Welcome to The Select Sires Podcast talking Your Success, Our Passion, starting in 3-2-1.
Ethan Haywood
Hello and welcome to The Select Sires Podcast. We have a multi-part segment for you today, so stay tuned as we talk cow families, some exciting new bull releases and some successes that have been had on the colored shavings over the past couple weeks. With us for section one today to talk about our Showcase™ lineup is Senior Holstein Sire Analyst, Kevin Jorgensen. Kevin, thanks for joining us today.
Kevin Jorgensen
Glad to be here, Ethan. It's a pleasure.
Ethan Haywood
I think the Golden Age was such an awesome theme for this Expo, and I really felt like with the barns being that full, the show ring being that full, the tents being that full, and just the quality of cattle that was there was absolutely outstanding. And as we were going through our lists on which bulls to talk about, it's huge. We had to trim it down just because there's so many diverse genetics out there that are being successful for us and for a lot of producers, which is pretty cool.
Kevin Jorgenson
Absolutely. The quality is so deep from first to thirtieth, first to fortieth. A lot of those cattle have won at state and regional and other national shows. So I think that's a credit to the breeders. I think it's a credit to the people that participate in showing cattle that it really has become a 365 day endeavor. These people put so much time, so much effort, so many miles. Just speaking for myself, just the amount of miles that I've walked heifers the last six weeks it's a sixty mile drive back and forth to where my cattle live and just trying to put that time and effort in. That isn't just an individual endeavor it is everybody on that fairgrounds put so much time and effort into what we're doing and to me that's a credit to those breeders and exhibitors how much they love this, how much passion they have for it. And then when you see it come to fruition out in the ring, just nothing short of amazing to see how deep the water truly is and how good the quality is.
Ethan Haywood
What do you see out there in the barns, in the show ring, and of all these thousands of really nice cattle that just didn't quite make the cut to go to Expo as far as trends in different breeds?
Kevin Jorgensen
This movement towards balance, I think, has really become very, very evident, whether it's in the ring, whether it's on farm. I think people are truly trying to find that type of heifer, that type of cow, regardless of breed, that has a modern look to her, and when I say modern, I mean that she has tremendous style. She's got dairy strength. She's not too big. She moves freely on her feet and legs. Their udders have not just great width and height or shape to the udders. It's the texture of the udders. It's quality of bone. It's all of those distinct qualities that breeders across the globe are looking for. The extremes were maybe more in vogue a decade, two decades ago.
Ethan Haywood
So obviously those tendencies to push for the extremes have changed, but there are also other big changes on the farm side that influence the type of cattle that we are seeing in the ring.
Kevin Jorgensen
All our facilities have adapted and evolved, the cow that comes to the show is great, but she's got to be able to live in a real-world environment when she gets back home. And I think it's a credit again, and we've tried to adapt to those changes over the past decade and try to find that we talk crossover all the time. That crossover is they need to be able to work, and adapt and be in any environment and be successful. And so many of those cows that were out there, they might live in a special cow facility on a big dairy, but they're living in, a lot of them live in a freestall. A lot of them live in more real-world conditions.
Ethan Haywood
All great points, Kevin and as a genetics company, we are focusing on those crossover sires to create crossover females. Farmers need cows that can generate profits on and off the farm. One of my favorite parts of Expo is the industry dialogue that you get to hear, those genuine conversations that you get to have with breeders in the barn or by the showring. Can you share a summary of those chats that you had this past week?
