Scholarship & Research
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Item An economic comparison of breeding performance of yearling and two-year-old bulls(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 1990) Carroll, Llane Glenn; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: R. Clyde Greer.An important decision a rancher makes is the age at which a bull will first be used for breeding. While yearling bulls are used by many ranchers in the Great Plains States, there is concern that lack of maturity among yearling bulls leads to lower breeding performance. To compare the breeding performance of yearling and two-year-old bulls Line One Hereford bulls in single sire breeding herds at Fort Keogh Livestock and Range Research Laboratory (LARRL) were analyzed. Tests for differences in pregnancy rates, calving dates, calf birth weight, and calf average daily gain were conducted. The physical attribute distributions were converted to a returns distribution for each age of bull. The distributions were then compared in a stochastic dominance framework. From the results it was concluded that the alternative "use the bull first as a two-year-old" dominated the alternative "use the bull first as a yearling" in the first order stochastic sense. While ranchers are using yearling bulls, the expected income is higher and the dispersion of observed income smaller from herds bred to two-year-old bulls. Ranchers may be deriving other benefits from the use of yearling bulls such as decreased intervals for introducing special genetic traits. Ranchers may be using yearlings in multiple sire settings which may diminish the downside risk of using yearling bulls as compared to using yearling bulls in single sire settings.Item The information content of seller-provided presale data in cattle auctions(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 1997) Chvosta, Jan; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Randal R. Rucker ; Myles Watts (co-chair)Both buyers and sellers of goods whose exact characteristics are uncertain have incentives to develop methods of reducing duplicative buyer presale measurements. This thesis examines this issue in the context of the cattle industry where sellers provide different types of presale information to reduce buyers' presale measurement activities. Of particular interest are marketing mechanisms that have developed in auctions for breeding bulls. At auctions of yearling bulls, sellers often provide buyers with information on such characteristics as the hull's birth, weaning, and yearling weights, as well as the hull's pedigree. A primary focus of this thesis is to compare the information contained in these simple performance measures (SPMs) with the information contained in recently developed alternative measures of prospective performance. This alternative--expected progeny differences (EPDs)-uses statistical methods not only to incorporate information on the characteristics of the sale bull, but also the bull' s relatives. The statistical method employed for this comparison is multiple regression analysis. The sale price of a bull is regressed on the hull's performance measures and other terms specified in the seller-buyer agreement. The regression results suggest that the simple performance measures (SPMs) contain substantial information in addition to that contained in expected progeny differences (EPDs). Conversely, it was found that EPDs contain some information in addition to that contained in SPMs, but this information is very limited. This finding is unexpected. EPDs, by construction design, contain the information found in SPMs, plus additional information on traits of related animals. Thus, it was hypothesized that the SPM measurements would contain no additional information beyond that contained within EPDs. The results of this research, however, suggest the contrary. An important question to be addressed by the cattle industry, therefore, is whether the costs of further development of EPDs are warranted.