Ethan Haywood
Hello and welcome back to The Select Sires Podcast. Today we are excited to talk to you about the exciting and new world of Polled genetics. Here to discuss Polled with us here today is Holstein Sire Analyst Jordan Siemers and Greg Andersen, partner in WinStar Genetics. Greg, Jordan, thanks for taking the time to be here with us today to talk Polled.
Greg Andersen
Hey, good to be here.
Jordan Siemers
Yeah, thanks for having us there, Ethan.
Ethan Haywood
To get us started off, Greg, will you tell us a little bit about yourself and your history, as well as the formation of the WinStar Genetics partnership?
Greg Andersen
So yeah, I live here in American Falls, Idaho, born and raised here on the family farm, Seagull Bay Dairy. So this is where I've been my whole life, literally. My parents built our farm the year I was born, and I live here in the house I grew up in. And so, you know, we've been milking cows and breeding cows under the Seagull Bay prefix for a lot of years, but then you know, as things changed over time, we decided to join up with some other breeders and dairymen to form WinStar Genetics. My brother, John, who'd been out on his own doing Triple Crown Genetics. It was kind of his brainchild that, “Hey, let's join forces and create a new genetic enterprise.” And so between the Seagull Bay Dairy, which includes me and my parents and my brother Ben, my sister Heather is a partner with us. I'm married, my wife, Gwen, and I have six kids. So there's a lot of us here, too many to sit and name everybody in the Anderson family. John is my oldest brother and he had Triple Crown Genetics, and so we've joined forces, Triple Crown Genetics, Seagull Bay Dairy, and then our friends, Seth Cannon and his family, they operate Cannon Farms in the Idaho Falls area here in eastern Idaho. And they milk about 10,000 cows on two farms. The Anderson dairies, we have two locations, milk about 2,000 cows. Anyway, we joined forces, the three of us, to create WinStar Genetics at the end of 2016. So really beginning in 2017 is when the WinStar partners came together. And then also as things have evolved, just two years ago, as a WinStar group, we purchased a dairy that has Lely robots and we milk about 700 cows in Lely robots and we call that WinStar Dairy. That dairy is located in Preston, Idaho. Here in eastern Idaho, there's about four different facilities where we milk cows, but all of the breeding efforts go through the WinStar enterprise.
Ethan Haywood
A lot of really good cows are covered by that partnership and it's really cool to see you guys intermix those gene pools as well as make investments to better your herds and to better the genetics that are offered to farmers around the globe. The Seagull Bay prefix is something that's not new to our lineup whatsoever and has a really large influence both on the paternal and maternal side for some of the Select Sires animals that have been offered around the world. Jordan name off a couple of these either bulls or donors that have been really influential for our program that come from this genetic pool.
Jordan Siemers
Yeah I mean from Seagull Bay, it's hard not to think of the Holstein breed without the likes of 7HO11351 SUPERSIRE, the likes of 7HO11419 HEADLINER, two highly influential bulls and Greg, did SUPERSIRE ever win any sire awards, other than being a millionaire sire?
Greg Andersen
That's really the only award that we saw when he made it to a million units, but at the Holstein Association, he's likely to have some sire awards listed, but honestly, I can't name those off the top of my head. His registration paper and ear tag are hanging here in my office in a special box.
Jordan Siemers
Yeah, it's a pretty awesome accomplishment and really hats off to you and the family for breeding such a pair of bulls. From the WinStar breeding program, in our proven lineup, we have 7HO15245 WinStar Lionel PERPETUAL, a 7HO14454 LIONEL son out of Winstar Medley 4365-ET (VG-85-DOM) from the Minnows. And in the G-Force™ lineup, one of our best-selling bulls at Select Sires right now is a Polled bull, 14HO15929 CIRRUS-P, a really balanced 7HO15085 PARFECT son out of Winstar Kenobi 5932 P-ET (GP-81). Greg, do you have any comments on either of those bulls?
Greg Andersen
The PERPETUAL bull, I mean, big time production, really being a LIONEL son. I mean, LIONEL needs no introduction as far as his yield capabilities, but that line there, the Medley dam made 1,600 of fat her first record, Triplecrown Jw Ofest 142-ET (VG-87-VG-MS-DOM) was a huge fat producer. And really that line, all the way back to Seagull-Bay Oman Mirror-ET (VG-86-DOM) was just really, really good cows, lots of production, good strength. You know, PERPETUAL is one of those bulls where he's got more strength and stature by almost a full point, wide rear udders and just lots of milk, you know, just protect a little for daughter fertility. But with +220 Combined Fat and Protein (CFP) and 2.60 Somatic Cell Score (SCS) really, he's a darn good proven bull. And that cow family behind him has paid a lot of bills.
