Breaking free from the chains of the past Where
truth moves faster than a Holstein calf No law
waiting on some printed page We're charting new
ground in the digital age From genomic codes
to robot facts We cut through the noise, no hold
them back not your daddy's dairy news tonight
we're sparking Welcome back to the Deep Dive,
where we cut through all the industry noise and
just, you know, get right down to the data that
actually matters for your operation. Exactly.
We're here to look at the numbers, skip the marketing
hype, and figure out what's really going to move
the needle on your farm. Right. So I want you
to transport yourself back to April of 2020.
Oh, man. 2020. Yeah. Right. And I don't mean
the pandemic stuff. I mean, in the dairy industry,
breeders were logging into the U .S. CDCB and
the Holstein Association evaluations. And it
was honestly like draft day. Oh, totally. It
was a frenzy. There was this list of 401 elite
genomic Holstein. Yeah. And they were being hailed
as the absolute undeniable future of the breed.
They can't miss sires. Exactly. They can't miss
sires. And mating programs everywhere just swung
hard toward these genomic wonders overnight.
Everyone was buying in. Because on paper, you'd
be crazy not to, right? The numbers were sky
high. Right. But fast forward to December 2025.
We have a massive, rigorous tracking analysis
from the bull vine. And it tracks this specific
2020 cohort for five full years. And the results
are... Well, they're honestly staggering. Yes,
staggering is the word. Out of those 401 elite
bulls, 236 of them completely vanished. Done.
Zero official daughters. Zero impact on the bulk
tank. Yep. So today, our mission is to tear into
this data. We need to figure out what happens
when genetic theory actually hits the concrete
of a commercial parlor. I mean, it's a massive
reality check. If you're a farmer betting your
future milk check on young sires, you have to
understand why this happened. Exactly. And we
aren't just looking at who survived. We're looking
at the biological failures, the shifting math,
and the crazy economic divide between the bulls
that essentially predicted the future and the
ones that just burned spectacular holes in farmers'
pockets. Right. The financial fallout is wild.
Let's start with that attrition rate. Out of
401 bulls, only 165 made it to an official daughter
proven proof by December 2025. That is just 41%.
Less than half. All right. So I look at that
and I have to push back a little here. How does
an animal with supposedly elite genetic potential
just evaporate? Yeah, that's a great question.
I mean, did farmers buy into a biological mirage?
How does a top tier bull fail to produce literally
one milking daughter? Well, what's fascinating
here is that it's rarely a failure on the farmer's
end. It's really a collision between biological
limits and honestly, extreme corporate velocity.
OK, unpack that. Biological limits first. Right.
So let's look at the biology. That 2020 top -tier
cohort, they were the product of incredibly aggressive
in vitro fertilization programs. IVF was everywhere.
Because everyone wanted to shorten the generation
interval. Exactly. The whole industry became
obsessed with accelerating genetic gain. And
mathematically, if you breed a 10 -month -old
calf to another 10 -month -old calf, you speed
up how fast superior genes hit the population.
Which sounds great on a spreadsheet. It looks
amazing on a spreadsheet. Biologically, you are
asking a juvenile animal to take on the reproductive
workload of a mature adult. Right. The physical
engine is just running way too hot. Exactly.
The physical toll on these young bulls is immense.
They were being pushed into heavy semen collection
before they even reached physical maturity. And
for a lot of them, it led to a literal breakdown.
Wow. So they just couldn't physically handle
it. Yeah. Some of these elite calves just couldn't
produce enough viable semen to get a meaningful
number of cows pregnant. And others, while others
suffered rapid health declines and didn't even
live long enough to see their first daughters
hit the ground. So the genetic potential was
technically real, but the delivery system failed.
Precisely. The bull himself just broke down.
Okay, so that's the biology side. But you also
mentioned corporate velocity. Yeah, the institutional
churn. Right. So if an AI stud pays massive money
to acquire one of these elite calves, why on
earth would they let him vanish if he happens
to be physically healthy? Because the AI studs
were moving at a speed that literally outpaced
their own product life cycle. Wait, what do you
mean? Well, think about it. by the time a phenomenal
2020 calf was a year old his own son or maybe
a half brother was already hitting the ground
in 2021 with an even higher index oh i see yeah
the studs looked at their rosters and realized
hey we've already mathematically replaced the
2020 model so they quietly retired or culled
a massive swath of these calves before they ever
had milking daughters. Just to make room in the
bull barns. Exactly. Make room for the next iteration.
