Conventional Semen Proven Sires

Progeny testing:

It is commercially important in animal breeding to determine the true breeding value of an animal especially males which are used extensively for propagation of best germplasm. The extensive use of artificial insemination in domestic animals has helped in increasing the selection intensity on male animals. This selection tool is usually used for characters that are sex-limited and usually with low heritability E.g., milk production in females. A bull cannot be assessed for milk production, however, the performance of their female offspring can be used to determine the use of the animal for future crosses.

What is done in progeny testing?

A progeny test is performed by mating the male with a number of females to produce many progenies in a different environment and over a long time period involving different seasons to nullify the impact of season, management and environment in breeding value estimation. The average performance of the offspring is then found, giving a measure of the male’s respective value to the breeder.

Field progeny testing;

The field-based progeny testing is highly required when the selected bulls are to be distributed in a large area to many farmers in different environments. Conducting a field-based progeny testing activity, especially in smallholder production systems require huge resources of both financial and infrastructural like a large A.I. network, robust and dynamic data collection and analysis system and also existing progeny testing programme requires more time hence semen produced from proven sires is always comparatively costlier.   

BAIF’s program of progeny testing:

This program is now 38 years old. BAIF declared the test evaluation on Holstein X Zebu crossbred bulls with excellent progeny test results. The present program is aimed at evaluating the crossbred bulls at farmer level management under the aggies of ICAR-CIRC, Meerut. BAIF is one of the units in central India along with three other FPT unis of Uttarakhand, Punjab and Keral states. During the period of 2014-2019 another field progeny testing program for HF crossbred bulls are implemented in Uttar Pradesh state under National Dairy Plan-I and post NDP period the programme is being implemented in 38 CDC’s. During NDP project period semen doses of 85 bulls were used for test inseminations and progenies from first bull batch completed their performance and other bulls’ progeny are under milk recording stage.

Semen doses availability:

The semen doses of proven sires available with BAIF for HF crossbreed bulls and for such bulls the information on the contemporary comparison (C.C.) relative breeding value (R.B.V.) for milk of the progeny tested bulls is provided in sire directory. The efforts are also being made to evaluate the bulls based on genomic breeding values and in near future semen from gnomically selected bulls will be available for breeding the field animals.