Ethan Haywood
Yeah, you guys have had such an excellent focus on maternal lines. You work very hard to achieve those genetic goals. And in the formation process of WinStar, you decided to add some Polled into those female lines. What was the thought process and the actual process of getting the Polled gene into the donor pool back then?
Greg Andersen
Sure really, so Polled breeding for us, we got real serious about it back in 2013, so really it's been, yeah, ten years or more. What we planned to do was to buy some good Polled females and then breed from there, breed them to the top, you know, total merit sires of the breed, horned sires of the breed. And then just carry that Polled gene on through. I mean, you already brought up CIRRUS-P. He goes to the best of the donors that we purchased in 2013, and that's MD-Valleyvue Nuno Kim (EX-91). We purchased her in 2013. That cow's still around, just for your information. She's just dried off after her seventh lactation. That Numero Uno cow has been a staple around here and a dominant matriarch for us. She was purchased in 2013. She had what we liked: high components, nice udder, really good pedigree on her. We also purchased an Effect-P-RED daughter from Seagull-Bay Miss America-ET (EX-91-EX-MS-GMD-DOM). We had sold Miss America as a calf, but she was a prolific donor and made a lot of daughters and we bought a Polled daughter of Miss America. We also bought a SUPERSIRE, a Polled SUPERSIRE, Bryhill SS Sateen P-ET (VG-88-EX-MS). In fact, she's the grandam of 7HO14451 BIG AL. The sire of 7HO15167 GAMEDAY. And so, I mean, GAMEDAY and BIG AL actually have Polled back in their family tree. It just, you have to get really, really lucky to get Polled to carry through every generation. But with a bull like CIRRUS-P, I mean, he's got five horned sires in his pedigree before you get back to 7HO8223 LAWN BOY-P-RED. And so really, you know, that's really a cool way to do it. If you can keep getting that Polled gene to go through each generation, but you're using some really good horned sires. That was really part of our strategy. In the beginning, the strategy wasn't to try to make a lot of homozygous Polled males or females, but to try to just keep getting really good Polled males and females by using the top horned sires in our matings. And now we're getting to the point where there's enough really good Polled sires to mate to the Polled donors that here soon you're going to be seeing a lot better true, homozygous Polled sires, I think, in our program.
Ethan Haywood
And that's been the problem with the uptake of the Polled gene is wanting to gain that into the population without giving up any other traits. And with the amount of focus that you are putting within your program, you get a lot of shots on goal. What other traits are you looking to bring alongside the Polled gene? You know, you're looking for cows that you want to milk.
Greg Andersen
It all starts with the yield traits. I mean, Combined Fat and Protein needs to take up the bulk of any selection criteria that we're going to select for. Everything we do in breeding and in our efficiencies on the farm that we're looking at, it's built on economic incentives, so you've got to start with yield production. The cool thing is you don't have to give up fitness and utility with it. When I'm looking to select sires in our breeding program or to use on the herd at-large it starts with Combined Fat and Protein. Then you look into, say, the fitness category, Productive Life, easy calving, mastitis resistance. I mean, those would be right at the top of the list. We want easy calvings, smooth transitions, and then what I might call utility comes into it as well. I mean, you need proper teat placement, proper teat length. You need good body condition on these animals. That's all part of the utility part of the formula for us. If I was just gonna keep it simple it's production, fitness, utility that's what we're looking for.
Jordan Siemers
It's interesting you're talking about that Greg. We're releasing 14HO17371 ALPAZO into the NxGEN®
program and let's talk about utilitarian and a profitability driver for our commercial dairy producers right. He's tied for the No. 1 HHP$®
bull in 2024, and he's our No. 1 DWP$® bull in 2024 you know. He's over +200 Combined Fat and Protein, he's +5.4 in CDCB Mastitis and 111 on Zoetis Mastitis you know this bull exemplifies what you're just talking about, Greg. So I just had him pulled up here and I'm just kind of going, yep, the proof's in the pudding. You say it, you believe it, and you execute it.
Greg Andersen
Well, yeah, and ALPAZO, being a 7HO16276 SHEEPSTER son, his dam's a GAMEDAY. I just saw her this morning. She just got moved to the close-up pen, made a really good record, you know, moderate volume but really high components, high kind of relative value cow, moderate size. She's got adequate width, really nice udder on her. But yeah, what it comes down to is having the high wellness traits, ranking well on HHP$, that's a selection index that we can get behind and we're happy that a WinStar bull is ranking well on the HHP$ index.
Ethan Haywood
It takes a lot of sorting to find these bulls who check all of the boxes and then can bring that Polled gene along. And you've got to dig pretty deep to find some diversity in the process as well. Jordan, within the sire department, whether you're working with breeder herds or the internal program, what does that process or plan look like to try and bring more Polled to the market?
