Top tips for semen purchasing decisions

Choosing which bulls to breed from and buying semen is one of the most important decisions on farm as it shapes your herd for years to come.

There are three stages to buying semen – preparation, purchase and review – and each is important to ensure you're getting the most from your decisions.

Here are our tops tips to help guide you through the process:

Preparation

1. Assess your herd’s strengths and weaknesses.
   If you are fully milk recording, this can be done by using the dairy herd genetic report. However, no matter your milking recording status, on-farm data (such as incidences of mastitis or lameness) and benchmarking parameters will also help to assess strengths and weaknesses.
2. Set a breeding goal.
   This should highlight the desired outcome of your herd’s performance in 5 to 10 years’ time. Take into consideration aspects such as your calving pattern and milk contract requirements.
3. Set priorities.
   Set 3 key priorities that are achievable, have measurable results and will have a positive return. Which areas of weakness identified in point 1 will have the most impact in terms of management and productivity? These are the areas to look at first, don’t try to do everything at once.
4. Choose a specific area or aspiration for development.
   For example:
   • Reduce lameness incidences as this area of your herd health uses the most amount of medicine
   • You want to improve your herd's fertility because you want to start using sexed semen
   • You want to alter your herd's fat and protein percentage so that it is better positioned to maximise on milk contracts
5. Calculate semen usage.
   Decide how much conventional, sexed semen and beef semen needs to be purchased. Our semen usage calculator can help.

Purchasing: Choosing a bull

1. Which economic index applies to your herd?
   Profitable Lifetime Index (£PLI), Spring Calving Index (£SCI) or the Autumn Calving Index (£ACI). If you’re unsure, our handy guide will help.
2. Only ever use bulls in the top 50% of the appropriate index.
   Find this information in our bull and cow reports list.
3. Select bulls that meet your herd’s key priorities.
   It is also important to ensure that bulls used on maiden heifers have a high predicted transmitting ability (PTA) for direct calving ease (dCE%). Further explanation of other PTAs included in the bull and cow report can be found on the traits and indexes page.
4. Run all decisions through an inbreeding checker.
   This will check how related all available bulls are to your herd. Individual bulls can then be selected, based on genetic merit and inbreeding suitability, ensuring any mating problems between bulls and cows have been flagged. This is available in the dairy herd genetic report, and more information is available on genomic inbreeding.

Purchasing: Questions to ask your sales representative

1. At the start of any conversation, outline your breeding goal and key priorities. Discuss cow numbers and the amount of dairy (conventional and sexed semen) and beef bulls you need to use.
2. Always check if a suggested bull has independently validated AHDB figures. And if not, why not?
3. Get your rep to quantify why the bull(s) is appropriate for your herd based on your breeding strategies and priorities. Always ask why a suggested bull is right for your herd and verify the data before purchase.
4. Using data from the dairy herd genetic report can be another way to guide the conversation by visually identifying the key priorities you have identified and refer back to confirm that bulls are right for your herd.

Review

1. Review the conversation with the semen rep after it has taken place.
   What areas went particularly well? What areas could have gone better? Are there any further questions that need asking? What things would you like to happen next time? Make a note of these thoughts for the next rep visit.
2. Is the semen in the tank fit for purpose?
   Does the semen fit the priorities that have been set? Make sure that the most up to date figures are used to check this.
3. Review your priorities when you buy semen.
   Has a new priority overtaken the current ones due to improvements or are the priorities still the same?
4. Did the current replacements come from your herd’s best cows?
   If you used conventional semen across your herd, did you get your heifer calves from the better or poorer genetic females? If it’s from the poorer genetic females, consider using sexed semen on your superior females instead. Consider genomically testing your youngstock to ensure that you are breeding your replacements from the genetically superior younger animals in your herd.