Plain-language, link-checked guides to reading Angus EPDs and $Values and making sound breeding decisions, from Deluisio Angus, a registered Black Angus seedstock operation. No breeder computes these numbers. The American Angus Association does, across the whole breed every week. What a good breeder does is read them well and pair them with cow sense. These guides teach you the first part, in plain words, with no schooling in statistics required.

New to the numbers? Start with the page of numbers nobody taught you to read.

EPD basics

Foundational explainers for anyone new to Expected Progeny Differences.

• The page of numbers nobody taught you to read. The plainest place to start.
• EPDs, plain and simple. A five-part series that builds from what you already do at the fence.
• What an EPD is, in plain English. Expected Progeny Difference, one word at a time.
• What EPDs really are. The main essay: what the numbers are, how they work, and why a high one sometimes disappoints.
• The coffee-counter complaints, answered. The common gripes about EPDs, one at a time.
• Understanding Angus genetic selection. The complete reference: every trait and every dollar index defined.

Reading the bull page

How to read the specific numbers on a catalog or animal page.

• What counts as a good number. Percentile rank and the genetic base, so a bare EPD finally means something.
• Every number on the bull page. Each trait, which way you want it, and the catch.
• Where these numbers live. The three places to find a bull’s real, current EPDs.
• Accuracy and the range behind it. Why two +90 bulls are not the same bet.
• Why you cannot push one number without moving another. The traits are tied together, so the job is balancing.
• The milk number on a bull that will never give milk. Why more milk is not better.
• Contemporary groups. Why a feed truck cannot buy a good number.
• Genomics explained plainly. What a DNA test actually buys you.
• What is inside a $Value. How a dozen EPDs net to one dollar figure.

Selection and mating

Practical decisions you make with the numbers.

• Which $Value fits your operation. Match the index to how you make money.
• Calving ease and picking a heifer bull. Why CED beats birth weight alone.
• From a sale book to a short list. Five passes to a buying short list.
• Genetic conditions and recessives. Reading carrier status before you breed.
• Reading inbreeding coefficients. What a coefficient of inbreeding tells you, and what it cannot.
• Figuring a mating on paper. What a pairing will produce before you breed.
• Planning matings to manage inbreeding. Using a COI before the calf is born.
• How a modern operation uses the numbers. Where honest home math ends and the Association’s evaluation begins.

More to come

This hub starts with Angus genetic selection because that is where the numbers confuse people most. It will grow into the rest of what a seedstock operation lives on: reproduction and estrus synchronization, herd health, cow nutrition and body condition, and how to buy bulls that fit your country.

A wider resource shelf

For trusted tools and guides beyond Deluisio Angus, from the American Angus Association, the Beef Reproduction Task Force, and university extension, see the cattle breeding resource directory.