That is wild. You're essentially making a bet
on a financial asset and the bank discontinues
the asset before it even matures. That's exactly
what happened. So if you were a breeder who went
all in on those April 2020 genomic lists, a massive
chunk of what you paid for never even got a chance
to prove itself. Yep. Your investment just evaporated
into the corporate churn. And for the 41 % that
did survive, the reshuffling of the rankings
was just brutal. I mean, let's look at the absolute
peak. Of the top 25 genomic bulls in 2020, 21
actually got a proof. Okay, so a good survival
rate for the absolute elite. Yeah, but of those
21, only 9 held on to a top 25 spot by December
2025. Wow, only 9? Only 36 % of the elite actually
stayed elite. And if we expand to the top 100,
74 got a proof, but only 14 were still in the
top 25 five years later. That is a massive reshuffle.
Right. So a farmer hearing this might immediately
say, well, genomics is a scam. The DNA testing
lied. Yeah, that's the coffee shop talk for sure.
Exactly. But looking at the actual data from
the surviving bulls, the DNA didn't lie at all,
did it? Not at all. The underlying biology held
up incredibly well. Okay, let's unpack this.
If the genomic science works, Why did so many
of these bulls just hemorrhage TPI points? Because
the volatility didn't come from the DNA. The
volatility came from the human -made index that
grades the DNA. The yardstick moved. The yardstick
moved massively. The correlations between the
2020 predictions and the 2025 proven proofs for
core biological traits were actually ironclad.
Do we have the numbers on that? We do. For predicted
transmitting ability for type PTT, the correlation
was 0 .814. That's really high. It is. For fat
yield, it was 0 .762. For protein yield, 0 .709.
And in statistics, anything over a 0 .7 is a
very strong relationship. Exactly. It means genomics
accurately predicted how many pounds of fat and
protein a bull's daughters would produce. The
physical cow did exactly what the test tube predicted.
So the science worked. The DNA delivered. Yep.
But the ground literally shifted under every
single bull in this cohort in three major structural
ways. The TPI formula underwent massive rewrites.
Okay, let's dig into those three shifts because
this is where the money is won or lost. Right.
So the first one, and probably the most universal,
was the April 2025 base change. Think of this
as the genetic treadmill speeding up. Right,
because every five years, the CDCB resets the
Holstein genetic base. They moved the baseline
from cows born in 2015 to cows born in 2020.
And because the Holstein breed made such massive
genetic progress in that five -year window, everyone's
baseline was heavily penalized. So just to stay
at zero, you had to be vastly superior to what
was required five years ago. Exactly. The mathematical
rollback was severe. Milk was slashed by 650
pounds, fat by 38 pounds, protein by 26 pounds.
Wow. That's a huge haircut. It is. Productive
life was docked by 2 .31 months. For the average
bull in this cohort that survived to 2025, they
dropped an average of 42 .5 TPI points just from
surviving this base change. That's pure academic
inflation. Totally. If the whole class suddenly
starts testing 20 % higher and 85 % on the exam
no longer looks like an elite score. So the grading
curve shifts downward. Exactly right. And on
top of that base change, expected future inbreeding,
or EFI, climbed from 7 .5 % to 9 .4%. Oh, so
that penalized certain heavily utilized pedigrees
even more. Yeah, it added extra mathematical
pressure. So if your favorite bull lost 40 or
50 points of TPI over those five years, he didn't
biologically regress. Right, the formula just
demanded more. Exactly. But that base change
was purely mathematical. The second massive shift,
which hit in April 2021, was entirely philosophical.
The feed efficiency update. Yes. Holstein Association
USA rewrote the TPI formula to heavily penalize
big, heavy cows by pulling feed saved into the
mix. Because before that, TPI really loved a
giant, high -volume cow. It did. But the new
term leaned incredibly hard into solids and feed
conversion rather than raw fluid volume. The
actual math on this is fascinating. I love the
math. Let's hear it. All right. So the new formula
became feed efficiency dollars equals negative
0 .0025 times PTA milk. Wait, negative. The multiplier
for raw milk volume became a negative number.
