ANGUS Australia has released an addition to the Angus SaleSelect tool, called Angus SemenSelect.

This companion tool makes it easier for breeders of Angus cattle to search for and find the semen most suitable to their AI breeding programs.

Almost 50 percent of registered Angus calves are the result of AI, making the selection of semen sires very important to the rate of genetic progress in individual herds and the breed.

Education officer at Angus Australia, Liz Roan, said users of Angus SaleSelect would quickly master Angus SemenSelect, as the interfaces shared many features in common.

“It’s a two-step process,” she said. “First, users choose the catalogue or catalogues of interest, or search across all catalogues, and then they refine their search by applying extra selection criteria to the sires.”

Sires can be selected on a range of criteria such as registration status, colour and number of progeny, along with pedigree, genetic test results and EBVs. Minimum and maximum values can be applied to any of the Angus Selection Indexes or EBVs, along with cutoffs for accuracy or percentile bands.

The best thing about the new SemenSelect tool was that users can use it to search across all semen catalogues at once, Ms Roan said.

“The user doesn’t need to know who is storing or selling the semen – instead, they can search all of the semen lots currently available for sale, refining the search using criteria to find the best fit for the females in their herd and the breeding objectives of the business.”

The ability to search across all catalogues and lots at the same time meant that Angus breeders had a greater chance of finding exactly the right match for their requirements.

“For example, producers who are looking for semen from bulls with high EMA and IMF EBVs, while maintaining low calving difficulty, don’t need to go looking for bulls based on their name or owner details. With Angus SemenSelect, they can identify them by searching through the EBVs of sires with semen available,” Ms Roan said.

“It really does provide great flexibility. A user who’s signed in, can sort on any field and customise the display of results so they only look at those traits of importance to their enterprise.”

The ability to print search results, either in a tabular format or a compact one animal to a page format, is also available to registered users, something that has been identified as lacking in the past.

“The great benefit in Angus Australia moving to the new suite of Angus Select tools is our access to in-house software developers,” Ms Roan said.

“By having our own programmers developing our own Angus-specific tools, we can quickly respond to feedback from producers to tweak or enhance the systems to make them even more effective. It increases our ability to be responsive to our members’ needs.”

Source: Angus Australia