Alta’s Product Strength

“No one can match Alta’s current BALANCE of PRODUCTION, COMPONENTS, TYPE, HEALTH, FERTILITY, and RELIABILITY!”
– Dr. Bob Welper, Senior Director – Research & Development

Recently, we visited with Senior Director – Research & Development, Dr. Bob Welper to gain his perspective on Alta’s current North American developed Product Strength. His answers to our questions provide a thought provoking view on Alta’s current lineup and highlight some of the challenges producers face in selecting sires for their breeding program.

Q - How would you characterize Alta’s current product strength relative to our competitors and relative to previous years/eras at Alta?

A - COMPLETE PACKAGE sums up the current product offerings from our North American programs. The May 2005 proof run created one of the DEEPEST line-ups that we have ever had at Alta! The current Alta product line offers just what is needed by our focus customers – progressive large herds. The Top 10 USA bulls are the most consistent group of bulls that we have had over the years, in that they offer an amazing balance of PRODUCTION, COMPONENTS, TYPE, HEALTH, RELIABILITY, and FERTILITY. None of our competitors can match this balance across all traits – even those that sample more than twice as many bulls!

Top 10 US Bulls

The 4 new additions from our Canadian program mirror this consistency and balance of production, type and health that SMARTY started. The 50% graduation rate for these 4 bulls in the months that they were sampled is quite rare in this industry.

Four Recent Canadian Graduates

Q - Within our marketing lineup of proven bulls are there specific aspects which you feel accentuate Alta’s leadership position?

A - Add DIVERSITY of genetic lines to the appeal of the 15 top bulls mentioned above. There are 10 different sires and 10 different MGS represented in this elite group of bulls, which offers a variety of genetic lines from which to choose, and helps to minimize inbreeding into the future. On top of that, 12 of these bulls are Calving Ease, which is a very high percentage compared to previous Alta product lines.

Q - We have talked at great length about Alta’s program strength and its appeal to the progressive dairy sector, but if you make the comparisons simply on products, why should progressive dairy producers choose Alta sires over those of competitors?

A - Nobody can match Alta’s current BALANCE of PRODUCTION, COMPONENTS, TYPE, HEALTH, FERTILITY, and RELIABILITY!

Q - In the late 90’s Alta had a top-10 hit parade which helped to create strong links within the Pedigree segment of the market. Many of Alta’s bulls were used heavily as sires of sons and several others were specialists at making the show-winning kind. With respect to Alta’s current product lineup, what advice would you offer pedigree breeders?

A - Back then, a top 10 ranking for a bull meant that demand for this bull would easily be in excess of his production. But then those were the good old days, before the TIME OF TOO MANY THRESHOLD TRAITS, as we are currently in. If BELLWOOD was in the Top 10 TPI group during this era, we would be hard-pressed to sell 100,000 units in lifetime sales, rather than the ONE MILLION mark that we narrowly missed. Today, our progressive pedigree customers want MORE than a Top 10 TPI ranking, as they want bulls that rank high with few or no weaknesses in a long list of selection traits. Top 10 TPI bulls are no longer Top 10 Demand bulls. Therefore, we need to change our mindset and definitions of Top 10 bulls to include bulls that best meet the long list of thresholds set by our customers.

Let’s play the THRESHOLD GAME, where we set lower PTA limits for selected traits, or independent culling levels. If we place thresholds on the Canadian list of +1000 M, +100 CFP, -0.10 %F, -0.10 %P, 3.00 SCS, 3.0 HL, 86% SCE, +5 MS, and +5 FL, SMARTY and MEDIATE are the ONLY bulls that survive the Canadian THRESHOLD GAME – no competitor bulls. That’s a pretty small but ELITE duo! Let’s place similar thresholds on the USA list of +900 M, +60 CFP, -.10 %F, -.10 %P, 3.10 SCS, 1.0 PL, 9 SCE, +0.50 PTAT, +0.50 UDC, +0.50 FLC, 85% reliability for production and 75% reliability for type, and CVM-free. We find that ALLEGRO, SUEDE, YANKEE, GRANADO, BAILIFF and ONLY 4 COMPETITOR BULLS survive the USA THRESHOLD GAME!

Producers need to recognize the CONSISTENCY and DEPTH of improvement for ALL TRAITS that these 7 ELITE Alta bulls offer in this TIME OF TOO MANY THRESHOLD TRAITS.