Jordan Siemers
You know, it's a lot of using genetic strategy, you know, starting with a Polled female base and trying to use nice horned bulls back on the top, trying to get them. I would say the top of the Polled industry is within sniffing distance. There are some in the top 500 to a 1,000 females in the breed. The Polled business has come a long way. The other strategy that we've implemented, Ethan, is using some Polled bulls on traditionally horned lines that rank well, especially if they mate well, right? Again, trying to chase some HHP$, trying to chase some of these traits that we're all trying to chase at Select Sires. So there's kind of two different strategies. You can use it on the male, you can use it on the female. And then it's, okay, we have these parents that are high enough, compared to the breed, let's see if we can't try to make homozygous Polled. And we're really only going to do it when we have the male power and the female power that line up together. And like Greg said, it's just taking time to put this all together.
Ethan Haywood
And it's really neat to see those females become relevant in the overall ranking list, no matter what criteria you're using to rank them. I was looking at the list earlier today and Greg, you've got a couple of really neat SHEEPSTER females over +3200 GTPI® and a 7HO15977 HAYK up there as well. What percentage of your donor population is Polled at the moment? And what does that plan look like? How do you try and breed those types of animals?
Greg Andersen
I looked it up here this last week and of those that are donor age, about 30% of our donor pool is heterozygous or homozygous Polled. You mentioned some of our best ones, those SHEEPSTERs are our highest GTPI females right now. We've even got a nice Polled 14HO15926 VAN GOGH. Just this week, I got some results on a calf in the hutch. She's an 14HO16673 ENDEAR, an ENDEAR by a Mendel-P that's a +$1,300 NM$, +3200 GTPI. She's kind of a cool young calf. She'll make our donor pool here in another six months. But yeah, so you got about a third of our donor pool is Polled. There's only a handful of true, homozygous Polled donors in our program right now but that'll be growing over the next year or so that's I mean with the type of sire selection we've been doing and with the donors in our program over the last years. We have a significant chunk of Polled females in the program right now, and we're happy with them. They're the right kind of females where if they were Polled or not Polled, you still want to work them. That's really kind of where it gets certainly we may go down just a little bit on total merit to bring a Polled one into the program, but you don't need to go down very far anymore.
Jordan Siemers
Of those, Greg, of that 30%, what percent do you think you're running to try to make, you know, bulls? And what percent are you using just to propagate females back into the program?
Greg Andersen
Yeah. So really, though, it's just that top third of the Polled donors are probably being used to potentially make males. And then a lot of those will just be bred to female sorted semen to get good females for the next generation. And to fill our herds. I mean, we love to milk these high total merit females. They prove the genetics works. Whether they become a donor for us or not, we are very happy to raise them up and bring them into the milking herd and reap the benefits of highly selected females.
Ethan Haywood
We're really excited about some of the newer Polled bulls that we have coming out in different lineups. We just got word that 7HO17666 KIHLA-P, an 14HO16391 EASTON son from WinStar will be out in January. Who else are you excited to see come to market pretty quick here, Jordan?
Jordan Siemers
The Polled side of the business has certainly been gaining a large buzz. We've been making a tremendous headway within that portion of the breeding program. And yes, WinStar has been a tremendous supplier for us, including 14HO17133 MADRID-P, who's a CIRRUS-P son, out of a GAMEDAY. And, you know, the WinStar family bred CIRRUS-P, like we talked about before. Some other exciting Polled bulls coming through the program would be some 7HO16103 CHEW-P bulls sons like 250HO17009 HOWLAND-P and even a HAYK son, 250HO17298 HABULOUS-P and a 250HO16074 FIGARO, 7HO17158 HOLY-P. There's a lot of really exciting high-ranking bulls, regardless of Polled status or not, that are really balanced, really complete bulls. The future of Polled is extremely bright right now.
Ethan Haywood
And there's a lot of diversity to be offered so that we can do some of this crossing over and try and make these homozygous or true Polled sires. It's really interesting to me when I got on this topic and started reading, they were writing about evidence of Polled cattle in 3000 B.C. in ancient Egypt based on the skull fragments and the earliest purebred Holstein bull recorded in the U.S. was in 1889. Yet we are only looking at probably, what, a 2% frequency of this gene within the registered Holstein breed right now? So it's a pretty low frequency and pretty rare gene and even more rare to see it become homozygous. I'd like to hear from both of you, Greg and Jordan, what do you think it's going to take in the future to really increase the frequency and make these animals a very large portion of the relevant genetic pool here in the U.S.?
