Due to a delay in the distribution of Interbull evaluations, the release of official bull evaluation files was delayed. Other (cow) evaluations files were available Friday, May 6th (encrypted) as usual. A file including U.S. evaluations for bulls was created (format 38) and made available Friday, May 6th (encrypted) ftp://aipl.arsusda.gov/pub/bulls/38dom.zip, however this file included evaluations which would not be official if the Interbull evaluation for the bull was designated official when released. Interbull discovered that Ayrshire, Guernsey, Holstein and Jersey pedigree data from UK was invalid (paternal grandsire was supplied as maternal grandsire). Interbull recalculated the evaluations for all traits for those breeds. Complete files were available by Monday, May 9th.
By Paul VanRaden
AIPL discovered that Interbull type data was not included in the weekend recalculation of Net Merit and Productive Life for Holstein bulls with foreign daughters. Other breeds bulls, and other traits for Holstein were not affected. Tom Lawlor supplied a corrected MACE file on Saturday, May 7th, but one of the steps to reload this into the AIPL database did not get rerun. Thus, domestic composites were used for bulls with US daughters, but most foreign Holstein bulls had only parent average rather than PTA for conformation used in calculating NM$ and PL. Corrected values will be distributed for 1443 bulls that have NAAB codes, including 68 bulls with Foreign Available status and 23 with Active AI status. Of the Active bulls, the highest NM$ bull affected was 151HO381 Vantage-PT Booster, whose NM$ decreased from 427 to 359. NM$ also changed for foreign bulls without NAAB codes.
TPI's were correct except that PL changed slightly for some foreign bulls that had few PL daughters. The problem was discovered after Dr. Matthias Riedl reported differences between German and US rankings to Ole Meland, who forwarded the observation to us. AIPL apologizes for this mistake. New format 38 files were made available Thursday, May 12th and these included the current AI status codes.