Kevin Jorgensen
I had several conversations with people in the barns this last week about particular bulls that maybe never made it back to the proven status. A bull like 7HO13778 APPLE-CRISP, a bull that had a very, very successful career as a GForce™ Showcase sire, never quite had the data to come back and be a proven graduate. Yet, he has had such tremendous success for a lot of breeders across the globe. I get questions about him all the time. Our reserve supreme champion and grand champion of the red & white show was sired by APPLE-CRISP. So he's made those. He had another top ten finisher in the black show. Another bull like 250HO15236 MYSTIC CRUSH or even 7HO15210 JOURNEY-RED. He was the intermediate champion in the red show and was a bull that had two class winners and had a huge day. That's a bull that when I look at all of this and think of that, or even 7HO15601 RON BURGUNDY-RED and 7HO12512 DERBY and 7HO14734 HANDSOME and lots of bulls that we've had in the Showcase lineup previously, whether they make proven status or not, really what matters to us most is did you get a good result in the barn when you used semen from the Showcase program? Did you get a return on the investment? Are you a happy customer that you used a bull that gave you great results? And to me, that's more defining of this program than we've got a lot of great results to share from the show. But at the end of the day, what we've got to be able to create are bulls that create cows that can live in any environment, that whether they graduate back or not, that they made cows that are some of your favorites. And just even individually, probably the best cow that my cattle partner and I have ever bred is an APPLE-CRISP daughter that's 94 points, and she's one of our favorites. And he never graduated. Doesn't matter because she's a great cow, and we've had several others that had great success.
Ethan Haywood
And there’s another side to this discussion on young sires and graduation status. Our industry is experiencing changes and as we market sires around the world, that is a factor in the program’s direction.
Kevin Jorgensen
That's the cream of the crop that goes into a proven lineup. And then as our percentage globally just continues to rise in terms of how many people are using GForce sires, Showcase GForce sires. And I've had conversations at shows this summer of even the proven bulls we do have, a bull like 7HO15325 HANANS, that they love their daughters, but they'll talk about, well, I want to use this bull that I saw that you just brought in from that family that's a newer version of that. So I like them, but I'm going to use the next one because, boy, I sure like what I see in these younger bulls. So that's just sort of an evolution. Back in the day, it was that you needed them to become a proven sire, or back in the proven lineup, I should say, they'll all be proven sires. But to me, I want success for the people that use our product, and that's something that's been really gratifying to see. Some of these bulls that maybe got off people's radar screens, but yet they make a lot of exciting cows and including, the 250HO13736 HARDROCK daughter that was grand champion of the Holstein show. HARDROCK was a bull that had a nice career and actually did come back to the proven lineup for a period of time. And not many people would think of a grand champion by a 7HO12600 MODESTY son, but his Stantons Capital Gain mother is a high scoring cow and the next dam is the 94 point sister to Cookiecutter Mog Hanker-ET (EX-94-2E-EX-MS-GMD-DOM), Cookiecutter Mogul Handy-ET (EX-94-2E-EX-MS-DOM). So it's back to the same cow family. He has all the H bulls that we have in our lineup. And, those are the, so even a bull like that, that has made a lot of really nice cows. He's a high production bull. He's good on type. Those are bulls that maybe didn't have extended careers like 250HO12961 DOC, but by the same token, they've made a lot of happy customers. And at the end of the day, that's more important to me than anything.
Ethan Haywood
Absolutely. The H family, which we'll get into some new releases later on is a good example of modern versions that do well on indexes, but go back to the same, fantastic families that we want to use to, to create good, long-lasting, productive cattle. So with that, let's talk a little bit about what we did see in the ring. Who were some of our favorites? There was a lot to choose from and we had to pick and narrow down the list, but who do you want to start with?