Yes, exactly. Negative for fluid volume. Then
it adds 1 .86 times PTA fat plus 1 .75 times
PTA protein plus 0 .13 times feed saved. That
is a total paradigm shift. It really is. Think
about the sheer metabolic tax of maintaining
an 1 ,800 pound cow. Right. She's huge. Even
if she gives you 35 ,000 pounds of fluid milk,
she's consuming so much dry matter just to keep
her heartbeat. and her massive frame moving.
The economic margin on that milk is entirely
eaten up at the feed bunk. Exactly. So if a bull
was making massive, tall, heavy daughters with
a high body weight composite, they suddenly started
paying a heavy TPI penalty. So the era of bigger
is better officially died in 2021. It did. The
formula stopped rewarding the sheer volume giants
and started handsomely rewarding the moderate
-framed cows, quietly pounding out butter, fat,
and protein without needing extra tons of expensive
corn. Which makes total sense for a farmer's
bottom line. And that perfectly sets the stage
for the third massive structural shift in August
2024, the fertility index rebalance. Oh yeah,
this one was huge. Because fertility is the silent
killer of profitability on any dairy. Absolutely.
For years, daughter pregnancy rate DPR carried
70 % of the weight of the fertility index. But
in 2024, the industry recognized a major flaw
in how that was being applied. So they slashed
it. They slashed DPR's weight down to 40%. And
to fill the gap, they elevated cow consumption
rate, or CCR, up to 40 % as well. So explain
that to the listener. Why does the distinction
between DPR and CCR matter so much when you are
standing in the barn with an AI gun? Well, DPR
essentially measures how quickly a cow gets pregnant.
after her voluntary waiting period. But it was
inadvertently rewarding cows that might miss
a conception, come back into heat very quickly,
and try again. Oh, so it was rewarding the speed
of cycling, not necessarily a successful pregnancy
on the first try. Exactly. It rewarded fast cycling.
By elevating CCR, the index stopped rewarding
bulls whose daughters just cycled fast and started
explicitly rewarding actual first -service conception.
It's the difference between a cow who gets bred
three times in 60 days versus a cow who gets
bread once on day 40 and actually sticks. And
which one does the farmer want? The one who sticks
the first time, obviously. Every missed heat,
every extra straw semen, every extra vet check
eats directly into the profit margin. Precisely.
So any 2020 bull whose genomic PPI looked amazing
just because it was propped up by extreme DPR,
but lacked the underlying cow conception rate
to actually hold the pregnancy. Well, he took
a massive hit in 2024. Wow. So to tie those three
shifts together. The baseline got universally
harder, big feed -hungry cows got heavily penalized,
and sloppy multi -service fertility got punished.
That is the perfect summary. And look, you don't
control any of these base changes as a dairy
farmer. Right, you're at the mercy of the association.
But understanding the mechanisms behind them
is the only way you prevent yourself from throwing
out a perfectly profitable bull just because
his TPI number adjusted to a new reality. That
makes so much sense. So now that we know how
the yardstick moved, let's look at the bulls
that played this new game perfectly and the ones
that crashed entirely. We have to start with
the absolute outlier of this entire data set.
We do. A bull that didn't just survive the gauntlet,
but seemingly predicted the future of dairy economics.
We need to talk about Genasaur's captain. Captain
is the defining bull of this era. I mean, hands
down. Born on New Year's Day 2019 out in Iowa.
Yep. He's a troll by saber. And for those analyzing
the pedigree, what does that mean? It means he
inherited a massive production engine from his
sire line, but he was grounded by moderate, efficient
physical traits on his maternal side. So he had
the perfect balance. Exactly. Even early on,
Tim Rowan from Genisource flagged him as a long
-term deal. They knew they had something special.
He debuted in April 2020 at 3 ,059 GDPI. And
remember, the base change in formula shifts caused
the average surviving bull to drop over 42 points.
Most of his peers plummeted. But Captain, by
December 2025, Captain gained 369 TPI points,
hitting 3428 TPI. It's unheard of. And this isn't
based on a small sample size. His proof is pulling
from over 12 ,000 daughters in nearly 800 herds.
