Select Sires

SELECTIONS - Summer 2003
Reliability Breeds
Customer Satisfaction

50 percent. You may have recently read this statistic, referring to the number of Select genes representing the genes in common for both Holstein and Jersey active-A.I. sires. While this number is impressive, however, what is more important is the reliability behind them.

Select understands that reliability breeds consistent results and customer satisfaction. For decades, producers have trusted Select Sires to provide highly fertile semen from bulls that transmit both production and type. They like milking daughters of top new active-A.I. sires, but they especially appreciate bulls that continue to sire the good ones once their second-crop results are in.

This second-crop success is a driving force behind Select sires. Year-in, year-out you’ll find that a third or more of the top 50 Holstein bulls for TPI™ with 97 percent reliabilities have a stud code of 7 or 9 (see figure 1). Led by 7HO5157 Regancrest Elton DURHAM-ET*CV (+1597 TPI), who tops the industry’s list, and 7HO6250 Ricecrest EMERSON-ET*BL,TV, these 18 high-TPI Select sires have offered producers a variety of highly reliable genetic choices. Visit the dairy lineup page for a complete list.

Figure 1. Percent of top-50 TPI sires with at least 97 percent reliabilities for milk and type, by A.I. organization. Background: Gold bars show the consistently high number of Select sires among the top-50 TPI sires with at least 97 percent reliabilities for milk and type for the past 10 quarters.

Select also leads the Jersey breed in reliability. More than one-third of the active-A.I. Jersey sires with 96 percent reliabilities for both type and production are at Select Sires. Following in the footsteps of earlier customer-satisfaction sires like 7JE177 Highland Magic DUNCAN and, more recently 7JE254 Mason Boomer Sooner BERRETTA, sires like 7JE290 WF/L&M Duncan BARBER-ET, 7JE329 Sooner CENTURION-ET, 7JE424 Molly Brook Glnwood FREEDOM-ET and 7JE356 Lester SAMBO are creating customer satisfaction with their second-crop daughters.

	From their early first-crop offspring to the present, BARBER (top and center) and DURHAM (bottom) have sired daughters that demonstrate the consistency and reliability behind Select genetics.

More than half of Select’s Holstein and Jersey active-A.I. sires have yield reliabilities of 90 percent or more. In addition, 30 active-A.I. sires at Select meet or exceed the 90 percent threshold for type reliability.

Does this mean producers only should use proven sires with high reliabilities? Unquesionably, using higher-reliability sires provides known results. On the other hand, young sires offer cutting-edge genetics, and Select is committed to annually sampling more than 350 bulls of the six dairy breeds through the Program for Genetic Advancement™ (PGA™). Many producers are taking a multi-pronged approach to the sires they use: using PGA sires to get the latest genetics, recent active-A.I. graduates with known results to maximize improvement and high-reliability sires to replicate matings that already have worked in their herds.

Know that whatever breeding approach you choose, involving Select sires of all ages in your mating program will deliver the reliable results you can trust.

™TPI is a trademark of Holstein Association USA
™Programs for Genetic Advancement and PGA are trademarks of Select Sires Inc.

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Select Sires Inc., 11740 U.S. 42 North, Plain City, Ohio 43064 / Phone: (614) 873-4683 Fax: (614) 873-5751