Farm Table says:
This article discusses carcase EBVs and how BREEDPLAN can assist producers.
Items covered in this article were:
• BREEDPLAN
• Carcase EBVs
• Steer carcase weight endpoint
Key points were as follows:
• BREEDPLAN offers carcase EBVs for eye muscle area, fat depth and retail beef yield%.
• More variety with EBVs was sought as data couldn’t be compared for bulls, steers and heifers so in the late 1990’s BREEDPLAN made a steer carcase weight endpoint available.
• Version 4.2 was released in 2002 including the steer carcase weight endpoint (including express EBVs on a 300 kg steer carcase equivalent; combine abattoir carcase measurements with live scan measurements; use overseas EBVs/EPDs in the analysis (the US equivalent of an EBV is an EPD) and provides carcase weight and IMF% EBVs).
• Look ahead, BREEDPLAN hopes that technological advances would assist carcase EBVs so they could be calculated from scans, abattoir reports and gene markers.