With a milk reliability sitting at a flawless
99%. 99%. So we know exactly what a Captain daughter
looks like in the bulk tank. We do. They average
32 ,542 pounds of milk. plus 123 pounds of fat,
and plus 64 pounds of protein. That is insane
production. The CEO of ST Genetics publicly stated
he is the best bull the breed has ever seen.
And looking at the specific proof file, the math
absolutely backs up the hyperbole. But how? How
did he defy the gravity that pulled down 59 %
of his cohort? If the yardstick moves so drastically
against his peers, How did he gain almost 400
points? Because he was naturally built for the
updates before they even happened. He was ahead
of his time. Totally. His profile was intensely
heavy on components. He threw incredibly efficient,
moderate frames that scored perfectly on the
2021 feed -saved update. Right. So his daughters
weren't wasting energy maintaining massive body
weights. Exactly. And furthermore, his fertility
metrics held rock solid under the 2024 CCR rewrite.
He was the absolute prototype for the economic
reality of 2025, but he was born in 2019. Now,
even Captain has nuances to manage, right? We
have to be fair. Oh, for sure. Readers note he
needs to be protected on somatic cell count,
and you have to watch his overall conformation,
specifically strength, foot angle, and teat length.
So he's not flawless physically. No, but the
sheer production engine underneath that frame
is unprecedented at a 99 % reliability level.
So let's translate those index points into actual
revenue for a farm. Because overperformed is
a nice concept, but here's where it gets really
interesting. Yeah. What does it mean for the
milk check? Let's do the exact math. I love this
part. Go for it. On the December 2025 proof,
Captain's predicted transmitting ability stands
at plus 67 pounds of protein and plus 120 pounds
of fat per lactation. Okay. And the average bull.
The average bull in this 401 bull cohort sits
at plus 29 pounds of protein and plus 64 .9 pounds
of fat. So subtracting the average from Captain
gives him an edge of roughly 38 extra pounds
of protein and 55 extra pounds of fat per daughter
per lactation. Right. Compared to an average
bull from his exact same class. So the bull vine.
Use the January 2025 U .S. Federal Milk Marketing
Order Class 3 component prices for this calculation.
And at $2 .33 per pound of protein and $2 .95
per pound of butterfat. That component gap works
out to roughly $250 extra per cow per year in
raw component revenue. $250 extra per cow every
single year. Exactly. And scaling that up to
a commercial level is where the stakes become
truly apparent for your operation. Right. Let's
look at a big free stall herd. Say you run a
1 ,000 cow operation and you used Captain to
sire half of your replacements. Once those 500
daughters are in full production, you are looking
at $125 ,000 in extra component revenue every
single year. Which compared to using an average
bull. Yes. That $125 ,000 extra annually is not
a rounding error. That is the difference between
making your principal loan payments comfortably
and sweating bullets every time feed costs spike.
It changes the entire financial trajectory of
a farm. It really does. But to truly understand
the impact of sire selection, we have to look
at the opposite end of the spectrum. The foil
to captain. Ah, yes. A .O. homecoming. Homecoming.
The ultimate. cautionary tale of this five -year
window. He really is. He was heavily marketed
right alongside Captain in that 2020 window.
People were incredibly excited about him. But
while Captain gained 369 points, Homecoming crashed
spectacularly. It was brutal. He lost 414 TPI
points. 414 points. No. His proven PTAs landed
at a dismal minus five pounds of protein and
just plus six pounds of fat. So comparing homecoming
directly to cavity is just brutal. A homecoming
daughter is giving you 72 pounds less protein
and 114 pounds less fat per lactation. And if
you run the same component prices on that deficit,
a homecoming daughter brings in roughly $500
less per cow per year than a captain daughter.
$500 less per cow. Per year. Yes. And over a
typical three lactation lifespan, that is $1
,500 of lost revenue per animal. On a herd of
any significant size, that is a catastrophic
loss of potential capital. Absolutely catastrophic.
And here's the kicker. Both of these bulls were
available in semen catalogs at the exact same
time. Yep, sitting right next to each other on
the page. The semen price gap between a straw
of captain and a straw of homecoming wasn't $500.
