Just over 3,600 bulls were declared active by A.I. marketing organizations. Of those sires, 2,795 were Holsteins, 540 were Jerseys, and the remaining 277 bulls could be found in nine other breeds. For Holsteins and Jerseys, those numbers were almost 250 bulls higher than December 2015.
To make heads or tails of all those bulls, we sorted through the top bulls and ranked them on nine different traits or indexes in the Holstein breed. In Jerseys, we ranked bulls on two traits; and all other breeds on one trait.
Genomics continue to garner a larger portion of the bull rankings. Overall, 68.6 percent of the bulls were ranked on DNA evaluations without direct daughter data. This represents a new watermark.
While the Hoard's Dairyman Bull List will be available in the April 25 issue, we are making it available to readers here as well. It can be downloaded by clicking this link.
(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2016
April 11, 2016