Kevin Jorgensen
Well, like I say, it was such an amazing week from Sunday to Friday afternoon and naming a supreme champion and I just kind of went through and started with the junior Holstein show. And the amazing part to me was, again, as we talk about bulls that have had long careers and done well, a bull like 7HO13839 TATOO was one of my favorites, a bull that, that was one of the early bulls that I had the chance to bring into the program nearly a decade ago. And he continues to do well. He had the grand champion from Oakfield Corners. He had the honorable mention senior champion. He had the intermediate champion for the Ross’ out at Arizona Dairy. So he had an amazing day, and had seven top 10 finishes. He had a huge day. 7HO14477 WARRIOR-RED had a big day. 7HO16104 EYE CANDY had a very, very nice day in the junior show. So we talked earlier about lots of different bulls. There were 12 different bulls from our lineup that had top 10 finishers, and I just went through all the top 10, the ones that got a ribbon at Madison and how they fared. And in that respect, we have 34 top 10 finishers in the junior show sired by 12 different sires. And so, WARRIOR-RED, EYE CANDY, TATOO, 250HO16115 PAZZLE, HANANS, DOC, 250HO14579 HANCOCK, 250HO15329 THUNDER STRUCK, 7HO12587 DIAMONDBACK, 7HO13730 UNDENIED, 250HO12589 JACOBY, 7HO12353 BEEMER. So a lot of those bulls that some of them are more recent names, like PAZZLE is starting to make a name for himself, I mean, maybe the next crossover sire. And yet you've got stalwarts like DOC and TATOO that continue to bang them out year after year, and still can compete at the highest level. So that was kind of the start of the week when we were in the junior Holstein show on Sunday. As we move later into the week, the Jersey show, there was, the stalwarts again, I mean, there were 10 different bulls that had top 10 finishers in the Jersey show. 7JE5032 VICTORIOUS had a huge day, obviously with 14 top 10 finishers, several winners. 7JE1088 COLTON, again, a bull that did extremely well, an old stalwart that's just always made really good cows. So in that respect, 10 different bulls from our Jersey lineup that banged right in there through the course of the week. As we moved into Wednesday and we got to the Red & White show, that's where our Red & White program has certainly shined for several years. And it was really exciting that in the first class, one of the top five heifers, she was fourth in the spring calf class, was a 250HO16498 HULU daughter that's Red and, as we move to the H family, putting, emphasis into the Red business now and the Polled just really exciting, but there was, again, we had nine class winners in the Red & White show. WARRIOR-RED was the premier sire in the Red & White heifer show again. And again, 27 different WARRIOR-RED daughters in the top 10. He had multiple class winners, and had just an amazing day. But there were also 11 different bulls from our lineup that did well in the top 10 finish in the Red & White show. Again, as I mentioned, HULU, 7HO15023 ANALYST-RED, DIAMONDBACK, 7HO15427 ROMPEN-RED, JOURNEY-RED, RON BURGUNDY-RED, 7HO12344 RAGER-RED, 7HO14458 ARTISAN-RED, APPLE-CRISP, with Premium Apple Crisp Lilly-Red (EX-94) being grand of that show and reserve supreme champion on Friday afternoon. Still in the production cow classes are 7HO11703 ARMANI daughters that come out and bang right in there. So we just had an amazing, 60 top 10 finishes, actually. WARRIOR-RED had 27 in the top 10. We had 60 top 10 finishers in the Red & White show through those 11 different bulls. So, we were riding pretty high when it came to Wednesday and Thursday. And then the Holstein show, again, the water is so incredibly deep there, but we had 31 top 10 finishers, three class winners. Obviously, as we mentioned, Jeffrey-Way Hard Rock Twigs (EX-94), being the grand champion of the Holstein show and being part of that exciting finish to that show.
Ethan Haywood
And man, if you were in the coliseum on Friday for the cow classes, it was an incredible experience and an electric atmosphere.
