Growing mis-ID Rate Costs Producers

DNA testing most logical solution

In the business world, making decisions based on inaccurate information can lead to costly errors. The dairy industry - and specifically the AI sector - is not immune with the financial impact of errors increasing as herd sizes grow ever larger. Data quality is at the heart of this issue.

Have you ever looked at the daughter picture of a bull and thought ‘what’s the chance that cow I’m looking at is sired by an entirely different bull?’ While it’s unlikely that there is purposeful deception taking place, don’t kid yourself, it happens – we know! Our estimates indicate it’s 1 out of every 4 pictures you look at!

Growing herd sizes and our dependence as an industry on such herds to sample bulls is at the root of the problem. It’s easy to understand why mis-identification rates are usually higher in large herd settings – there’s simply greater opportunity for errors to creep in – but what about the impact on sire proof accuracy? It has been estimated that a 25% mis-identification rate would equate to nearly a 10% reduction in genetic gain – or in other words it’s costing producers about $50 lifetime profit per animal!

So what’s the solution? DNA testing is regularly used to verify parentage on Bulls entering AI and for their dams. It is certainly possible to DNA test daughters of all young sires too, with mis-identified daughters removed from the dataset. Of course it’s also possible to match up mis-identified daughters to the correct sire, which provides further benefit. Logistically DNA verification of all daughters is a difficult task, but, it may be the only way to eliminate this growing problem.

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Posted Oct 7th

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