know. Good question.

Beyond my simple brain, I'm afraid. We have actually had a comment, from one of the attendees, Derek, saying that whilst there will be some genetic by environmental interaction, they will tend to rank in a similar way on different production systems, which could, could counteract, for some of that. So, Based on that, I think that, That there may be some influence, but I don't think that it would maybe, sort of skew the genetics that much.

There we go. Thank you very much, Derek. There you go.

OK, we've got time for 11 very quick, final question before we finish. This one's from John. If a farmer is buying a young virgin beef bull to put on dairy heifers, are the EBVs for calving difficulty derived from that bull sire only?

The carving. Difficulties derived from that bull sire only. No, I think they're, no, because it's, it's, it's lots and different, lots of different pieces of data feeding into that bull, because if it's, if it's, if it's a virgin bull at 15 months old, we won't have any progeny on the ground from it.

So it will be that his, his, his sire, his grand sire, his great grandsire. And then all their sort of, relations and contemporaries all feed into that, that, that one figure. So there's lots and lots and lots.

Of, data that feed into that, that one figure for that one bull. So it's, it's, that's animal's trait plus all its relatives, plus all its relatives' contemporaries that, that are put into the, the, the blop machine, and, and calculate that figures for that, that one bull. Again, it's carving, it's only half of its genetics, so.

You, it's the, the whole, you know, the heifers, are going to give half the genetics to that calf, and that bully is going to give the other half. So, so the, the, the EBB scores half if you like. But, but no, I think it's, it's lots of, lots of different animals data going into that, that, that one EBV score.

If that answers that question. Yes, that's great. Thank you, Jenny.

So we've just, we've just come up to time. We do have some more questions, but what we'll ask, Jenny to do is to, we'll email them to her, and we will make sure that we get answers for those. So just to wrap up on time, I just want to thank Jenny, once again for your great presentation.

Also honesty in answering, the questions. We've had some comments, back from some of the attendees that they're very happy to have had a practitioners, doing a talk. And also thanks to our panellists, Daw and Rich, for their assistance in tonight's webinar, and of course, to everybody who has, attended the webinar and also contributed with questions.

So thank you very much once again, and we look forward to you joining us again for the next BCVA webinar early in the year, in the new year. Good night. Good night.