SELECTIONS - Fall 2005
PGA and SMS Span Three Decades
The players have changed since Select Sires formed in 1965. The game plan has been modified to keep pace with the changes in the dairy industry, but the primary goal of the team has never faltered.
S elect Sires is in existence today, as it was in the beginning, to continually address the genetic well being of its end user, the farmer member. The field staff among the 10-member cooperatives in this A.I. federation has been the direct link to the customer and, collectively, all have had key roles in determining the genetic advancements that Select Sires has fostered over the past 30 years. Listening to the needs of our customers, Select Sires has been able to successfully develop a highly proven sire program that remains the standard of the A.I. industry.
Historians may say that 7HO0058 Round Oak Rag Apple ELEVATION*TV put Select Sires on the map, but it has been the genetic programs that have kept the organization on course for over three decades. The core of our success is rooted in the Program for Genetic Advancement™ (PGA™), the industry’s benchmark for random and accurate young sire sampling, and the Select Mating Service™ (SMS™), the most widely accepted mating system in the world.
Over the years, the needs of dairy producers have evolved challenging Select Sires to further develop these programs and services. Average-herd size has increased, costs of production has skyrocketed, breeding systems have changed, on-farm computer technology has been implemented, and the demands placed on owner-operators have escalated. In turn, the breeding philosophy of today’s dairy producers has progressed placing an even greater demand on efficiency and profitability.
Select Sires has met these challenges head on, adding new breeding programs and services, to ensure that the genetic programs that got us here will continue to grow and will remain viable in the future.
PGA Expanding to Meet Demand
For 30 years the PGA young-sire procurement system has set the A.I. -industry standard in producing highly reliable proven sires over multiple generations. Names like ELEVATION, MARK, BLACKSTAR, EMORY, BW MARSHALL, DURHAM, SOONER, BERRETTA, and PROPHET are synonymous with breed improvement.
This success is rooted in the infancy of Select Sires when the individual charter cooperatives of the new A.I. federation were each sampling young sires. It wasn’t until 1969 when a uniform sire sampling program was established. Even then the craftsmen of the program decided that a sire-procurement system would be more efficient if cooperator herds represented all systems of management, and all herd sizes. Each herd owner enrolled with the understanding that he would receive semen from randomly selected young sires. Dairy producers would then maintain accurate record-keeping, milk-recording and identification systems.
When this sampling structure officially was named the Program for Genetic Advancement in 1974, the Select Sires federation was marketing semen from coast to coast. The sampling system grew from a regional sire development program to a national system, sampling 70 Holstein sires in 940 cooperator herds. Select Sires managed the logistics of the program. Local representatives from the member cooperatives conducted the routine herd consultations and the physical trait appraisals on the milking daughters that were used in the official type evaluations of the proven graduates.
Today Select Sires operates the largest nationwide sampling system in A.I., generating the most-reliable proven bulls in the industry. The program has grown to 359 sires in all breeds sampled annually through the cooperation of more than 4,000 participating herds that milk more than one million cows.
The key to obtaining the most marketable proven sires is to be diverse in our selection approach. Select Sires sire team interprets and evaluates the data during each sampling phase thus allowing cooperators the opportunity to be the first to milk daughters from some of the most exciting genetics in the breed. Select Sires returns only the most elite of these widely sampled sires to active-A.I. service.
Current PGA cooperators are committed to following the same basic sampling and semen usage procedures that were implemented in the beginning. The key is to provide a broad sampling so that each sire will have 70 or more daughters and an 85 percent or greater reliability when the full
sample has been evaluated. This gives Select Sires an advantage in stability of bull proofs when data from second-crop daughters is later added. That way producers are getting the daughter performance they expect when using the proven graduates of the PGA.
The increasing demand for proven genetics from Select Sires has led the company’s farmer-directed board to approve expanding the PGA sampling base to include an additional 30 Holstein young sires in 2006. Additional cooperator herds are needed to effectively sample more bulls. Owners of well-managed herds are invited to share in the success of the PGA by enrolling today.
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Select Sires SMS evaluators at spring conference held in New York. At the annual conference, evaluators are updated on herd management software, evaluation techniques and other industry trends.
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SMS Diversifies to Meet Producers’ Goals
Back in 1973, only 5,800 cows were evaluated. Today that number now exceeds 3.5 million cows. SMS is a time-tested service that has the same goal today as it had more than 30 years ago. The program assists each producer in developing a herd of cows with the type and production that meets his individual needs. In 2004 alone, the SMS evaluators with the federation’s 10-member cooperatives and Select Sires Canada mated 805,235 additional cows. This set a new record for the number of first-time animals entered into the SMS program in one year. Also, Select evaluators mated more than 345,400 heifers using SMSII Pedigree Mate™.
Originally part-time evaluators did cow side type-trait breakdowns on paper and handwritten mating recommendations were returned to producers in a week or two. Today’s local SMS evaluators are full-time professionals with good old-fashioned cow sense and customer respect. They have the computer capabilities to generate printouts of mating selections on the farm. In many cases, the SMS program and its mating recommendations are being integrated into other on-farm computer services.
"There are only 24 hours in a day so I need to be more efficient and surround myself with a team of smart people who can take responsibility for specific aspects of my operation," suggests Randy Schweer, a 90-cow registered Holstein herd owner and Cache Valley Select Sires member, Watertown, SD.
"I have a lot of confidence in SMS and I trust my evaluator Dennis Fischer. It’s convenient to look at a sheet and know what to breed a cow to. Duane Broek, my Select Sires sales representative, is the only one putting semen in my tank."
Select Sires has customized and expanded its mating program to meet the specific needs on both large and small dairies. SMS programmers also have implemented factors to compensate for high levels of inbreeding and to avoid carrier-to-carrier matings of animals known to possess various genetic recessives. Good management of these areas result in more genetic return from every dollar spent for semen.
Schweer adds, "Because of the SMS program, I am not buying semen on a whim. I am using good solid bulls that complement my cows. And we are breeding more uniformity into the herd. Now I can concentrate on my goals of 30,000 pounds of milk and a 110% BAA."
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SMS evaluators listen as Barb Nedrow, Clifton, Springs, N.Y., shares herd information with the group.
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The Goal…Consistent Results™
Select Sires has experienced a 22 percent increase in semen sales over the past five years and this success can be directly attributed to the genetic strength of those sires graduating from the PGA and the value-added features of the SMS. These genetic programs have provided our customers the opportunity to produce Consistent Results™ in their herds.
In the future, innovative technology will allow Select Sires to further assist producers like Randy Schweer in the genetic selection arena. With an array of IGENITY™ DNA tests and services now available through Select Sires, (see page 9 for more details), producers will have new technology available to them. Meanwhile, these tests also give Select Sires an additional genetic selection tool for screening young sires prior to PGA sampling. These tools will keep Select Sires on target with the same basic goal it had in 1965 of assisting today’s producers in improving the efficiency and the profitability of their operations.
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SMS evaluator, Dennis Fischer, with SMS results MARSHALL daughter at DeBoer Holsteins,
Corona, S.D.
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™Program for Genetic Advancement, PGA, Select Mating Service and SMS are trademarks of Select Sires Inc.
™IGENITY is a trademark of Merial, Duluth, GA
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