
INTERBULL Helps U.S. Cows Meet World's Best BullsBy Hank Becker February
25, 1998America's most productive dairy cows can be bred to the world's best bulls,
thanks to information that U.S. scientists supply to an international
bull-rating service.
INTERBULL, the International
Bull Evaluation Service headquartered in Uppsala, Sweden, is like a consumer
report that objectively rates bulls worldwide, based on an extensive list of
important quality standards. American bull semen continually ranks high on INTERBULL evaluations, and the
United States is the world's leading exporter of dairy bull semen, with sales
exceeding $60 million a year. To help the U.S. stay competitive, Agricultural
Research Service scientists evaluate about 128,000 U.S. bulls from data
collected from more than 20 million of the animals' daughters by the National
Dairy Herd Improvement Association. Each year, the scientists process and
evaluate millions of new records from these female offspring that indicate
important traits such as milk production and composition. The researchers forward their results to INTERBULL. Twice each year,
INTERBULL evaluates bulls that have been properly tested in different
countries--currently 22 and growing. Among INTERBULL's long-term aims are improving milk yield and quality and
increasing resistance to diseases like mastitis, while protecting genetic
diversity. But its short-term goal is to rank the bulls, enabling dairy farmers
and breeders to select the world's best bulls to sire daughters based on
objective criteria A story about INTERBULL appears in the February 1998 issue of ARS'
Agricultural Research magazine. The story is also on the World Wide Web
at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/feb98/bull0298.htm
Scientific contact: Rex L. Powell, ARS
Animal Improvement Programs Laboratory,
Beltsville, Md., phone (301) 504-8334, fax (301) 504-8092, [email protected] . U.S. Department of Agriculture | |