Ethan Haywood
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Select Sires Podcast. I’m your host Ethan Haywood and in today’s episode I will be passing the microphone over to members of our sire team to review the April sire summaries. In this first segment, Senior Holstein Sire Analysts Kevin Jorgensen and Rick VerBeek will recap the April 2025 sire summaries, and highlight new graduates to our Holstein proven sire lineup. Later in the episode, Jersey Development Manager Herby Lutz and Dairy Sire Marketing Coordinator Marc Bolen will highlight new graduates to our proven Jersey sire lineup. Tune in now as Kevin and Rick give us insights from the April sire summaries.
Kevin Jorgensen
But like I say, in this new graduate category, Rick, there's a couple here that are pretty exciting.
Rick VerBeek
Yeah, I think we were really happy to see 14HO15932 CUMULUS. Our first 14HO15223 CONWAY son to graduate right at the top of the charts. He's the top ten TPI® bull on the official Holstein list. He is, as I said, the CONWAY son out of the Very Good 7HO14454 LIONEL and then a Very Good Medley behind that. When you look at our proven list, he is right at the top for nearly all of our selection indexes. He is our number one proven HHP$® (Herd Health Profit Dollars®
) bull. He's our number two overall TPI bull, number two CM$, number three NM$ bull. So you don't have to go very far down the list to find CUMULUS in his genetic wealth and offering. Big CFP bull at a +167 pounds CFP. I mentioned that elite TPI and CM$. He is an A2A2 bull. He's also BB on Kappa-Casein. Moderate
frame cows. Nice to have that strength higher than stature, that body depth higher than stature. So I do think they're going to be robust kind of cows, give you a little bit of power in width, yet going to keep those teats centrally
placed and squarely under the bottom of the udder and actually add just a tad bit of teat length as well. So nice bull to have right at the top of the list. Another new bull is 7HO15754 Badger S-S-I ZAPPA-ET. A 7HO15112 TAOS son out of an 83 point 7HO14451 BIG AL, next dam’s an 88 point 7HO12819 OUTSIDERS daughter. So kind of a unique pedigree bull here. Certainly a bull that's going to complement all of our 7HO15167 GAMEDAY blood. I think very nicely in that respect. High solids bull, high percent fat, high percent protein. He is a tremendous Mastitis ResistantPRO®
bull. 102 Zoetis Mastitis, +1.1 CDCB Mastitis, low Somatic Cell Score, tremendous Fertility Index, high DPR, high Cow Conception Rate, and then a linear profile that's right down the middle. So a bull that’s going to keep you neutral on frame, not going to do anything negatively on feet and legs and help improve the udder slightly as well. Another nice thing about him is Calf Livability, 105. We'll talk about that throughout the presentation today. You know, with this precision breeding and all the beef semen that we're using, the females that we do make, those calves that once they hit the ground, they've got to live and they've got to make it into that milking herd. So the survivability of that is becoming more and more critical each and every day. So a nice bull right at the top of our list, a top 20 TPI bull in the industry and a top five bull at Select Sires, a top 10 HHP$ bull at Select Sires.
