Evaluations Used by Interbull

by George Wiggans

Bulls must meet one of the following criteria for an evaluation record to be sent to Interbull:

Record in the AI codes table (i.e., recorded with the National Association for Animal Breeders) or
Daughters in 10+ U.S. herds or
U.S. identification (ID) number that has been reported by another country (record provided to report pedigree)

The record sent to the Interbull Centre (format 010) contains information that determines whether the bull is included in Interbull evaluations. The two key variables are the codes for status of bull and type of proof:

Status of bull:

Type of proof:

Bulls must meet the following criteria for their U.S. data to be included in Interbull evaluations:

Daughters in 10+ US herds and
Born in 1986 or later for Holsteins and in 1981 or later for other breeds and
Status of bull = 10, or if U.S. type of proof = 21, then:
- Official first-crop evaluation in some country (i.e., at least 1 country submitting an official record with type of proof = 11 or 12 and status of bull = 10) and
- In the U.S. record, coded as AI sampled or with sufficient daughters and herds.

Status of bull

The Interbull rule states that bulls must be "randomly sampled through an official AI scheme." Those bulls are coded as 10 for status of bull. The reasoning is that bulls with biased sampling should not be included, and there are always questions about non-AI bulls. For U.S. records, a code of 10 is assigned for status of bull if any of the following criteria for sampling status as assigned by the National Association of Animal Breeders is met:

U.S. sampling status of S or M or
U.S. sampling status of O if semen distributed by 40 months from birth and evaluated in 40+ herds for Holstein or 10+ herds for other breeds or
Blank U.S. sampling status if semen distributed by 40 months from birth or
Sampled in at least 150 herds regardless of U.S. sampling status.

Type of proof

"Type of proof" is the indicator of whether the evaluation is for a bull evaluated in the United States as a young bull or is from another country. A code of 21 for type of proof indicates an evaluation based on imported semen from a bull proven outside the United States. Type of proof is assigned as 21 if the semen packager is foreign (from bull code number) or the country code of the international ID number is not USA and the bull was not evaluated in the United States by 7 years of age in 10+ herds. The purpose is to designate bulls that were used in the particular country after merit was known from sampling in another country. Bulls that are reported as under the control of a foreign organization but with semen distributed in the United States by the time that they are 48 months old are assigned a type of proof of 11 or 12.

Daughter/herd requirements

Data for bulls with type of proof = 21 (second-country evaluations) are used only if there are 150+ daughters in 50+ herds for Holsteins, 30+ daughters in 10+ herds for Guernseys, and 80+ daughters in 20+ herds for other breeds. Although information from the second country is valuable for knowing how the bull is doing there, preferential treatment of daughters and importation of many or all of the daughters are of concern.