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Blog Archive November 2015

Top Web Sale Lots Week of 11/23/2015

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $39,500 - Heifer sired by Steel Force
  2. $31,000 - Heifer sired by MSF Journey
  3. $28,500 - Heifer sired by Silveiras Style 9303
  4. $27,000 - Heifer sired by Mr HOC Broker
  5. $25,500 - Heifer sired by I-80
  6. $22,000 - Heifer sired by SCC First N Goal
  7. $20,000 - Heifer sired by C and C McKinley
  8. $19,005 - Heifer sired by Mr HOC Broker
  9. $17,000 - Heifer sired by DJAS Shockwave
  10. $17,000 - Heifer sired by Irish Whiskey

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Top Web Sale Lots Week of 11/16/2015

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $12,500 - Heifer sired by Dameron C-5 American Classic
  2. $11,000 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
  3. $11,000 - Heifer sired by EXAR Blue Chip
  4. $10,500 - Heifer sired by Mohnen South Dakota
  5. $8,000 - Heifer sired by BC Classic
  6. $7,000 - Steer sired by Italian Stallion
  7. $7,000 - Heifer sired by Man Among Boys
  8. $6,500 - Steer sired by Monopoly
  9. $6,500 - Heifer sired by RB Riley 890-2181
  10. $6,250 - Heifer sired by BR DM SOONER 8090 ET

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Reverse Engineering Angus Indexes Part 2 - $QG & $YG

I posted a relationship between the carcass indexes last week and over the next few weeks I’ll be posting approximations for the other Angus index values.  I saw approximations because these are most certainly not the actual formulas themselves but rather reverse engineered approximations of them.

Speaking of data, those Angus guys don’t mess around on blocking IPs.  The story I’ve been told is they had a bunch of their data stolen/taken in bulk by another breed association quite a while back and ever since then they’ve made it annoying to find more than a few animal pedigrees.

I’m blocked on three now and I didn’t pull up more than a couple dozen bulls in any given session.  I respected their data policy and didn’t use bots, just looked up bulls at various ends of the spectrum for various EPDs and then pulled up more animals through their pedigrees.

Regardless, I put together a data set of about 100 bulls with a wide range of EPDs and ages and threw the info into Eureqa to see how they’re calculated.

$QG


This one is extremely straight forward when compared to the other $ indexes and it almost makes you wonder what the point of having an EPD for both marbling and quality grade is.

$QG = 5.05 + 54.16 * MARB - 17.97 * MARB ^ 2

You can use the MARC conversions to get an estimate of where your bull from another breed measures against his Angus counterparts quite easily.

Don't want to do that?

Don't worry, I've got a handy little tool coming soon.

$YG

While I analyzed the full EPD profiles for the 100+ Angus cattle used in this, the results for $YG came out exactly how you'd expect.  It's based on rib eye area, carcass weight, and fat.  There are signficantly more complicated formulas that would get a big closer than this but they're all based on those three traits.

X = 5.6 + 11.6 * RE - 0.17 * CW - 95.8 * Fat

$YG = -0.0171 * x2 + 1.2345 * x - 0.7187

The second part of that equation is due almost entirely to the animals on the extremes for $YG.  You'd have to ask the AAA why it works out that way.

There’s no MARC info for carcass weight so it wouldn’t be as straight forward to do a cross breed conversion.

Next week is $EN and $W approximations.

4

A Dying Breed

In the world we live in today, it’s easy for some to twist the truth. The agriculture industry is always taking heat from the agriculturally lacking, and their many ways to “fix” the things they have a problem with. One of the new public stunts took some of the cattle producers by storm. 

 I’m sure everyone has read about Subway and how they wish to be antibiotic free. When I first read their statement over this I instantly thought, “Wow Subway is doing more harm than good.” I then began reading how the agriculture activist began flooding Subway with calls, emails, and social media posts about how this would do more harm than good in raising livestock. Subway began deleting every comment that was against their claim of how being antibiotic free would save people’s health. 

As someone who has grown up around cattle her whole life, I began thinking back at all of those cows in the field. Cows that, like children, can get sick at the drop of a hat. I began thinking about those sick baby calves that I would bottle feed and doctor, just to give them a fighting chance to live. Using Subway logic, I should have just shot them. 

Every cattle producer knows about the so called cool down periods. Cool down periods are the time it takes for the antibiotics to work its way out of the animals system. Farmers and ranchers have known about these days for such a long time, and it seems like just recently people have decided to take an interest in agriculture. However, that interest in agriculture isn’t always the best thing.

If people could see what would happen if these animals weren’t vaccinated they might change their minds about what is considered healthy. Rubbing dirt on a cow with pneumonia and telling her to walk it off isn’t a solution at all. “Mother Earth” isn’t a veterinarian. Also, by not doctoring those sick cattle you risk losing your whole heard. Like sickness in people, sickness in animals can spread to other animals.