Kevin Jorgensen
You hit that on the head. Every calf counts in today's world, and you want them to be the kind that are going to do a lot of things right. First bull I get to talk about is a new graduate, a bull that is really, really unique. The longer I look at him, when you think about a bull that's a different pedigree, you're going to hear us talk a lot about diversity and those kinds of things. Here's 7HO15597 RICHE. He's a 250HO14957 Melarry SSI Husky FLOYD-ET son, so he was a little bit different in those respects. The next dam is an 82 point 7HO13991 NUGENT daughter. She's at Siemers Holsteins. Made 42,260 pounds of milk. The cool part about this bottom side pedigree, and it was really fun as I went through and looked at this this morning. The next dam is a 7HO12722 MARKLEY daughter, and Markley was a 7HO12165 MONTROSS brother to 7HO12418 SPARK. We had purchased this heifer for the ART™ program. Unfortunately, she was lost as a heifer, but we bought her from Bob and Jeanette Sheehan in Minnesota, and I traced this pedigree back 12 generations, not a skip or blip. There's an old cow named Sheeknoll Bolton Ariana, who was one of Sheehan's great cows. And then it actually goes back to a Larson Acres bred cow, about 12 generations back, that was an Excellent (95). So he's got a really unique sire stack. I think he’ll be able to be very good for sire diversity. He ranks extremely high at +3159 for TPI. He's the number two DWP$® bull in the breed for proven bulls at +918. He's got those mastitis resistance scores that you talked about earlier on other bulls, Rick. He's A2A2, he's +87 pounds of Fat. That ranks him right here at the top of the proven bulls. So there were a lot of things to like about this bull. The longer I dug into him, the better I liked him. Next bull, as you mentioned, were the first CONWAY sons, the first TAOS sons. Now we already have the first GAMEDAY sons that have progeny in 7HO15913 Wilmer Gameday KAHN-ET. A bull that I've always liked. He's got a brother, we'll talk about some sons later, of 7HO16176 WAR GEAR. Out of that excellent LIONEL, Wilra Lionel 1910-ET (EX-90-EX-MS-DOM), lives at Siemers Holsteins. A bull again that ranks incredibly good for TPI at +3156. He's got the right caseins for a GAMEDAY son. That +82 pounds of Fat gets him extremely high ranking within the breed when you look at the ranks for proven sires. So he does a lot of things right. Also has those right mastitis traits. The one thing I can tell you is in my travels this winter, I had the chance to go to southern Illinois and do some meetings and went down to Wilra. What an impressive farm. Been a great collaborator of ours for a number of years. Going to be a national convention tour stop if you're here in America, and going to be at the national convention. It'll be a must stop. It's a wonderful herd of cows, saw so many. They had a bunch of these KAHN daughters milking. They looked really, really good. GAMEDAY worked fantastic in that herd. A bull we've used as a sire father, a bull that's gonna have a really big impact and the first of our GAMEDAY sons to graduate.
Rick VerBeek
Well, another new bull that graduates, another CONWAY son here in 250HO16110 LETCHWORTH. I did have a chance to go up to Aurora last Friday, and walk some pens. KAHN was one of those bulls that I liked the daughters of quite nicely. And LETCHWORTH was another certainly favorite of mine as I was out last week looking at some new two-year-olds. This is a family we're going to talk about a couple different times throughout the presentation. Aurora Rapid 21849-ET (VG-87-VG-MS-DOM), the dam of LETCHWORTH should be fresh again with her third calf. She was a few days overdue when I was there a week ago, looked incredible. Her dam, the Excellent Aurora Frazzled 19447-ET (EX-90-VG-MS-GMD-DOM) is still there in the herd. And then her dam, the Aurora Doorsopen 17054-ET (EX-93-2E-EX-MS-DOM) is also still in the herd. So there's actually now five generations of this cow family in milk at Aurora Ridge, which I think is just a tremendous accomplishment, but a testimony to the type of cow family that this is. LETCHWORTH himself, as I said, he was my champion sire group of what I looked at last week when I was out. Very balanced, uniform, consistent group of young cows, beautiful, nice, high, wide rear udders, moderate frames, mobile, good foot and legged cows. And then, now that we see some of his daughter data here, high Fat bull, he's always been a high percent, high solids bull for percent Fat and Protein, that continues now with milking daughters. Good mastitis resistance bull for both Zoetis and CDCB. Maintains high fertility from a Sire Conception Rate standpoint. And then you've got the CW$™ highlighted there. Another bull that's really good on Calf Livability, Calf Scours Resistance. And then obviously he's been an A2A2 sire. So a bull that's really checking a lot of different boxes. You see a lot of logos up there, RobotPRO®