Q - Breeding goals continue to evolve. We’ve never had so many traits that can “disqualify” a sire from our sales vocabulary. Some of the more recent additions include: PL, SCS, DPR, Milking Speed and we are more stringent on Calving Ease ratings than in years gone by as well. We seem to want a bull that can deliver tremendous Production, outstanding Type all balanced by an array of impressive Health traits too – and of course he must be high on fertility. There’s no simple solution, but please offer your views on how Alta customers can get the most out of the proof information without eliminating bulls from contributing to their breeding program.

A – First of all I encourage people NOT to play the THRESHOLD GAME! But since our customers want to use THRESHOLDS – and the customer is always right - we must address this need. So let’s take the approach that thresholds do not have to be a bad thing . . . if used correctly.

Thresholds FAIL to provide our customers with OPTIMAL GENETIC GAINS when they are applied to INDIVIDUAL BULLS. This is simply because the more traits that you select for, the less progress that you make in any of these traits. This loss in genetic gain is inflated for HEALTH and REPRODUCTIVE traits, where accuracy of evaluation is quite low for most bulls, which means there will be a considerable amount of re-ranking of bulls with the addition of 2nd crop information. Applying any significant thresholds on low reliability traits like DPR really doesn’t make much economic sense.

Thresholds can be used without significantly hurting genetic gain when used on a GROUP OF BULLS. By focusing on a GROUP OF BULLS and enforcing thresholds only on groups of bulls, potential genetic gain is only slightly limited and the accuracy for all traits is much higher, especially for health and reproductive traits. Take a look at the Alta TOP TEN group of bulls mentioned above. In each case a subgroup can be generated to address different needs and wants such as PRODUCTION, COMPONENTS, TYPE, HEALTH PLUS, etc. You will see that you can create several very interesting sub-groups from this elite group of bulls.

Production Specialists

HealthPlus Specialists

Type Specialists

CheeseMerit Specialists

Is GROUPING OF BULLS a new concept? OF COURSE NOT, as Alta has been doing this for years to meet bids and to offer affordable elite genetics to our customers. Can we highlight this concept MORE as a solution to simplify selection in this TIME OF TOO MANY THRESHOLD TRAITS? I believe that we can.

The Interbull process has long been known to handicap foreign bulls, especially in their assessment of Type numbers. Dutch bulls like LUCKY MIKE, DYNASTY, ACCOORD and LEMMER are provided embarrassingly low converted Type numbers in North America while bulls like ALLEGRO, ROLEX, SUEDE, SMARTY etc from North America lose their appeal in Dutch, German or UK terms. Some have suggested that we should try again to display bulls with home country Type proofs. In Canada this has been well accepted. Do you favor this approach for the US or is there a better alternative?

While the Interbull/MACE evaluations are better than their predecessor, conversions, there is still a significant ‘home-ice’ advantage, as Doug Blair always called it. I do believe that you should sell the top bulls from each genetic line, and place less emphasis on how they rank in biased foreign country rankings. Therefore, I do believe that we need to place more emphasis on selling our lineup based on home-country type proof rankings.

Let’s take a look at AARON as an example. In 2000 his first crop MACE evaluation in Holland placed him near the top for type. In 2005 he is CLEARLY THE OUTLIER for type in Holland and around the world. You can see below how he fares now compared to the home-country bulls that he was ranked similar to in 2000, now that he has milking daughters in Holland. You will notice that AARON gained +3 for Udder, +8 for F&L and +5 for Total Score relative to his 2000 proof and +3 for Udder, +9 for F&L and +6 for Total Score relative to his high Type contemporaries (2005 base changes of -3 Udders, -1 F&L and -3 Total Score taken into account ).

Is this because AARON increased drastically with the addition of second crop information? Not really. This is more due to the fact that his current type proof in Holland is on an apples-to-apples basis since he has home-country daughters and does not have to fight the Interbull/MACE bias against him for type traits.

I still firmly believe that the Interbull/MACE evaluations work for production for most countries, as the correlations between countries are high. The low correlations between countries for type, however, cause outlier bulls to be lower on foreign country bases, thus creating the ‘home-ice’ or home-field advantage that we must fight to minimize.

Of course evaluating bulls on multiple-country type evaluation bases is not an easy task. It means customers will need to be educated on how to interpret what these different evaluation bases mean to them. We owe it to our customers to make them aware of the ‘home-ice’ advantage inherent in the Interbull/MACE type evaluations. AARON is a good example to show this bias, and we can find more examples of other bulls and in other countries. We need to overcome local biases and protection of trade in order to offer our customers the outlier bulls for type (many of which offer differing bloodlines) that will still be outliers after they have added local daughters and second crop daughters globally.

Posted Jul 8th

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