Kevin Jorgensen
I don't know if I've ever seen the crowd that geeked up at the end of a show, especially through the production cow classes with Erbacres Snapple Shakira (EX-97-4E-CAN) and Oakfield Solom Footloose-ET (EX-97-2E-EX-MS) going head-to-head. So it was maybe one of the most exciting shows in that respect. But again, 14 different sires from the Showcase or Select Sires lineup that did well throughout the show, TATOO, again, was the clear star for us with 10 top 10 finishers and the winning milking yearling that, incidentally, and I don't want to steal Mike and Tim's thunder when they get to the Showbox side of this, but the winning milking yearling is a full sister to 744HO17043 FLASH in the Showbox lineup. So that was pretty exciting. And then you see in the junior two-year-olds a 7HO15085 PARFECT daughter that's fourth in class and a cow that everybody wanted to talk about. From the beginning of the week on Sunday to the end on Friday afternoon with Jeffrey-Way Hard Rock Twigs being named grand champion, it was certainly an exciting week in every breed. And I still hold out hope that DOC and TATOO someday can, as they continue to make heifers and their lives, especially in DOC, as he's approaching a million units, that that bull will still be in there. They're in the hunt for premier sire every year, but you gotta have everything shine on you very, very well. But I still hold out hope that someday, there'll be a premier sire banner for one of those two bulls at the biggest show in the world.
Ethan Haywood
Yeah, we're hoping for that for sure. And the comment that you made to me when you came out of the barn in Plain City the last time we were down was, “Man, DOC looks good, right?” He just is, for a bull with his age, just the style he carries and is such an awesome bull.
Kevin Jorgensen
Sometimes part of life is luck. And the fact that DOC was able to come along at a unique time, I had just taken over Showcase earlier that year in 2015. And when we picked that bull up, he was a late 7HO12198 KINGBOY son. We discussed him and he was a bull that as we changed the vision of this program to that crossover balance or whatever you want to define it as we talked about earlier, he came along and I mentioned to Chuck Sattler and Rick VerBeek, I'm like, I would really like this bull to be Showcase. And, the rest, I guess you'd say is history, but a bull like that’s had that kind of influence to change the breed to what we now define as crossover is exciting. And by the same token TATOO at the time, I was so excited to have that bull in our program. I had said to Mike Duckett, very early on in my career, 12 years ago, I began in sire acquisition that I really would like a bull out of Vangoh Durham Treasure (EX-96-3E-EX-MS). She was one of my all-time favorites, but maybe one of the best-uddered cows that's walked on planet Earth. And Duckett G Chip Tokyo-ET (EX-93-EX-MS) went to Madison, won the milking yearling class, she had this Crush son. And so, two divergent paths. A bull that was from a well-known cow family in the show ring, and another one that went back to C Glenridge Citation Roxy (EX-97-GMD), but everybody, again, early in his life, people said, I don't want to use a bull from a 7HO11853 Coyne-Farms Srock MACK-ET (VG-88) and a Flevo Genetics Snowman-ET grandam. And yet by the same token, he earned it the hard way and his career continues on. And as you mentioned, when I looked at that bull, on the Friday of proof week and went out and saw him, it's a testament that that bull has done well. And, I think he'll definitely be able to stick around and I hope we move that millionth unit of semen sometime in 2025. But I think for a Showcase bull to sell a million units, we've had 7HO4213 INTEGRITY in the past and some bulls like that. But in this modern era, it's really a testament to have a bull that can be a potential millionaire.
Ethan Haywood
Sometimes when you come out of Expo, it feels like there's a bull that you have to use to be successful in the ring and I think the unique part about this Expo as social media continues to get more and more popular, you know more of the cows and have seen the before pics of more of the cows that are showing up. So you are excited about somebody in every class. And this year, it was somebody sired by somebody different every single time you turned around and it feels like the doors are blown wide open. So your rundown of the show results was awesome because there are so many different sires that are being successful right now. And like you mentioned, we're getting more and more confident with grabbing some of these young bulls and using them on some pretty high-profile cow families to be able to create the next great ones that are very exciting. We've got some new options coming up pretty quick here as well.