, Mastitis ResistantPRO bull. So, a nice graduate. We've got some nice LETCHWORTH sons making positive contributions to our program. And you see some outstanding early daughter photos as well. So when you have a young bull at this age with 72 daughters to already pull off three outstanding daughter photos, I think that's another really nice testimonial to the kind of quality that he's siring for us. And another bull that impressed me last week while I was at Oakfield Corners in particular was 250HO16074 OCD Parfect FIGARO-ET. One of our first 7HO15085 PARFECT sons with 105 daughters in 22 herds. This particular bull is out of an 88 point 250HO14310 COFFEE, who was one of my barn favorites, a bull that I just really appreciate for what he does. His dam was always a favorite of mine up at Oakford Corners, as was the next dam, a 91 point Burley and then an excellent Delta behind that. So full, full pedigree now in FIGARO with 105 daughters in 22 herds. He's a bull, you see the low Somatic Cell Score, the good mastitis resistance. Again, great calf wellness. But then that linear profile early in terms of daughter classified with 23 daughters, I definitely liked what I saw. The consistency, the udders, the mammary system improvement, moderate size, good width, good strength, substance with still solid production behind them. So, again, FIGARO, a bull that does have some nice bulls, sons in our program. It's starting to backfill that data with really solid daughter data as well. The good thing about the Red program is you start with the number one bull in 7HO15825 REBEL-RED. You found him. The bull we'll talk about next is 7HO15636 RESONATE-RED. Number three, what else do you need? Number one and number three proven Red bulls in the breed at Select Sires. The number one genomic Red bull. You don't have to spend a lot of time sorting deep through lists to find tremendous quality. REBEL-RED is a bull that we used quite heavily as a mating sire. He's a bull now with 143 daughters in 44 herds. +1.80 on Type +1.46 UDC, beautiful linear profile. Good mastitis resistance. Once again, high percent Fat and Protein. He's A2A2, BB Kappa-Casein. As I said, the number one proven Red bull in the breed. And we had to fact check ourselves again this morning. You know, you go through so many different bulls, but a non-Salvatore RC pedigree as well. Which is so huge with all the influence of Salvatore RC blood in the Red program, in the Red breed, to have the number one bull of the breed without that blood, I think is just partly the reason this bull has been so popular in our sales program. And I think a reason that the bull is going to continue to be extremely popular for us in the Red &White program. And then nipping on his heels is 7HO15636 Bacon-Hill RESONATE-RED-ET, the Watson *RC son from the excellent Salvatore RC, then an 87 point 14HO7485 ALL DAY *RC daughter. He is the number three proven bull as I said. Another bull that’s a nice percent Fat and Protein bull, another bull over +1.0 on Udder Composite. As we've echoed all day long, teats in the right place in the right size. Another big SCR bull at +2.2 on SCR. And then that mastitis resistance is right where you'd like to see it. And a bull that does a really good job with Zoetis Lameness as well at 105. So two exciting bulls in our Red program, right at the top of the breed. Extremely proud to have both of these still part of the program, still alive and available and ready to go to work for you.
Ethan Haywood
Thanks Rick and Kevin for the great insights, now on over to Herby and Marc for some exciting Jersey updates.
Herby Lutz
We had five new graduates to our lineup. We only have 14 proven bulls in our lineup. But we're very excited about these proven bulls and what we added with some diversity to our program. Marc, won't you lead us off?
Marc Bolen
So the first new grad that we got is 7JE2033 CHARLTON. He's a Gislev son. He'd be the number four JPI™ bull in the breed, but also the number one JX-free JPI bull in the breed. When I say he's the number one JPI JX-free bull of the breed, I mean I think he's significantly higher than the second one. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I think it's at least by 15, 20 points I’d say. He's +171 JPI, +591 HHP$, which puts him third. He's also a CM$ bull at +451 to put him in ninth but he's got production, also. He's +768 of Milk, +74 CFP, +1.8 DPR so you factor all that in. He's one of two bulls that are +750 Milk, +70 CFP, and +1.5 DPR and the other one is 7JE1758 JX THRASHER {6}. So just kind of in a league of his own, but not having that JX in there makes him a really, really good option for the breeders that are seeking that JX-free pedigree kind of thing. But goes back to a two-time national grand champion in Pleasant Nook F Prize Circus (E-97%) as well. So another really, really good bull coming from the Jerseyland program.
Herby Lutz
Well, and no JX THRASHER {6} in his pedigree helps, too, with all the JX THRASHER {6} and JX THRASHER {6} sons we have at the top of the list right now. I'm going to talk about a JX THRASHER {6} son, 7JE5078 MIDWAY from our friends at River Valley. The Sauder family developed this bull. He's the number five JPI bull in the breed. He's number four for HHP$, number six for CM$. He's a bull that's number five for Productive Life. And he's the only bull to be over +650 pounds of Milk with at least +0.5 of DPR and lower than 2.8 SCS. Things that we're looking for is the reason he ranks high on HHP$. He's a bull that's got a 91 point dam, then an 87 point grandam and then a 91 point 236JE146 ZUMA back in there. So a little different pedigree from what we're used to seeing. He is a JX THRASHER {6} son, but a bull that ranks right at the top. Really excited about MIDWAY entering the lineup. And he's been a great fertility bull over time.