A farmer could have picked either one for roughly
the same upfront investment. But the long -term
revenue gap on your milk check is staggering.
It highlights the immense risk of genomic selection.
But homecoming wasn't the only casualty, right?
If we look at the anatomy of a genomic crash,
a very clear repeating pattern emerges in the
data. It does. We have to name the specific bulls
to understand the failure here. Besides homecoming
losing 414 points, we saw Supercharge lose 396
points. Wow. What happened to him? Well, his
type score just collapsed by 2 .32 points. It
fell from a positive 1 .18 down to a negative
1 .14. Yeah. Then Tycoon lost 352 points, largely
driven by severe yield underperformance. And
Shine dropped 327 points because his fertility
and health traits completely eroded away under
commercial conditions. OK, so when you dissect
the pedigrees of these massive crashes, what
is the underlying structural flaw? Why do some
bulls plummet while others hold steady? The shared
architecture of these failures is almost identical.
It's heavily overpredicted type, stacked on top
of weak or incredibly shallow functional traits.
So they looked pretty, but couldn't function.
Exactly. In this specific data set, sire lines
heavy on legacy and heroic on the top side of
the pedigree, combined with delta on the maternal
side, were heavily overrepresented in the severe
crashes. So supercharge is the textbook example
of this phenomenon, right? Textbook. His early
genomic type score was popped up by a stack of
fashionable type sires. He looked spectacular
on a spreadsheet. But what actually happens to
a high PTAC cow with poor health traits when
she hits a commercial freestyle? Well, she might
look great as a fresh two -year -old. You'll
walk out to the barn and think, wow, what a beautiful
heifer. But by her third lactation, the physical
reality catches up. Right. Her joints wear down
on the concrete. Her utter attachments stretch
because she doesn't have the underlying strength
to support the volume. And her somatic cell counts
spikes. And then what? When those daughters calve
in and hit real commercial parlors, their physical
structure simply cannot hold up to the rigors
of modern dairy farming. And the index violently
corrects itself as the culling data rolls in.
Because they just... Don't survive. Exactly.
They get called. So the disappointment for a
breeder isn't just a red arrow on a proof sheet.
It's standing in your parlor looking at cows
that physically cannot do the job they were bred
to do. Which is the worst feeling as a farmer.
It really is. And this reality leads us directly
into dissecting one of the most pervasive, stubbornly
held myths in the dairy industry. Oh, I know
where you're going with this. Yep. The concept
of proof deflation. The classic coffee shop myth.
Explain it for us. Okay, so the assumption is
that once a bull goes mainstream, his proof will
inevitably crash. The logic goes that early daughters
are born into elite, pampered environments where
they are aggressively managed for maximum performance.
Right, they get the best feed, the best care.
Exactly. So the theory says once the bull is
sold to the masses and the daughters are subjected
to average management and crowded commercial
herds, the numbers will just plummet. It sounds
entirely logical. I mean, you hear that in barns
all the time. You do. But the bull vine data
set completely dismantles it. I love this part.
The data proves the exact opposite is true. It
really does. When they grouped the 165 proven
bulls by how many daughters they had in December
2025, the bulls with under 500 daughters lost
an average of 81 .8 TPI points. Wait, the bulls
with the least daughters crashed the hardest?
Yes. Less than 30 % of them saw their TPI go
up. But conversely, look at the heavy hitters.
Bulls with over 5 ,000 daughters in their proof
didn't crash at all. No, they didn't. They gained
an average of 62 .3 TPI points. Two -thirds of
those high -volume bulls saw their scores climb,
not fall. It's incredible. The more a bull was
used, the better he got. That completely shatters
the coffee shop logic. Yeah. How does the data
explain this? It comes down to survivorship bias
and the basic mechanics of semen distribution.
Think about it. If a bull reaches 5 ,000 or 10
,000 daughters, it means commercial farmers liked
the first crop of calves enough to keep buying
the semen. Ah, right. It's repeat business. Exactly.
And more importantly, those daughters are surviving
and thriving across hundreds of different varied
management styles. The cream rises to the top
precisely because they can handle the pressure.
So the environment isn't dragging them down.
They're proving they can handle any environment.
