Hoard's Dairyman bull list now available

For those looking for the latest genetic updates from this January's sire summary, you can download our entire bull list from this blog post. It includes the highest-ranking bulls for the top seven dairy breeds.

Holsteins are ranked by Net Merit, Fluid Merit, Cheese Merit, udders, feet and legs, productive life, daughter pregnancy rate, somatic cell score, sire conception rate, sire calving ease, and sire stillbirth. It is the most comprehensive bull list published by any dairy outlet that is available free for download.

In the Holstein breed: Freddie, O Man, Super, and Planet, are still in the top four. Shottle reappears among the top five after making a slight dip to 10 in the August run. In the Jerseys, Matinee now ranks top in that breed, a climb of 13 spots. Likewise, Phillip in the Ayrshire breed jumped four spots to take the lead. Vigor (Brown Swiss), Alstar (Guernsey), and Ted (Milking Shorthorn) all maintain their leader position in their respective breeds. Meanwhile, new-comer Fidelity-Red (Red and White) earned the top Net Merit position at 364.

jan_10_2010_bull_list.pdf

Genomic evaluations trumped a few additional daughters

January was a quiet sire evaluation just as it’s always been for most Holstein and Jersey proven bulls that had a majority of their first-crop daughters past the first lactation. For this group of bulls, representing about 80 percent of the active A.I. population, the sire summaries found on pages 101 to 104 of the February 10 issue are essentially the August 2008 sire proofs along with new genomic information. Put another way, for each domestic bull or cow, either the August lactations plus genomic information or the new lactations were used, whichever had the higher reliability.

The remaining 20 percent of bulls that had changes in their traditional proofs fell into two groups, notes Animal Improvement Programs Laboratory (AIPL) scientists who work on genetic evaluations.

• Younger progeny test bulls with a substantial number of daughters providing first-lactation production and health trait information. These newcomers did not have genomic information added to their January genetic evaluations because some computer programs needed to combine the data were not ready by mid-December.

• Bulls with foreign daughters, in which case the Interbull multitrait, across-country evaluation became official. These bulls did not have genomic data added to their proofs.

For future genetic evaluations, AIPL plans to include all new phenotypic information in genomic calculations.