With profitability top of mind, are producers looking more at the genetic rankings for dollar values today?
I believe they are, Bill. Profitability certainly has never been more important than it is today. One of the helpful pieces of information are the selection indexes provided by USDA. The USDA provides indexes are called net-merit dollars, fluid-merit dollars, and cheese-merit dollars, and these values are intended to help farmers focus in on those sire-summary traits that will help improve profitability the most. So, what are some of these changes to the formulas? These formulas were revised with the August 2003 genetic evaluations. What USDA did was add in the information for some reproduction traits to these formulas. The traits that were added were PTAs for daughter pregnancy rates and the calving-ease genetic evaluation. We have discussed the genetic evaluations for these traits in earlier Reproductive Moments segments, and they are useful traits to use in your sire-selection program. Now, these traits have been added to USDA merit formula, and these traits certainly are of great i
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