Exactly. Look at Larkrest captivating. He hit
14 ,000 daughters. Sandy Valliar Conway hit 12
,000 daughters and he actually gained 22 points.
And then we have the ultimate volume winner.
The bull that completely caught the industry
by surprise. Oh, man. Seymour's ran again. Perfect.
Perfect. In April 2020, he was sitting down at
number 150 on the genomic TPI list with 2980
GTPI. Which was a solid score, but he wasn't
headlining any catalogs. Right. He was incredibly
easy to skim past. Yeah. But by December 2025,
Parfect had accumulated 19 ,079 daughters. Let
the sheer scale of that number sink in for a
second. 19 ,000 daughters spread across 2 ,627
different herds. That is the highest daughter
count of any single bull in this entire 401 bull
data set. It's massive. And his TPI didn't drop
under the weight of all his commercial herds.
It climbed. You gain 144 points, jumping to 3124
TPI. But you know what the most staggering statistic
about Parfitt is? The type data. Yes, his physical
confirmation data. Out of the 165 bulls that
actually got a proof, he was the only bull whose
PTAT went up. The only one. His type went from
plus 1 .80 genomic to plus 1 .88 proven. That
is unbelievable. What's his pedigree? He's a
renegade by Delta Lambda by Denver, and he traces
back to the legendary Seymour's Elmda Paris cow
family. The logistics of his impact are immense,
too. He sold roughly 450 ,000 units of semen
worldwide. And he's still an allocated bull today.
Because global demand drastically outpaces how
much semen he can physically produce. You talk
to producers running massive freestyle setups,
and they call Parfitt a generational talent.
Oh, absolutely. He's throwing well -balanced
positive milk, strong component cows with bulletproof
udders and rumps that simply do not break down.
The core lesson of the Parfitt story is that
past a certain point, volume is truth. I love
that phrase. Volume is truth. When 19 ,000 daughters
across 2 ,600 herds are all telling the exact
same story, you are way past this small sample
size excuse. The proof is undeniable. So if you
are analyzing your own sire list right now, the
question you have to ask yourself is, are you
ignoring these volume metrics in favor of chasing
the shiny new genomic toy with zero daughters?
Right, because a bull with 10 ,000 daughters
is offering guaranteed profitability based on
ironclad data, while a virgin young sire is still
a 59 % gamble. Exactly. It's a massive calculation
of risk. And that risk is something the AI studs
themselves had to aggressively navigate over
this exact same five -year window. Yeah, because
these bulls don't exist in a vacuum, right? They
are bred, acquired, and marketed by massive corporate
breeding companies. So by analyzing how the different
AI companies performed over this window, we can
clearly see which corporate breeding programs
were anticipating the future and which ones were
stuck peddling the past. This part of the analysis
is really revealing. It is. The undeniable winner
in this retrospective was ST Genetics. Undeniable.
They were the only major stud whose retained
bulls actually gained TPI points on average.
Their entire lineup went up an average of plus
21 .8 points. Which is crazy when you remember
the cohort average was minus 42. Right. Now Captain
was obviously the massive anchor pulling that
average up, along with his clone brothers Jack
and John. But it wasn't just a Captain anomaly.
No. Bulls like Holden gained 111 points. Jarvis
gained 76 points. So what exactly was ST Genetics
doing differently behind the scenes to win this
five -year window so decisively? Well, they won
because their overarching corporate strategy
was obsessively targeting feed conversion and
solids long before the TPI formula officially
rewarded them. They were playing the long game.
They really were. Through their chromosomal mating
and their proprietary ecofeed programs, they
were literally measuring the dry matter intake
of individual animals, and they were breeding
for the 2025 milk check way back in 2018. Wow.
So when the TPI formula finally updated in 2021
to penalize big hungry cows, and reward -efficient
ones, ST's lineup was already genetically positioned
to dominate the new math. They anticipated the
market shift perfectly. Okay, so that's ST Genetics.
Let's look at the middle of the pack. Peak represented
what we could call the safe center. Yeah, safe
and steady. They had the highest retention rate
of any major stud. They successfully proved 52
.8 % of their bulls from this elite list. And
their average TPI drop was only minus 36, which
is notably better than the cohort average of
minus 42 .5. Right. So Peak didn't have the 300
-point moonshots like Captain, but they also
avoided the catastrophic 300 -point crashes.
