Utilizing performance records in commercial beef herds

"Herd profitability is based on costs and total herd production. Evaluation of herd production, in a simplified and straightforward way, can be extremely enlightening and result in obvious management deficiencies that can be changed many times easily. Today many commercial beef producers are using simple performance evaluations to determine which animals to cull. A pregnancy exam would be a simple performance evaluation. Too often selection and culling decisions are based on visual appraisal. Although this can be highly valuable with a few traits, it generally results in some serious errors when considering most growth and reproductive traits."--First page.John Massey (Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture)New 3/86/6