Select Sires

SELECTIONS - Fall 2006
IGENITY Expands Its Inside Track
on Dairy Form and Productive Life

The Select Sires and Merial partnership is speeding up genetic improvement through the use of the latest DNA technology. Now there are expanded opportunities for improvement with further development of the IGENITY® Dairy Selections profile. A new round of research results provides additional verification in production markers, including one new marker to add in the dairy form category and two new markers related to productive life. Since productive life is difficult to measure, especially in young animals, the enhanced IGENITY profile can be a very useful tool for dairy producers looking to improve longevity in their herd.

"We are expanding our reach in the health and fitness area," said Chuck Sattler, vice president and manager of genetic programs for Select Sires. "Traits like productive life are ideal for marker-assisted selection. We’re very excited about having new tools to work with in identifying more genetic differences in these areas."

IGENITY profiles for individual animals will be presented in the same manner as they were before, with the only difference being an increase in variation able to be measured. For dairy form, the difference between a cow scoring a 10 and a one is now 3.30 linear classification points on average, when before the variation was 1.95 points. The variation for productive life between cows with extreme genotypes is 3.44 months on average. The cooperative effort with Merial continues to produce results; and, with ongoing research, more breakthroughs are expected in the future.

Also in the future, Select Sires hopes to incorporate these latest markers into identifying a new category of bulls, combining early PTA data for Productive Life with genetic marker information. The outcome created from blending these two pieces of information will allow producers to make even more informed sire choices.

Updated IGENTIY profiles, which include the new markers, will be provided for recently-tested animals upon request. For information on receiving an updated profile or to conduct new tests, contact your Select Sires representative.

®IGENITY is a registered trademark of Merial, Duluth, Ga.

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