They leaned heavily into predictable balance
genetics. Bulls like Zillion and Alta Zazale.
And honestly... For a commercial farmer whose
primary goal is risk mitigation, peak strategy
is exactly what lets you sleep well at night.
Right. You know what you're getting, and the
genetic base isn't going to pull the rug out
from under your operation. Exactly. Then you
have slick sires. They operated with what looks
like a barbell strategy, high ceiling, deep floor.
Yeah, it was a wild ride for them. They retained
40 .6 % of their bulls, but they had an incredibly
widespread. They had 16 bulls that gained points,
including... massive successes like Payload,
Crusher, and Game Day. But on the flip side,
they also own four of the six worst crashes in
the entire analysis. Including Homecoming and
Supercharge. Yep. So if a farmer spread their
matings across the entire Select Sires lineup,
they likely performed just fine as the massive
winners balanced out the catastrophic losers.
However, if a farmer concentrated all their bets
on a couple of high PTAT pedigrees from Select
that later deflated, December 2025 was a brutally
painful proof run to evaluate. Extremely painful.
Finally, we have to look at the stud that had
the roughest ride in this specific 2020 look
back, ABS Global. Yeah, the numbers here are
tough. They started with the highest number of
bulls on the 2020 elite list, but ended up with
the lowest retention rate, just 39 .3%. And their
retained bulls suffered the steepest average
decline among the majors, dropping minus 70 .6
TPI points. So if ABS dropped that steeply, it
tells me they were overly exposed to the old
rules. Were they banking too hard on the old
metrics? Precisely. They were heavily exposed
to the outdated index. Many of their high -profile
young sires in 2020 were built on extreme daughter
pregnancy rate and high milk large frame daughters.
And as we discussed, when the industry pivoted
to prioritize feed efficiency and cow conception
rate, those specific profiles became economically
obsolete incredibly fast. Exactly. The sheer
volume of heroic and prince sons that fell off
the map just pulled their entire tile stud average
down. Now, it is absolutely worth noting that
ABS hasn't just sat on their hands. They've aggressively
adjusted their acquisition strategy, recently
introducing 36 new Holstein graduates to realign
with the new TPI standards. Yeah, they are correcting
course. But their trajectory perfectly illustrates
how quickly a stud's portfolio can depreciate
if the mathematical formula changes direction.
It really does. So look, all of this history,
the complex math of the base changes, the deep
dive into the corporate strategies, it all has
to synthesize into something. actionable. We
have to turn this historical analysis into a
concrete, executable strategy for the farm today.
Exactly. So what does this all mean? If a farmer
is listening to this right now, walking out of
the parlor and looking at their semen inventory
for next month's breeding, what are the immediate
rules of thumb they need to apply to protect
their milk check? Let's break this down into
a five -point action plan. Okay, hit me. Number
one, audit your reliability stack within the
next 30 days. So what does that look like practically?
Print your current sire list and rigorously cross
-reference every bull's reliability percentage
against the current proofs. Treat any bull with
under 70 % reliability as a raw, genomic young
sire. Period. Even if he technically has a handful
of daughters milking in one or two herds. Yes.
65 % reliability is not a sure thing. It is a
mathematical gamble. Identify your bulls with
over 90 % reliability. Those are your shock absorbers.
You need a rock -solid foundation of 90 -plus
reliability to protect your herd from the 59
% attrition rate we saw in the young sires. Exactly,
which perfectly leads into point number two.
Balance your proven versus genomic usage intentionally.
Do not let this split happen by accident or based
on whichever semen rep happens to visit the farm
that week. Right. You have to take control of
it. For a commercial Holstein herd focused on
profitability, the pragmatic split is aiming
for 50 to 70 % of your meetings on those high
reliability proven sires that deliver proven
solids and efficiency. Let them pay the bills
and build the foundation. Right. Then allocate
the remaining 30 to 50 % on genomic young sires.
But crucially, spread that genomic risk across
four to six entirely different sire lines. Right.
Diversify. Do not put all your genomic eggs in
one pedigree basket. Because if one line crashes
like homecoming, the others buffer the loss.