Kevin Jorgensen
Absolutely. And, the first bull I'll talk about, I mentioned APPLE-CRISP a minute ago because he's done so well and people respect him. The opportunity for us to bring another bull in from that fork of the family is 7HO17431 Siemers APPLEJAX-ET. A bull that I think is incredibly unique being that he's a 250HO16290 BLAKELY son, and he's our first BLAKELY son. We have some more coming later. Just a very different pedigree being that BLAKELY is our highest Type 7HO15167 GAMEDAY son, and it's been an international sensation. We actually just put him into the domestic GForce lineup here in August, because we finally can produce enough semen to meet both domestic and global demand. But we’ve used him as a sire father, went back to the DOC, to the cow family that created APPLE-CRISP through the Apples. Mother's an 85-point PARFECT and then a DOC and goes back to that cow family that gave us APPLE-CRISP through Siemers Mogul Apple-Star (EX-91-EX-MS-GMD). And so I'm really excited about this bull, which just got released last month. A high production bull that's still +3.0 points on Type. He's high udder composite, beautiful linear profile, hits all those crossover boxes that we try to catch on to, he's got the right caseins, he's A2A2, he's double digit plus conformation in Canada. So he was one of the first ones that I just wanted to mention, Ethan, because I think he ties into that APPLE-CRISP theme of Lily and being able to have such a successful week that we haven't forgotten about this cow family. We still go back to it again. And just really an exciting bull that quite frankly, doesn't have an H, doesn't have a P in his cow family. Mother is a PARFECT, but I mean it's at least a new maternal line that's treated us very well because RON BURGUNDY-RED, DIAMONDBACK, we've had success with the Apples and we adore that maternal line to have a bull like this that comes into the lineup to the only thing I wish he was is Red factor. But I think he's a very exciting bull that should help us extremely well.
Ethan Haywood
Yeah, like you say, you can use it on everyone. He checks all of those boxes for sure. And we play this fun game when we go out on the road of who's the grand champion in the two-year-old pen. And GAMEDAY seems to win that quite often. So seeing GAMEDAY blood crossed over on that cow family is pretty neat.
Kevin Jorgensen
So PAZZLE has been a bull that we think is maybe the next generation. You said of what's coming and, and everybody talks about those calves, the HULU calves, as I mentioned earlier. But PAZZLE is a bull that we put a fair bit of stock in the program. We've got nine sons of PAZZLE that are coming in. But the one that I wanted to highlight here just in this podcast was 250HO17266 King's-Ransom P CAPSIZE-ET. And to me, what is incredibly unique about this bull is that he goes back to a different cow family. He goes back to the Kings-Ransom Mg Cleavage-ET (EX-95-EX-MS-DOM) side of this from the King brothers. What the King family was able to accomplish last week with the best three female class winner with the DOC daughter, they had a young two-year-old that was out of the same cow family as CAPSIZE and using Delta-Lambda on the bottom side and then back to Kings-Ransom Mg Cleavage-ET (EX-95-EX-MS-DOM) and Kings-Ransom Mogul Cleo-ET (EX-95) and their fork of the Roxy family, and we've been wanting to get some bulls from that. We've had 7HO15634 CADILLAC in the past. They're starting to calve in, and people are really enthusiastic about what they're seeing with those. So the ability to have a PAZZLE son from this great C family at Kings-Ransom, obviously, just like Siemers, they have multiple families. They've got the D family and the C family through Cleavage and that stuff. But again, a break-even DPR, +3.0 Type PAZZLE son with a beautiful linear profile that's BB Kappa-Casein, BB Beta-Lac, does a lot of things right. And the Lambda mother is already Very Good (86) as a young cow, and then the 7HO12787 KING ROYAL that's Excellent (91) or (92) is behind that, and then back into the Cleavage and Cleo family at Kings-Ransom. Just a shout-out to those guys because a farmer-breeder herd that's able to bring cows like that, producers who milk a lot of cows. And so those cows have the ability to live in free stalls too. And then to be able to bang in, those are cow families that we definitely want to tap into. And we're just tickled to death to have a bull like CAPSIZE come into the program as well.
Ethan Haywood
And you use the term modern, that's such a modern herd where they are so strong, so open, so hard milking, but then can do that without being at the crazy end of the stature and moderate that a little bit. So they're just great survivability, great feet and legs. And that's a herd of cows that you can just wander around all day and see good cow after good cow. It's pretty fun.
