Low RFI Bulls

I have spent the last 20 plus years working in or around the packing, feedyard, and seedstock businesses.  Before that I grew up on a diversified farm which included dairy, cow/calf, and hogs.  My job descriptions have included: Executive Vice President of the Braunvieh Association of America, Field Representative for the Samson PVP, Business Coordinator for Angus America, Cattle Buyer for Excel Corporation, Kill and Fabrication Supervisor for Excel Corporation, as well as employment in college with a Polled Hereford breeder and Loeffel Meat Lab at the University of Nebraska. With this multi-faceted exposure and long time deep seated interest in genetics, I have analyzed and dollar crunched the value of genetics in each of the segments individually and also collectively.  In studying how they tie together and affect for total profitability, like many of you I found the biggest single value trait to be efficiency.  I would even argue that superior efficiency beats out a live calf when the entire lifetime production of that animal is calculated.  So it was always frustrating to me that Feed Efficiency was the missing individually measureable piece of data we could select or cull for. 

Now with progressive seedstock breeders utilizing residual feed intake systems newly available to them, individuals which excel are now being identified.  With feed efficiency being deemed moderately heritable (about the same as carcass traits) by academia, great strides can be made with the best genetics.  When you consider the value of improving efficiency in your operation by adding low rfi sired steer progeny you feed out or market and the savings replacement heifers will offer up every year in their own consumption as well as generating more efficient progeny themselves, I believe you will make RFI a priority on your bull selection criteria.

One of the more intriguing things about RFI is that you cannot always see it in what most of us cowmen consider an "efficient looking" animal.  You truly cannot manage what you do not measure in the area of feed efficiency.  With this lack of visual selection combined with so much performance selection using Yearling Weight epd's alot of todays top genetics have been just selected for appetite.  The numbers show this is more true than not at least 50% of the time.

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