Precisely. Okay, point three is something breeders
often ignore until they are culling a three -year
-old cow. Run a type fragility check. This is
so important. We saw exactly what happened with
the massive crashes like Supercharge and Shine.
They weren't derailed because they lacked fluid
milk. No, they were derailed because they featured
overpredicted type combined with inherently weak
health and fertility traits. Right. Exactly.
So before you load up your tank with the next
PTAT rocket, you know, a bull boasting a massive
plus 3 .5 type score, you have to dig into his
pedigree. Look at his sire's history. Scrutinize
his maternal grandsire. Evaluate his health and
fertility stack. Right. If his pedigree is all
glitz and glamour with no actual biological ballast,
do not use him across your commercial free stall
herd. Save him for your flesh cows, your donors,
or your show string. Because building a commercial
milking string out of biologically fragile animals
is financial suicide. It really is. Now, point
four dictates how we interpret data. Treat daughter
and herd counts as rigid filters. not fine print.
This goes back to the coffee shop myth, right?
Yep. Returning to that, a bull with 300 daughters
and 20 herds is still fundamentally on trial.
The data is vulnerable to management bias. But
a bull with 2 ,000 or 10 ,000 daughters spread
across hundreds of herds is telling you the absolute,
unvarnished truth about who he is. Exactly. When
you are selecting sires, filter by the number
of herds. Make that a mandatory, non -negotiable
part of your selection criteria. I love that.
And finally, point five. Align with solids and
efficiency economics. Because at the end of the
day, it's about the milk check. Fat and protein
are what drive the global dairy economy right
now. Fluid volume is nice for bragging rights,
but solids pay the mortgage. They really do.
You need to focus intensely on feed efficiency
dollars and net merit. Pick sires that put more
pounds of combined fat and protein into the bulk
tank without requiring a disproportionate increase
in dry matter intake. Because the TPI formula
is finally rewarding these cows, and your milk
processor has been paying premiums for them for
years. So to bring this entirely into focus,
genomics isn't broken. It remains the absolute
sharpest tool in the breeding shed. But index
volatility is a reality you have to actively
manage. You essentially have to act like an investment
manager. You blend the proven blue -chip stability
of high -daughter bulls like Parfict and Captain
with the high -risk, high -reward venture capital
upside of young genomic sires. That is the perfect
analogy. And you know, the broader implications
of this analysis raise a fascinating, almost
unsettling thought about the future of dairy
genetics. Ooh, okay. What are you thinking? We've
spent this time dissecting how human -made formulas
like the base change and the TPI updates periodically
adjust to correct past errors in how we value
a cow. We execute this clunky manual process
every five years or whenever a committee decides
it's necessary. It's incredibly reactive. We
wait for the problem to become undeniable and
then we forcefully adjust the math to catch up
to reality. Right. But look at the trajectory
of technology. As AI and machine learning increasingly
infiltrate genetic evaluations over the next
decade, what happens when the five -year base
change becomes entirely obsolete? Wait, you mean
like a constant evaluation? Yes. Imagine a scenario
where traits are automatically reweighted by
an AI based on global milk market futures, feed
costs, and climate data. Not every five years,
but continuously. Oh, wow. So if the butterfat
market spikes in Asia on a Tuesday? and corn
prices surge on a Wednesday, your bull's index
automatically adjusts on Thursday to reflect
the real -time economic reality of what it costs
to feed a cow versus what her milk is worth.
Exactly. The yardstick would never stop moving.
That is wild to think about. If the index is
constantly adjusting in real time, how do you
breed a cow? Do you chase the daily algorithm,
constantly pivoting your semen purchases based
on micro fluctuations in the market? Or do you
anchor yourself to the fundamental, unchanging
biology of a healthy, moderate, efficient cow
that can survive any economic weather? That is
the ultimate question to mull over next time
you're standing in the parlor. It really is.
Well, thank you for joining us on this deep dive.
Do yourself a favor tonight. Pull out your old
semen invoices from 2020 and 2021. Match them
up against your current December 2025 proof file.
See how many of those genomic bets actually paid
off and how many vanished before they ever hit
the tank. It's going to be an eye -opening exercise
for a lot of people. We'll see you next time.