Kevin Jorgensen
And I'm going to kick one more PAZZLE son into the mix as well. Because like I say, I think with those nine PAZZLE sons, we also back in August released a bull, 250HO17435 Synergy KICKSTART-ET and a bull that I'm very, very excited about. Again, from a herd of cows that typically, the Synergy, the Jauquet family, they milk a lot of cows. They love great type. They've had great success in the showring. They've also had success in making bulls that are crossover sires. So a bull like KICKSTART, that's another PAZZLE son. His PARFECT mother just went Very Good (87) as a two-year-old. And it's a different cow family in that he's, again, a high production bull over +1,200 pounds of Milk. That's +12 on conformation in Canada, A2A2, BB, and right at +3.0 on Type, just shy of these +2.63 on Udder Composite, but +1.5 on stature with that really balanced linear profile. And so these are the kind of bulls that I think can add in like say we've got a lot of PAZZLE sons, but I think they fit that unique niche of being that next generation crossover sire.
Ethan Haywood
Absolutely. You know, cows, they'll make cows that can be successful in any environment, which is pretty cool. And we see these PAZZLEs as heifers growing like crazy and just being successful in a lot of environments. So they're going to be awfully fun to watch calve in.
Kevin Jorgensen
Absolutely. And to that end, Ethan, another bull that had a really, really good day that we haven't even hardly talked about is HANANS. And obviously, he was able to have several top 10 finishers of both the junior show and the open show. Had a fifth place junior two-year-old on Friday morning. And that cow family has been so influential for us. And I'm going to keep going back to the well as long as they keep performing for us, and kind of an offshoot of that is that now we're to the point where we're in that next generation of the H family and there's a couple of bulls I wanted to point out. And the first one is a bull we just released this month, 250HO17304 Haveitall Hanx HARDWICK-ET. And so we've got, the DOC family we haven't talked about very much yet, but obviously, S-S-I Doc Have Not 8784-ET (EX-96-EX-MS-DOM), as well as S-S-I Doc Have Not 8783-ET (EX-92-DOM) as we'll talk about it a little bit. Those two cows have had a huge influence. And again, they defined that crossover market so well. But 7HO16387 HANX-P is from the same cow family as HANANS and his grand dam is HANANS’ full sister and then Siemers Lstr Hanan 33317-ET (EX-90-VG-MS). And we have one of the first HANX-P sons. He's not Polled, but it doesn't really matter because this is a bull that I was just really geeked up when Tim and Mike made this bull out of Duckett Parfect Holly-ET (VG-86-VG-MS), out of DOC. She's just fresh again up at Mike's. He's incredibly excited about where Holly is headed this lactation. She looks great. I always thought maybe she was the best of the PARFECT sisters to 7HO16295 HAS IT ALL. And a bull that's over +3000 GTPI®. He's +1,500 of Milk. He's again, good in fertility index and his fitness traits. He's +3.0 Type, keeps that stature at +2.0, +2.5 on stature versus +4.0. Just a beautiful linear profile. Again, a bull that's A2A2 because we know that those things are always the types of little boxes that everyone wants checked. And so, being that he's one of our first HANX-P sons to bring the H family on the top side, we're really excited. And then the other one that we've tried to, Jordan, Dan Siemers, and I, as we have discussions about what the next generation at Siemers Holsteins is going to look like, I'm a big fan of trying to cross those three great cow families at Siemers’ on top of one another, whether it's a bull like PAZZLE that puts the Siemers Frzld Roz 28450-ET (EX-90-EX-MS-GMD) on the top side and Siemers Lmda Paris 27856-ET (EX-91-EX-MS-GMD-DOM) on the bottom. The bull I'd like to mention here quickly is 250HO17560 Siemers PARIAN-P-ET
. He's a Polled bull from Lmda Paris herself. So we put the H's and the P's together, a bull again, over +3000 TPI, +10 on conformation, +3.7 on Type. He's our number three Type bull overall at Select Sires at the moment. He's a bull that even though he's got that extreme Type, he's not +4.0 on stature. He's +2.83. He's A2A2, BB, when you've got a cow as prolific as Lmda Paris and she's going to have about 12 sons at Select Sires. She was named Global Cow of the Year last year for good reason because of her influence, and her sons, but she can make a bull like PARFECT that's a top proven TPI bull right at the top of the charts, but yet can still make Showcase bulls.
