How to show EPDs and indexes to commercial buyers

By the RanchOS Global editorial team · Updated

In short: lead with the economic index that matches how your buyers market calves, show the few EPDs that matter for their goal, add percentile ranks so nobody has to know breed averages, and keep accuracy visible. Help buyers use the numbers well and they come back.

Lead with the right index

University of Nebraska–Lincoln geneticist Matt Spangler advises commercial buyers to choose bulls on an economic index that fits their breeding objective rather than on single EPDs. Your buyers fall into two broad groups:

  • They keep replacement heifers: show a maternal or all-purpose index first, with maternal calving ease, stayability or sustained cow fertility where your breed publishes them.
  • They sell every calf: show a terminal index first, with growth and carcass EPDs.

Using a terminal index to pick bulls for a herd that keeps heifers is one of the mistakes Spangler lists. Label each index with what it is for.

Show the EPDs that matter, with context

  • Percentile ranks next to each EPD, so a buyer sees "top 15%" without looking up a breed average table.
  • Accuracy for young bulls, so buyers know which numbers may still move.
  • Calving ease rather than birth weight where both exist: calving ease EPDs already use birth weight data, so counting both double-counts it.
  • Post-weaning and carcass traits even for buyers who sell at weaning; the calves still get fed out by someone.

Put the important numbers first

University of Tennessee eye-tracking research presented at the 2024 Beef Improvement Federation symposium found that the order in which EPDs and indexes appear changes how long buyers look at them. It also found that producers who used EPDs together with percentile ranks judged bull prices more accurately. Put the index and the key EPDs at the top of every bull's page and catalog entry.

Make comparison easy

Oklahoma State Extension describes how buyers work through a catalog: set limits on the traits that matter, cut bulls outside them, then rank the rest on the whole EPD profile. Give them a table of all available bulls with the same columns in the same order, and let them sort it.

Background for buyers: What EPDs are and how to read them. For catalog layout, see What to put in a bull sale catalog. On RanchOS Global, each animal's EPDs and pedigree appear on its own page.

Sources