FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

• What is AltaAdvantage?
• How does AltaAdvantage differ from other testing programs?
• How does Alta Advantage ensure accuracy in record keeping?
• How can Accuracy be assured?
• How do Advantage Herds compare to the Average for mis-ID Rate?
• What is the impact of lower mis-ID Rates on Genetic Evaluations?
• Does Advantage testing guarantee proof stability?
• Does Advantage testing increase accuracy on Management Trait proofs?
• What additional Management Traits are possible with Advantage?
• How do Large Contemporary Group sizes increase accuracy?
• How can I become an Advantage Herd?
• How much do US bull proofs change from 1st to 2nd crop?
• Should Dairy Producers Trust US Proofs?
• How do Advantage proofs compare Internationally?
• Is Advantage the best program for Large Herds outside of the US?

As we launch into the marketing phase of AltaAdvantage , it’s important to ensure good understanding of the program, to help provide the correct terminology; to help explain the science in lay-man’s terms; to debunk myths and perhaps most importantly to share our excitement.

By providing answers to FAQ, you’ll come to understand why there is such excitement surrounding the Advantage initiative. Why? This is the biggest thing to happen in AI in a long, long time and it will undoubtedly redefine sampling programs of the future!

AltaAdvantage refers to Alta’s US progeny test program. In 1999, Alta chose to limit the number of herds that participate as product development partners, and to focus its product testing efforts in the most accurate, commercial, unbiased environments possible. The net effect has been to reduce participation in Alta’s US sampling program from approximately 3,000 herds to its current size of 170 herds. The concept of Advantage is not new – many competitors know that this is the way it should be done, however Alta is the first company to fully embrace it, with a goal of delivering genetics you can TRUST.

Most young sire sampling initiatives are used by salespeople and farmers to lower semen blend prices. While they do generate proven bulls, the commitment level by participants is not very high – certainly they could not be called ‘product development partners’. Alta’s Advantage program differs in that due to the small number of herds, it can offer more and in turn demand a commitment level that makes it truly a partnership.

Alta’s Advantage Consultants are the key. Advantage herd owners understand the value of accurate records. They need them to make sound management decisions. To ensure accurate records Advantage Consultants assist them in setting up a system to promote the accurate identification of calves along with a feedback mechanism to measure effectiveness. In addition to adopting an effective system to properly record all insemination and calving information, each of the 170 Advantage partner herds identifies every animal at birth with a national FAIR id tag, including a unique American ID number. Tags cannot be changed, or re-used, so that the tag (and number) remains with the animal for her entire life. Each animal is recorded with that same number in the dairy’s management software program (like DairyComp 305), on the DHI test sheet, and in the Holstein classifier’s inventory. This has simplified the record keeping process, and is the first step to accurate identification.

Through DNA testing! Advantage Consultants collect DNA on every YS daughter. From this DNA testing, identification accuracy is monitored in all herds so that only the best are maintained on the program. Currently the average is 92% accuracy across all Advantage herds. Advantage daughters mis-identified are either corrected or removed from the proof. No other program compares in its ability to deliver genetics you can TRUST.

Although on average 8% of the animals in Advantage herds are still misidentified, it is known from random tests that the commercial population in the United States has a mis-identification rate of > 25%!! In competitor sampling programs, collecting DNA on all YS daughters (from thousands of potential dairies) is not a consideration so errors go unchecked. From DNA results, ID errors for Advantage tested bulls are corrected, and where that’s not possible, their sire ID is changed to “unknown”, eliminating their data from the bull’s proof. The goal for DNA verified ID in Advantage tested bulls is 100%!

Increased accuracy of identification leads to higher heritability and more genetic progress. Imagine a bull with 60 daughters in his proof – if 25% of them are misidentified, that means there are only 45 of them are truly his daughters. The 15 mis-identified daughters add error to every number printed on the proof sheet! In a study by Visscher et al, (http://www.adsa.org/jds/papers/2002/d0292368.pdf) in 2002, it was estimated that a 25% error rate would reduce selection response by approximately 8%! An example of this loss is below:

You can equate an 8% loss in genetic progress to subtracting 8% of the value off the top of a sire’s proof. As you can see, if this is done for Bull ‘X’, because of misidentification, the realized gains that farmers will see from using this bull will be far less than expected. Such change will be vastly reduced for Advantage tested bulls however, primarily because identification accuracy is ensured.

As revolutionary as Advantage is, it is not going to single handedly solve all of the challenges with genetic evaluations. Although Alta can guarantee integrity of the information, that it comes from well-managed, commercial environments and that proofs will not change as much from first to second crop; evolving proofs during the first crop period can and should still be expected. Why?

Additional Information - when Alta decides to begin marketing a bull, his daughters are generally only about 6-8 months into their first lactation. Although a fairly good estimate can be made at that time on how those daughters will finish out their lactation, not all the information is known about how these daughters and daughters still being added will perform in this and subsequent lactations. Even though identification is guaranteed to be accurate, additional information can still create some instability in a bull’s proof, especially in his first few evaluations.

Low Heritability Traits – there should still be an expectation for some change as bulls begin to provide information on low heritability traits like Productive Life (PL) and Daughter Pregnancy Rate (DPR), traits increasingly becoming emphasized to a greater degree in industry rankings. When sires are first released, there is very little, aside from pedigree information, available to make accurate predictions. As actual data begins replacing pedigree, some change should still be expected.