Marc Bolen
Another graduate from the Jerseyland program is another Gislev son out of JX Primus Enzo Charlize 668 {4}-ET (VG-80%) that goes back to Pleasant Nook F Prize Circus (E-97%) again. This bull is 7JE2027 JX CORBIN {5}.
He's number 12 for JPI, 13th for HHP$, a top 20 in CM$, top 35 for JUI™ at +17.2 and +0.8 puts him top 25 for PTAT but a bull that I haven't seen the daughters of, but when we talked, me and Herby talked about “The CORBIN” who has been a big, big donor for us in our program. So when he called and said, “The CORBIN” looks good, I knew we were in good spirits, but like I said, I haven't seen the daughters. I'll let Herby speak on those a little bit, but I think we have a really, really, really good one down here that exemplifies what this bull can do.
Herby Lutz
And that's the only one we had to choose from Mark. That's the only one in our program. That's the only one that was at Victory. We'll get to go back to California here this summer and get to see a lot more of these. And I'll be in west Texas in a couple of weeks to be able to see some daughters and looking forward to them because I really like, she's a clean bone dairy cow, high relative value. Everything's right on this cow. And you'll see in the future, she has several sons already in the program. So this bull graduating, right at the top of the list does a great job to solidify those pedigrees. I get to talk about 7JE2022 OVERALLS, Marc, and he doesn't need any introduction. He's the number four JX-free bull in the breed, number 16 overall for JPI, top ten for JUI, top 15 for Type at +1.0, over +20.0 for JUI. He's the only bull to be over +20 JUI. Plus at least +1.0 for DPR and positive for Milk. And Preston and I saw these at Dutch Hollow and then we ended up going to Victory and seeing some and just really standout bull for us. A bull that's gonna check a lot of boxes. I think he'll sell a lot of semen because he’s a customer satisfaction kind we're known for, Marc. This bull delivers that customer satisfaction.
Marc Bolen
Yep, and we've always been a big fan of his dam. Then when Steve bought her. She's always been a really, really outstanding cow that we've seen when we went there also.
Herby Lutz
We've been down, you know, pictured her down in Mississippi. Tremendous, tremendous cow family back behind this bull. Excellent dam, 85 point grandam, 88 point next dam. Everything's right with OVERALLS and the JX-free pedigree to go along with it.
Marc Bolen
The next graduate we're going to talk about is a bull that we had high hopes for after December proofs, and he kind of held where he was, and his daughters are probably, I'm not going to say our favorite, but the ones I've seen are my favorite because I haven't been able to see the ones that the boys have seen in the last couple months. But it's 250JE1947 JX CORSAIR {5}. A 7JE1760 ROWAN son out of the JX Primus Enzo Charlize 668 {4}-ET (VG-80%) again back to Pleasant Nook F Prize Circus (E-97%). A top 45 JPI, +19.5 JUI puts him in the top 20 and then +1.1 Type puts him in the top 15. But the daughters have really, really been good. Good uddered, got width, dairy strength all the way through. But a bull that we had high hopes for after December, he still held pretty well.
Herby Lutz
But Marc, the thing on him that gets me, 1,000 daughters in his proof already. Unbelievable. That Elite Sexed Fertility™ designation that we talk about, he's always had it. And unbelievable. Never seen that in my career, Marc.
Marc Bolen
With 1,000 daughters in his second proof, that's pretty outstanding. And honestly, he probably didn't graduate last time because we didn't have a Type proof. And he's already got 146 now. So I think you're going to see more of this bull and he's going to be really exciting to use.
Ethan Haywood
Thanks to Kevin, Rick, Herby and Marc for their insights and to their teams for all of the hard work that goes into sire summaries. To hear a complete overview of our lineups including new high ranking young genomic bulls, proven favorites and what's in the genetic pipeline, check out the recorded Facebook lives on the Select Sires Inc. Facebook page. Thanks to everyone in the barns and in the field that makes these big weeks happen three times a year and are servicing our breeders everyday of the year. We are excited for the future of Select Sires and to add these new bulls to our lineups. To our listeners, thanks for tuning in and we will see you next time for more episodes of The Select Sires Podcast.