More than 350 division-one schools are vying for an invitation to the NCAA tournament in March, but only 68 will get one. This sets the stage for millions of people to attempt to predict the tournament’s outcome, yet no one in the tournament’s history has ever filled out a perfect bracket. The odds are stacked against them, 1 in 9.2 quintillion (if you were to pick by flipping a coin).
It’s not a blind guess. Bracketologists seed teams based on performance data from the regular season and conference tournaments — and they do a lot better than flipping a coin. Historically, no team worse than an eight-seed has ever won the national championship, while one-seeds have only won 64% of the time, which still leaves plenty of uncertainty. The takeaway? The more we narrow the selection pool, the greater the risk of missing the true champion.
Why does this matter to your herd?
Terminal beef-on-dairy crossbreeding and improved fertility of sexed semen have given you unprecedented control over which animals generate the next generation of replacements. Many herds now produce nearly all their replacements from heifers and selectively breed only the top five-10% of the milking herd with sexed semen. This means your ability to accurately identify the best females has long-term implications for herd profitability and genetic progress. The only way to improve the odds of selecting the most profitable females is to have INDIVIDUAL cow data, that can be provided by DHI.
Just like NCAA seeding, data-driven selection improves your odds of success. The national champion almost always comes from the top 32-seeded teams because those seeds are based on proven performance. The same principle applies to your herd. If you’re limiting the number of cows that will shape your future genetics, shouldn’t you give yourself the best chance at picking the right ones? The more-individual-cow data you have to differentiate elite performers, the better chance you’ll have at beating the odds.
The most profitable cows should be identified using energy correct milk (ECM) from DHI. Why? ECM pairs fat and protein production with pounds of milk on an individual-cow basis. Relying on milk production, alone, is an unreliable way to find these high ECM cows, particularly when we limit the size of the selection pool.
Case in point, the graph above represents a data comparison of six Midwest dairies, representing 10,446 cows, showing how the reliability of selecting high-ECM cows decreases as the size of the selection pool is limited. If you breed the top 50% of a group based off milk production, alone, you will net 82% of the top ECM cows, not bad. But if you shrink the selection pool, as is commonly done on dairies, to five-10%, you will miss about 50% of the best ECM cows in your herd.
Just like building a championship team, creating a profitable herd takes more than a coin flip, it requires data. As your breeding strategy narrows your selection pool for future replacements, make sure you choose the right cows. The best way to do that is with individual-cow-performance data from DHI.
Talk to your CentralStar team, today, about starting DHI, or how to use your current individual-cow data so your best cows drive genetic progress, creating a championship-caliber herd.
Author: Doug Moyer, Dairy Consultant