Impact of global partners
The U.S., Canada and Australia have engaged in the trade of beef cattle genetics for years. In 2023, the common currency created through the World Angus Evaluation further supported trade activity and has simplified comparing animals’ EPD values.
What is the world angus evaluation?
The WAE includes data for 13 traits from three Angus associations: the American Angus Association, Canadian Angus Association, and Angus Australia. This allows direct comparison of these traits for cattle across the three herd books.
In total, there are 13 traits in the global evaluation. They include claw set (CLAW), foot angle (ANGLE), calving ease direct (CED), calving ease maternal (CEM), birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW), yearling weight (YW), maternal milk (MILK), scrotal circumference (SC), marbling (MARB), carcass weight (CW), ribeye area (RE) and fat thickness (FAT).
The American Angus Association, along with AGI, Angus Australia, and the Canadian Angus Association are involved currently. Research for this project started in 2018. The first release was in 2020 with the claw set and foot angle EPDs.
AGI is completing the evaluation weekly. We receive data from the Canadian Angus Association once a month, data from Angus Australia every two weeks, and internally pull data for the American Angus Association once a week.
All three countries have similar data collection strategies, and after extensive research, it was determined the same traits are being measured. Within individual countries, data edits were executed to ensure direct comparisons. In addition, the genotypes of the populations overlap, which means the relationships of animals from all three herd books are strong.
This has increased the number of performance records in our evaluation, which can increase the accuracy of individual EPDs. This also allows members to directly compare registered Angus seedstock animals across multiple herd books, enabling more international commerce. In addition, there will be an influx of carcass data, which can be difficult for many members to collect.
IMPACT OF GLOBAL PARTNERS
The U.S., Canada and Australia have engaged in the trade of beef cattle genetics for many years. In 2023, the common currency created through the World Angus Evaluation further supported trade activity and has simplify comparing animals’ EPD values.
260k
genotypes added
6%
increase in carcass records
1.3
millions of birth weight records added
14%
increase in calving ease scores
Access the Tools
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Global Sire Search Tool
powered by AGI®
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Canadian Angus Animal Inquiry
via Canadian Angus
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Find an Animal
via the American Angus Association
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AU Angus Database Search
via Angus Australia
What's next?
The World Angus Evaluation's global partnership helps improve evaluations for breeders, because it adds data to the evaluations of traits that are hard or expensive to measure.
As the partnership continues, work continues to expand the WAE even further through ongoing research on traits such as Functional Longevity, Heifer Pregnancy, Feed Intake and more.
AGI® looks forward to more collaboration with global partners in the WAE and continuing to provide solutions to Angus breeders around the world.
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