The line between knowing about agriculture and assuming about agriculture is a broad one. Agriculturally lacking are all about using Google and their natural healing methods to combat how farming and ranching is done today. The good news is that there are still some people out there willing to learn. The best thing to do to help stop these movements from causing more harm than good, is to educate others about why we do what we do. 

So maybe Subway decided that antibiotics are bad, but I know I’m going to continue using them. Also, I was never really a fan of Subway to begin with. 

10

Time for Some Christmas Shopping

Click the link in the tweet before buying the truck for your kids.


Walmart tracks that kind of info and you'll let your pocket book speak for yourself...


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Top Web Sale Lots Week of 11/9/2015

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $58,000 - Heifer sired by Cyclone
  2. $40,000 - Pair sired by SVF Steel Force S701
  3. $40,000 - Heifer sired by LLSF Uprising Z925
  4. $33,000 - Heifer sired by RSRG/SRG Two Step 20Z
  5. $30,000 - Heifer sired by JF Milestone 999W
  6. $30,000 - Heifer sired by W/C Wide Track 694Y
  7. $28,500 - Heifer sired by I-80
  8. $26,500 - Steer sired by Fu Man Chu
  9. $23,500 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
  10. $22,000 - Heifer sired by Built Right

2

Relationship between $B, $F, and $G

I don't know if the actual methodology for the Angus $B has ever been published or not, I couldn't find it, but I got bored and decided to see if I could use some low level machine learning and data science to reverse engineer it.


This isn't the first time I tried it, it's just the first time that I've been relatively succesful at it.  Previously I had only used EPDs as the inputs for the formula.  This time I used all of the $ indexes and it actually worked like a charm.

The inputs for this approximation are...

$F - The index from the AAA
$G - The index from the AAA
CW - Carcass weight EPD
WW - Weaning Weight EPD
YW - Yearling Weight EPD

$B = 64.94 + $F + $G + 2.96 * CW + 0.63 * WW - 1.61 * YW - .011 * CW ^ 2

Go ahead try it on an Angus bull.  Use the EPDs from the American Angus Association website, not sale catalogs.  Every time I found an outlier it was a bull that had EPDs in a sale catalog or website that didn't match his AAA data.

If you find one that formula is off by much on, please let me know.  

I've run it on 300 of them and it's within a dollar on over 99% of the bulls.

It's a bit surprising that YW negatively impacts $B but that's just because it increases $F by almost the exact same amount.

6

No, I'm not dead

It’s been a rather odd month or so.

Between being a single dad from time to time while my wife goes to Houston to help her mother with a medical condition, losing my last grandparent, various volunteer ‘jobs’, and hauling Luke around to various tournaments.

Apologies for letting duties here slip.

I've also updated the blog roll to get back to properly checking the blogs hosted on Blogger.  They made a minor change to their RSS feed that my half wit programming wasn't able to account for.

2

Sale Video Planning

Cattle

It’s two months till picture time, do we have a photographer booked?  Okay, well $50/head seems like quite a bit but you have to get it right, I guess that’s okay.

What about fitters?  Could you call a few guys to come help?  Yeah, no problem, we’ll pay their travel and board.  $200/day?  Do it, that seems cheap.

You got the picture pen done?

Well, I’ll go plant some rye grass over there so we have a solid foot of grass by the time we need to shoot.  Do we have a shredder that cuts high enough for a picture pen?

Pigs

Hey, I brought my phone, hold my beer and hold a shoe up in front of that barrow.

11

Top Web Sale Lots Week of 11/2/2015

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $81,000 - Heifer sired by NJW 98S R117 Ribeye 88X
  2. $70,000 - Heifer sired by Mr HOC Broker
  3. $65,000 - Heifer sired by I-80
  4. $57,000 - Heifer sired by I-80
  5. $52,500 - Heifer sired by Irish Whiskey
  6. $44,000 - Heifer sired by Mr HOC Broker
  7. $43,000 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
  8. $39,500 - Heifer sired by Dameron First Class
  9. $37,000 - Heifer sired by I-80
  10. $35,500 - Heifer sired by Dameron First Class

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Top Web Sale Lots Week of 10/26/2015

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $65,000 - Steer sired by Texas Tornado
  2. $45,500 - Steer sired by Monopoly
  3. $35,000 - Steer sired by Man Among Boys
  4. $34,000 - Steer sired by Monopoly
  5. $30,000 - Heifer sired by HD Swagger 802 ET
  6. $29,000 - Steer sired by Dakota Gold
  7. $27,500 - Steer sired by Monopoly
  8. $25,000 - Heifer sired by SS RF Gravity 321 ET
  9. $24,500 - Steer sired by Monopoly
  10. $24,500 - Heifer sired by GCC Whizard

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Past Posts