Ethan Haywood
Right. She's hit multiple niches, and continues to hit them. She looks great herself. And so many of those family members are up there milking at Siemers. We were lucky enough to take some tours up there and look at some cattle and just cattle that get out there, get to work. They look great with their working clothes on. They live in a very modern environment and they're pushing a lot of pounds of solids out of those cows.
Kevin Jorgensen
That is for sure. And, I mentioned the influence of DOC when I talked about HARDWICK. Another bull that is coming here in December. So just a little bit away, about six weeks away. A bull we're really excited about that Jordan was able to get procured from the state of Michigan over in your neck of the woods, Ethan. It's 7HO17379 Sunquest DROP N HOT-ET. Dropbox is a bull a lot of people talked about at the show last week. And again, that's the D family at King's-Ransom and the success that they've had with that. The winning DOC junior three was from this fork of their D cow family, so you got Dropbox on the top side. The bottom side is a PARFECT daughter that's out of Doc 8783, so this family goes through and does some things. This is a bull that's over +3100 GTPI. We're using him as a sire father right now. He's a high production bull. He holds positive for daughter fertility. He's +3.0 points on Type and he's A2A2, BB. This is a bull that I’m really trying to use as much as I can for Showcase matings at the moment.
Ethan Haywood
The bulls in this lineup are obviously where we go when we're trying to make something for the colored shavings. But your emphasis on maternal lines, great genomic tests, as well as having the traits that we need for longevity. For a bull to make this lineup, he's got to have all three. And there's so many great bulls and cow families out there. We can be picky about who makes this lineup. And we should expect that we're going to make productive, good milking, long lasting cows.
Kevin Jorgensen
When I'm thinking of matings, I'm trying to be that multi-hatted person that's thinking about it as a breeder, as well as a sire analyst, as well as a marketer, to move the breed in a positive direction and to catch all of those different markets. I often get asked what does it take to get a bull in Showcase? And it's not a great answer, but it's the most intellectually honest answer I can give. There's no real clear criteria, but we know it when we see it. If I see a bull that I'm really intrigued by, and I talk to somebody else on the team and say, what do you think of this bull? We kind of know it when we see it. It's just that completeness. And that's really what we're trying to, it's kind of like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but when you find it, you know you got it.
Ethan Haywood
And for those who are curious about learning more about the Showcase lineup, there's so many bulls that we didn't even have time to mention today. But if you check out our website,
https://www.selectsires.com/bull-search, then you can sort for the Showcase lineup in the filters on the left hand side and be able to sort them through all of your different criteria, different traits that you want to look at. Our communications team put together a really cool Showcase booklet that they were handing out there at the booth. If you were lucky enough to snag one of those there, they're pretty cool.
Kevin Jorgensen
Big shout out to Lauren Hendel on that. It's one of the favorite projects that we do during the year and she's done a marvelous job with this year's theme and highlighting the lineup and all breeds.
Ethan Haywood
We appreciate your time, Kevin. I would say that the week after World Dairy Expo recording talking about cows, maybe you'd be tired of it, but I know you don't get tired of talking good cows. So it's always a pleasure to have you and always a pleasure to hear about what your eyes are seeing on the road. Look forward to our social pages for a lot of new young bulls that are going to continue to enter the Showcase lineup over the next year. And we will talk to you again soon. Stay tuned for section two of our podcast, where we will talk Showbox Sires.