 Hello, I'm Ricky Colquitt with Alabama Farmer Extension System. I've been asked to talk with you today about the confirmation that it pertains to replacement heifers. Remember we think replacement heifers in terms of developing those from a production standpoint, there is absolutely no reason you as producing a heifer should not be willing to keep anything that you're willing to sell. If she's not good enough for you to keep, she's not good enough for you to sell. Keep that in mind as we move forward with this conversation. But when we're getting to confirmation, what we're actually doing is we're seeing the phenotype of the animal, not the genotype. EPDs are going to tell us more about the genotype. So what we're seeing here is terms of expression. So whenever we talk about confirmation and structural correctness, let's just start at the bottom and work our way forward. If we look down here at our hoods, we see we've got our two toes, we've got distance between them. We don't have any curling because if we have curl going on there, we could have some genetic problems, primarily screwcalls. And that is highly heritable and highly undesirable. So we want to avoid that at all costs. As we move our weight up from the hoof into the pastern, we want that pastern set at a proper angle because everything about cattle being able to function is about angles. If these angles are not proper, as these cattle get bigger and grow and mature, they begin to herd. That skeleton begins to straighten out. So anything that we can do to keep them feeling good and keep them growing properly, they're going to be more productive for not only you as the seller, but also your potential buyer. So we work our way from the pastern on up to the cannon bone. The set of the hawk is very important. We do want a slight curve, but not a tremendous curve. A big curve would be something like a sickled hawk condition. Once again, highly heritable. All right, moving from there. We move on up into the pins from the stifled to the hooks. This area here, everything here moves to a certain degree. So the reason those angles are important, straight here is possible. Now there is some breed differences here. Some of these prominent influence cattle, like these quality bringers efforts we have here, they may have a little bit more of a drop in the pins. So we have a more of a slope from hooks to pins. It's kind of a breed character. If we move from our hooks back down into our flanks, we want to make sure we've got really deep, really deep rear flanks. We want that really deep sided bowl sprung look on the ribs. We've got a lot of spring to this heifer's ribs moving forward. We want a level over the top. We don't want to broke it here in front of her hooks if we move forward here behind her shoulder. She gets a little off there in terms of I'd like to see her a little tighter, a little square up through that shoulder. But I think it's just the way she's standing in this awkward position. So then we'll work our way down from top of the shoulder down to the four flank. And from here, we're talking depth to fore rib, spring of fore rib. This is very important that we keep these cattle with a lot of volume and dimension to them because they not only have to hold the calf in here, produce that calf, they also have to consume enough forage in their diet to make sure that she's getting adequate nutrition. Now from the way the shoulder blends in to the neck is very important to me and females. I want my females to look like females. So the angularity of this from here to here is very important once again to get back into our angles. If we straighten this angle too much, yes, we can get these cattle tall quick. What happens is we start to, with genetic selection, we can change this angle. So every time she takes a step, the shock absorber is gone. She doesn't feel good. She won't eat. This is an excellent slope of shoulder. This is kind of what we're after right here. So moving from there, length of neck, we want a feminine face on a heifer, not so much on a bull. We're looking for a little bit more masculinity, a little bit more muscle there. And furthermore, on a female, we want to, a lot of people want to take it to the other extreme, possibly with too much muscle, too much volume, too much muscle, too much meat packaged in here. If we're getting a female that's that muscular, we can run into calving problems and a lot of other issues. So once again, we want to stay in moderation, everything in moderation. Moving on down, as we move back down here into our knee joint and into our pastures in the front, the same as we had in the back, proper angles, proper slope. As we analyze this female, there's not a lot of holes in her. She's a very good, excellent female. And from the back, as we analyze these females, we want to look from their pins down through their hawk. Ideally, we'd be able to drop a plumb ball, and it dissects the leg all the way down. And as we look here, we can tell this heifer is slightly cow hawk, not bad. But it's a condition we find in a lot of big cattle. It's not a detriment, but it is hereditary. We want them to square on his back feet and legs as we can get them. She's got just a little sit in the hawks turning in toward each other. That's a condition known as cow hawk. And as we work our way forward, we can look at that internal, we can look at that width and thickness that we find from end to end. We can also look at the spring of the rib, as we can see it from the rear. We can look at the width over her top. We can look at how this shoulder ties into the neck, moving forward, out over to the pole. Not so much on the front, but nonetheless, we're looking for the same things here. When we get to the front, again, we want to be able to, from the point of the shoulder, through the front of the hood, we want to be able to drop a blumb bob and dissect that leg if it all possible. Another point, as we look at the replacement heifer development that we're developing, we want to check out this heifer to make sure everything looks, we want four evenly spaced teats. As you look at it between these heifers rear legs, we see that she has the teats hanging perpendicular for the most part. One other thing, I want to give a plug to my organization that I work for, Alabama Cooperative Extension. There's a publication, Be Confirmation Basic, it's available on our website, which is acis.edu. This is a great publication, it was put together by one of our regional extension agents, Mr. David Daniel and Dr. Lisa Crease Anderson. Also, if you live in the state of Alabama, you are covered by a regional extension agent with this vast amount of knowledge that we've discussed today. Feel free to reach out to them off that same website or you can simply call your county extension office locally.