Great bulls are as rare as hockey's 'Great One'

KEMPTVILLE — The scouts for bull-breeding units say finding a bull that makes the grade is much like finding an NHL hockey player . A dairy bull has one chance in 1,000 of making the artificial insemination unit and one chance estimated in the millions of making super bull status.

"Genetics is not an exact science," says Marcel Chouinard, a former sire analyst with CIAQ, Quebec’s artificial insemination unit. You take your chances.

Chouinard, part of a round table discussion of Canadian bull facility managers at Eastern Breeders Inc., pointed out that it requires four-and-a-half years before the first proof comes back, before you find out if the bull is good enough. In between then and the time he was drafted, all kinds of problems might have developed, from lameness to deteriorating health and low fertility.

But what draws the buyers are the cows. And these are not necessarily the farmer’s favourites, says Andy Ness, herd manager at Westgen in British Columbia.

Before a sire analyst comes to your farm, he will have fine-combed six months of computerized statistics on the young heifers in the barn, everything from the classification scores to the somatic cell counts. He knows the particular cows he wants to see before he comes to the barn.

"A farmer will bring out his Maxville show cow," Chouinard says. "She’s a beauty queen. But maybe she has a low test for protein and won’t make a brood cow. Sometimes another cow in the herd is the mother" of the potential star.

For a bull to make the super star or the "million dose club list", everything has to come together — markets, popularity and longevity, says Ron Stewart, herd and facility manger at Kemptville’s Eastern Breeders Inc. (EBI), a semen-selling farmers’ co-operative. Only eight bulls have ever made the million dose list in Canada, with the last one being Stouder Morty, a Semex Bull at Eastern Breeders.

Ness said Westgen acquired Aerostar, the great Arnprior bull, in 1986 but only began to sell her semen in 1990. Until the proof came back, there was no way to tell that she was going to be a star.

Unlike some rogue bulls, Aerostar, he says, had "a rare, nice disposition" and like all the superstars had great strength and endurance. He produced three ejaculations three times per week and over a lifetime of mounting lifted the equivalent of a 20-car train of coal.

His lifetime was marred by only one accident that occurred while he was young and in group housing. "He split his jaw," says Ness. "His whole jaw was hanging down. The vet drove three stainless steel pins in his jaws and three weeks later he was all right. He never missed a feeding."

The group meeting at Kemptville included representatives from Semex, Gencor, EBI, Westgen and CIAQ, a Quebec artifical insemination unit. The group was together for three days to refine the "quality management system" for animal care in AI units and included advice on upgrading facilities along with the impact of new barn facilities on the bulls. In addition to recommending research projects, the group has drawn up guidelines on the care of young sires while they are still in a farmer’s barn.

Currently, CIAQ has 830 bulls and Semex Alliance 2,200 bulls world-wide. About 1,800 of those bulls reside in Canada.