Today, thanks to genomics, instead of selling only the semen of proven bulls, we also sell the semen of young sires whose genomic selection is based on the genotyping of 50,000 DNA markers. This was a fairly fast-moving development in dairy cattle.
Young bulls don't produce a lot of semen because they're young, so we have to make a choice. When we have the best bulls, there's tremendous competition for them, because both Canadian and foreign farmers want their semen. So we have to decide who gets the semen of the best bulls. And that means we have to make decisions that don't necessarily make everyone happy. We do try, however, to give our owners, the CIAQ, WestGen and EastGen, priority.