The bevy of new health traits that are available (reflected in the Healthplus index), including SCS, PL, DPR all have relatively low heritabilities. Certainly management influences these traits to a large degree; however when all of the daughters of Advantage bulls are in free-stall operations where no cows are given individual care, the value and precision of the estimates for these traits will be much greater. Having larger herds means more contemporaries or “herdmates” that can be compared to the individual cow in question. In other words more cows are under the same environmental conditions, and more of the difference between cows explained by genetics as opposed to environment. Sires with daughters that consistently last longer, have less mastitis problems, and get bred back sooner will continue to rise to the top, and you can be more and more confident in the evaluations of these secondary traits on Alta bulls. That’s an important distinction to other sampling programs and a tremendous selling point on why you too should consider partnering with Alta as your genetic supplier. It’s about delivering genetics you can TRUST! “Sampled in herds just like yours” is may be a marketing phrase to promote Advantage, but it really makes sense.

Conceptplus – the industry standard for fertility measurement
Healthplus – Alta is first to establish an index dedicated to cow Health & Longevity

Additional traits that Alta can collect information on and calculate proofs for internally are another reason for having a limited number of large commercial herd partners to assist in sampling bulls. The first example of this was the Conceptplus ranking. One of the challenges with other fertility measures is limited “herdmates” to compare individual services to in smaller herds. With Alta’s average Advantage herd size of 750 cows, there are about 250 services per month added per herd, which gives a much more accurate estimate on which bulls are doing the best job at getting cows pregnant under the same management conditions.

Early in 2005 Alta added Milking Speed proofs to the Healthplus formula. The estimation of milking speed is based solely on measurements obtained from Advantage herds with computer monitored milking times, for the most objective measurement possible. All recently activated Alta bulls already have data for a limited number of daughters. You can expect reliability for milking speed to be around 60%, with over 300 observations from about 25 daughters per sire. Also in 2005, Alta will begin to evaluate Calf Mortality on its sires and this too will be added to the Healthplus index.

Alta will continue to monitor Early Metabolic Disorders in the daughters of its sires, and as enough data is collected on these traits, it will be added to the Healthplus index. Problems around the calving period have a genetic component and Alta will attempt to sort out which bulls deliver daughters most likely to have a fast, trouble free start to their lactation, as opposed to those with constant problems.

The information that goes into the genetic evaluation for an individual animal is the difference between how she performs relative to the group of animals performing in the same herd, at the same time, in the same lactation. This is called a “deviation”. The group to which that animal is compared is known as the Contemporary Group. In the US, contemporary groups are normally defined in two month windows of time. All animals having calved in that two month window are compared to each other, in the belief that they are performing under identical management conditions and being subject to the same environmental conditions that occur during the lactation. Although further edits are applied within the genetic model, the basis for accurate proofs hinges on the with-in herd deviation of an individual to her contemporary group.

Advantage herds because of commercial orientation can be counted upon to generate deviations for individual cows that are accurate. There is no preferential treatment bias on these cows – this is not always the case in smaller herd settings where individual care is sometimes bestowed upon herd favorites. Advantage herds are large enough that all cows must do it on their own, without help. And it’s this significantly larger than average size that ensures Advantage herds also have larger contemporary groups. In other words, the data coming from Advantage herds for individual cows – the deviation from the contemporary group – is a comparison to many more animals, an important distinction that leads to more accurate proofs.

The average Advantage contemporary group size is 35 cows which differs significantly from the many, many herds contributing data to the US proving system where contemporary group size is just 5 animals. And in herds where the contemporary group is less that 5, the window of time is broadened; first from 2 to 4 months, then potentially to 6 in an effort to ensure at least 5 contemporaries for each animal being evaluated. Broadening the time period for a contemporary group may be necessary, but when a cow calving in January is considered as part of the same contemporary group as a cow calving in June or July; it will reduce the meaningfulness of the deviation. But even where this doesn’t occur it is much more meaningful for a cow to be +1,000 lbs milk over a contemporary group of 35 than just 5. It’s like being #1 ranked in an Elementary School class of 30 compared to #1 in a University class of 200. One carries substantially more significance than the other.

Understandably, as more progressive dairy producers learn about Alta’s Advantage initiative, some will wish to become enrolled onto the program. While there is some turnover among the Alta’s product development partner herds, very few come off the program voluntarily. This means getting put onto a waiting list.

In the meantime, you can already begin enjoying the benefits of Advantage information, creating extra value in your breeding program. In addition, you can also begin enacting procedures and processes that ensure data accuracy, so that if an opening presents itself, you’ll meet the identification accuracy standards.

In an analysis on the industry’s top 100TPI bulls it was discovered that on average, proofs change considerably more that is desired from 1st to 2nd crop. Advantage testing however, will ensure that Alta bulls change far less over time due to mis-identification having been addressed, and the benefit of testing in commercial environments with large contemporary groups.

There is nothing wrong with the US proving system, however, the genetic models that calculate the proof numbers you see cannot be held responsible for mis-identified daughters that are contained in the data set. It is up to each AI stud to ensure that the data going into the model carries the highest degree of integrity possible. The Advantage testing program ensures data accuracy. When evaluating US sire proofs dairy producers should ask, “what assurances do I have that the data going into the model is accurate?”

Many countries have employed sophisticated models to evaluate genetic differences, however, none have employed widespread DNA testing like is done in Advantage herds. And while in some markets the mis-identification issue is not as big an issue, it’s largely because of smaller herd sizes. All countries with large commercial herds have mis-identification issues. Countries that are predominantly small herd-based deal more with contemporary group size concerns. The Advantage program is the only program that has addressed mis-identification while at the same time testing in herds where contemporary group sizes will be large.

There are many large progressive dairies in all regions of the world. Many are located in countries where domestic products have been developed largely in small herd situations with very different management systems in place. It is likely that for these types of dairies, the Advantage product is most suitable. No other proven bulls, globally, carry an evaluation that’s based entirely on performance in large-herd, progressive environments. This makes Advantage truly unique, with products that progressive dairy managers will gravitate towards. No program has done more to deliver genetics you can TRUST.

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Posted Jun 15th

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