genex pregcheck

[bpwagner115]

Just got an email introducing genex's new fertility ranking system. Always heard various sires freeze better than others...would be a great tool if it proves reliable. Here is a link....
http://genex.crinet.com/page6095/PregCheck

 

[shortybreeder]

Well, for what it's worth, we had 2 heifers that we bred 5 times to different bulls and they finally stuck on Thunder... I believe he's got a 103 pregcheck rating?

 

[bpwagner115]

Yep, I was happy to see Upgrade at 106.....we bred 30 cows to him for this spring. Genex says every number difference indicates a percentage higher in conception. That is an 11% swing between NLC Upgrade at 106 and KG Solution at 95. That makes a difference in my sire choice, personally. Here is a table of sires that have been released. First number is pregcheck value, second is the reliability. Sorry about the formatting

PR REL
Thunder 103 92
Bismarck 100 89
Imprint 103 79
Long Distance 100 76
Walker 104 94
Irish 99 78
In Sure 96 72
Priority 100 70
Excitement 97 77
Angus Valley 96 75
Effective 100 86
Full Power 100 79
Dillon 96 89
Solution 95 84
Gold Rush 98 95
Vanguard 102 73
Lucky Dice 102 86
Tuition 105 82
Upgrade 106 96
Graduate 100 90
Top Grade 105 89

 

[cow pollinater]

Until you see reliability in the 70% range it's a junk number and quite a few of the bulls that fit into commercial herds won't ever get there because commercial guys won't report the results the way registered customers will. When you add in that bulls will vary from collection to collection it leads me to believe that this is nothing but a sales tool and tools are easy to manipulate.
I don't mean to sound jaded. I'm all for promoting fertility and being honest when it's not there but I've seen some neat tricks in marketing semen and this looks like one to me.

 

[bpwagner115]

Until you see reliability in the 70% range it's a junk number and quite a few of the bulls that fit into commercial herds won't ever get there because commercial guys won't report the results the way registered customers will. When you add in that bulls will vary from collection to collection it leads me to believe that this is nothing but a sales tool and tools are easy to manipulate.
I don't mean to sound jaded. I'm all for promoting fertility and being honest when it's not there but I've seen some neat tricks in marketing semen and this looks like one to me.

Is it a "trick" in the dairy industry? They have been using fertility rankings for the last 10 years (atleast) and the major studs i looked at all currently offer fertility rankings on their dairy bulls. (Genex, ABS, Accelerated, and Select Sires)

 

[cow pollinater]

Until you see reliability in the 70% range it's a junk number and quite a few of the bulls that fit into commercial herds won't ever get there because commercial guys won't report the results the way registered customers will. When you add in that bulls will vary from collection to collection it leads me to believe that this is nothing but a sales tool and tools are easy to manipulate.
I don't mean to sound jaded. I'm all for promoting fertility and being honest when it's not there but I've seen some neat tricks in marketing semen and this looks like one to me.

Is it a "trick" in the dairy industry? They have been using fertility rankings for the last 10 years (atleast) and the major studs i looked at all currently offer fertility rankings on their dairy bulls. (Genex, ABS, Accelerated, and Select Sires)

Dairy is a whole different ball game. Every sire gets proven through the young sire sampling program and part of that program is a waiver so that the companies can collect data from every herd that the sire goes into. Plus the herds don't get to pick which bulls they purchase so it eliminates bias in how the bulls are used which is a major problem in beef herds.It's still a crapshoot until the bull has a bunch of recorded breedings but that's the point of the young sire program is to figure out who's doing what before the bull gets marketed. Even after the bull is proven there is still variation between collections so it's still not a good selection tool unless you have a real standout.