Greg Andersen
Well, I think if the current trends continue, you know, it'll happen quite naturally because as the breeders come and provide Polled sires that are going to fit on people's sort lists, you know, because when you're looking at, “Hey, I want to have a certain level of HHP$ and I want Mastitis ResistantPRO®
” and whatever it is that you're going to sort those Polled bulls, they're going to make those sorts. There's enough of them making those sorts now and people should start using them. I mean, sometimes I hear people say, well, “Hey if I'm going to dehorn, I'm going to dehorn everything. And I don't want some Polled and not Polled.” I don't see it that way. One is, you can tell if they're Polled or not, even in the maternity barn. Most of you guys are using some beef sires too, and you can tell if they're Polled or not when they're in the maternity barn. And even if you're using, say, a paste program, you still got a significant amount of those that need some dehorning as they get older because you don't often get a good enough job with the paste program. And so let's all admit that there is a cost to removing horns and part of its labor, but part of it's in calf performance because there's pain associated with dehorning really no matter what stage, but there's certainly a more animal friendly way to do it when they're younger. And we certainly promote that and we practice that on our farms, but there is a cost, and part of it's going to be animal performance. They're more susceptible to diseases after a stressful event. So what I would say is I think dairymen should realize, “Hey, I can use some heterozygous bulls, and I don't need to buy all heterozygous bulls, but I should start using them.” And you can inform your maternity people, “Hey, some of these calves may be hornless. So let's start.” Usually you're going to take the little clippers to the buds before you put paste on them. You can tell if they've got buds or not at that point. And so let's be just a little bit more discriminatory in which calves we're going to dehorn or not, because the ones that you dehorned at conception, leave them alone, let them eat, let them relax and save that horn removal by doing it at conception. And so, I think it'll happen as we provide, we create more Polled sires that fit the sorts that the dairymen want. But let's also tell the story like it is that, “Hey, horns are undesirable. So let's make it easier on the calf. Let's make it easier on our people and reap the benefits of Polled.”
Jordan Siemers
I 100% agree with that Greg. We do it by making the bulls that hit the list that these producers, who are very genetically motivated, they can't help themselves but use, right? So if we're getting these bulls in their program, it'll result in some training on farms. And once you have the training established the effect is going to be longstanding. And I think we're going to see headway. Certain countries overseas, Ethan. They are highly incentivizing using 100% Polled bulls, you know, whether it be heterozygous or homozygous bulls. And then there's added opportunity, which for breeders like Greg and others, if that buck is able to make it back to the breeder, then they're going to be more incentivized to make more Polled, you know? So it's, how do we reward the makers of these products, right?
Ethan Haywood
Absolutely. There's certainly an economic component to it. And as we thin up heifer inventories, we are really honing in on that calf raising. We're really honing in on the quality of that start that the heifer gets. And this is such a huge point. I love the phrase dehorning them at conception because that's absolutely what it is, we're just taking care of that problem. And as you mentioned, Jordan, in some of our overseas markets, we see places like Germany where 40% of the bulls being utilized last year were Polled bulls. And it'd be really cool to get the U.S. market to that point. And it's going to take a lot of forward thinkers like the partners at WinStar to help drive that bus and get us genetically there in a relevant way where we don't give anything else up.
Jordan Siemers
No, there's certainly more than just Germany that are forcing the issue. I just got back from Denmark a little while ago, and they're really aggressively moving that direction. There are several other EU countries that are really getting more and more aggressive with their need for homozygous Polled and balanced.
Ethan Haywood
Looking at it from a producer's perspective, if I've got a herd of cattle with no Polled frequency whatsoever, it can seem kind of overwhelming to try and start working that in. What would you say is the best way to go about starting that process, Greg? And how do you think that we should be looking at it as fellow producers?
Greg Andersen
Well, I think part of it's been already stated, but let's remember Polled is a dominant trait. So even if a female only receives one copy of the Polled gene, that animal will still be hornless. You could carry the Red gene, but you need two copies of it to actually exhibit the Red color. But when it comes to Polled, with it being a dominant trait, it makes it easier to use than some of the others. And so I would just reiterate Polled is beneficial to the dairyman. It's beneficial to the calf and the cow. Horns are just bad all around. Let's just say that again. But I do understand you don't want to give up too much of your genetic goals to go for Polled. But the other thing I would say is you don't have to and you don't need to have 100% Polled bulls in your tank. Let's start with two or three that fit your criteria and let's start getting in the program so that you all start getting used to what Polled cattle can bring into your herd. So, I would just say get started because I ran some sorts recently on the Select Sires website and there's easily three or four bulls that fit our criteria to be in our tank and they are in our tank. And then beyond that, I think you'd have several bulls that would meet many markets and meet the traits that people want.
Ethan Haywood
Well, Greg, Jordan, thank you so much for your time being here with us today. We appreciate the work that you are both putting in on the Polled front. We are excited to see some of the new young Polled bulls and females that you both have cooking and to see those up on the ranking list as this becomes a more important part of dairy farming as we move forward. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and stay tuned to learn more about Polled:
https://www.selectsires.com/genetics/polled.