In most cases, they are free to commercial cattle producers. Requests for sire summaries should be made directly to the breed association's office. Traits that are economically important to most cattle producers are evaluated in these summaries. The traits listed vary slightly among breed sire summaries. They all evaluate the ability of a sire to transmit growth rate to his progeny in the areas of birth, weaning and yearling weights.
Most breeds also evaluate the performance of daughters of the sire.
Sire evaluation in the beef industry has become a sophisticated procedure developed through experience, research, improved statistical procedures and the development of high-speed computers. Fortunately, a beef producer only needs to know a few basic concepts to interpret and use the results. The EPD is reported as a plus or minus value in the unit in which the trait is measured, such as pounds for birth weight. An example of the Angus Sire Summary, which is similar to those of other breeds, is shown in Table 1. On the other hand, a bull with an EPD of -2.7 pounds for weaning weight would be expected to produce calves 2.7 pounds lighter at weaning weight than the average bull of that breed.