The australian sires fertility list needs changing

[triplev123]

.......and bugger me if I can get the tables I wanted to add to this post to transfer properly.
I'll get back to you shortly.

[triplev123]

Sires Fertility List
I’ve long held the view that the current Australia 'Sires Fertility List' is very poorly named & quite ill-conceived.

The current format.
Sire Total Services Normal Births Mare died birth (1) Mare slipped (2) Mare missed Foal died (3) Mare died (4) No Returns Percentage


Proposed changes to format.
Sire Total Services On Farm PTIF/% Semen Transport PTIF/% Mares Missed Normal Births No Returns Percentage

The reason I propose these changes is that I believe the current format and in particularly the columns marked as (1) (2) (3) & (4) to be of absolutely no assistance whatsoever to Breeders seeking to make an informed decision about a given Sire’s fertility. A Breeder comes away none the wiser for having paid for, downloaded and read over them...and given the time and cost involved in compiling them on the part of HRA and the fact that Breeders pay for access to these figures, this is completely unacceptable.
At the same time as basically doing nothing to help the cause of the Breeders, the current format also serves to quite adversely & most unfairly affect a Sire’s true fertility figures, his job being done once the mare goes in foal.

While it is obvious that the number of mares that missed should be recorded against a sire's fertility....I am of the opinion that no sire can reasonably be held responsible for in-foal mares subsequently slipping, for mares dying, for foals dying at or soon after birth etc. yet under the current format/ system....THEY ARE? Why?

Once again, I’d like to underline the fact that THE CURRENT LIST... IS NOT A SIRES FERTILITY LIST.

It is a LIVE FOALS TO MARES BRED LIST ONLY....and it does nobody any good.

A true Sires Fertility List should be a strict measurement of a Sire’s Fertility, of his capacity to get mares in foal. No more, no less. A sire’s fertility does not subsequently cause a mare to slip an early pregnancy, to die during gestation or birth and nor can a sire be reasonably held responsible for foals that die during, at or after birth.

THOSE ARE NOT FERTILITY RELATED ISSUES. THEY ARE HUSBANDRY/VET CARE RELATED ISSUES.

To underline the absolute folly of the current format, the TRUE figures for the 2009/2010 Season are in fact 6299 mares served and in foal plus 211 no returns, from a total of 8,415 services performed and this amounts to a much healthier In Foal/Sires Fertility figure of 74.85%.

Interested in everyone's thoughts.

[justdoit]

Hi TripleV123,
That being the result of the sense that is rearly used, common sense.

To add to that and to assist breeders a % infoal per mares cycle for each stallion. This would
also help when choosing a stallion to breed, given the cost of a single breeding and the cost
of having later foals every year

You would never get a job at HRV..haha

[triplev123]

That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a while justdoit. I'm not overly endowed with that sense as a rule so many thanks.
I wrestled with various ideas on how to re-design the current format because having been defeated at the first clash in the past by such things I was very mindful of that old Chestnut "That'll take some IT work and right now we haven't got the $$$ to do that so..." and that sort of thing...so I managed to come up with a new format that kept the same number of columns as the current format and merely removed the irrelevant to breeders information columns and their respective headings & replaced them with the aspects of the modern day business that would really make a difference to Breeders.
I've passed this on to Andrew Kelly and Harvey Kaplan, both Panel Members & I sincerely hope that it gets a fair hearing from the wider group. Quite frankly I will be right royally pissed off if it doesn't. That's a distinct possibility because at the Menangle meeting the other night I got the impression that John Bagshaw wasn't at all keen on the idea of having the On Farm & Off Farm services broken up into two seperate figures followed by the respective PTIF %'s recorded by each breeding method. Maybe he didn't understand what I was getting at, maybe he did, but that's the impression I was left with anyway. I don't think he's a fan. We shall see. I can't see how anyone could reasonably object to it but hey, anything's possible I guess.

[justdoit]

Hi TripleV123,
Anything that could possibly have a negative impact on a stallions or a farms marketing will not get much
support by this panel.
The farms have this and more info that they could give breeders, it is up to them.

Try breeding Brahman or Angus Cattle and you will get alot more information, breed averages for just about
anything you can imagine.

[triplev123]

I'm starting to think along those same lines justdoit.
It seemed to be all well and good, very much good fellow well met, when we were going through the admittedly very interesting overheads but for what was no doubt a largely predetermined outcome...but raise something which required a little more discussion and some in-depth analysis and it started to look more than a bit wobbly.
I raised the On-farm & Off-farm data being presented and, call me a cynic but the predetermined aspect was confirmed for me when the immediate false negative was put forward from that area of the business, one that I was ready for, "How can we possibly determine which yearlings were bred on-farm vs Semen Transport?" I was just a bit suprised by that. This was followed by "Yes but so much of the Industry relies on semen transport now so what would be the worth?" Again, that's a furphy because there is still a significant amount of 'on-farm' work being done and the infinitely better figures that engenders serves, in some cases, to bolster the overall fertility figures of some sires that cover mares on both an on farm and semen transport basis.
It also became clear that apparently few bother to look at their Service Certificates because Semen Transport breedings are duly noted thereon. The data is already available, just that it is not being used...at all.
In fact ALL of the Stats that Breeders require to allow them to make significantly better informed decisions are available to us right now.
In one form or another they are already being collected either on a State or on a National basis, it's just that they are not being used effectively & presented accordingly. With each State now linked via that computer network who's name escapes me at present, I can't see the problem.
As such, and as I pointed out to Andrew Kelly the other night, we need not embark on some bold new statistical gathering journey, we need not even spend vast amounts re-jigging the database...rather we merely need to quite simply reformat the presentation of currently existing streams of information (by way of re-naming existing columns on the current report format).
The more that I look at and into the quality of the information the current format offers the observer, which is zilch, I just can't believe the grossly misnomered HRA Sires Fertility List has been allowed to survive for so long, unchallenged. It is nothing short of a shambles. Whoever came up with that format was clearly unable to determine the information which cuts to the chase from that which serves virtually no Breeder educational purpose whatsoever.
It's a fact that we already know exactly how many mares are served on-farm and off.
It's a fact that the resultant number of services carried out and the resultant In-foal %'s for each breeding basis are already available.
It's a fact that the current format disguises a MASSIVE Husbandry issue in Australia by way of around 13.5% of all mares that initially went in foal, failing to go on and produce a live foal.
It's a fact that the Breeders currently & invariably seek to lay the blame for this discrepancy at the feet of the Studs, when the figures tell a vastly different story...their mares are going In-foal at a very good rate given the widespread use of Semen Transport in this Country....it's that they're just not getting over the 'produce a live foal line' come foaling time or soon after that is the issue.
It's a fact that the TRUE In-foal % here in Australia is around 74.5%, not the dreadful 61.7% that the current List erroneously proclaims.
Again, as noted in my initial post to this thread, the gap between the two figures is as a result of entirely non-sire related issues. They are instead HUSBANDRY issues but sit back and watch some of the Breeders squirm when you mention that aspect. Lastly...
It's a fact that the collation and presentation of ALL such currently collected figures would serve to produce a fundamentally better informed Breeding Industry.

I can't see how they could not adopt those proposed changes in entirety. There is no valid not to do so.

[justdoit]

Hi TripleV123,
A stallions or a mares breeding efficiency should be
their ability to produce offspring that reach the races?
The on farm/off farm stats do not interest me, unless my mares are not infoal

[triplev123]

G'day justdoit,

I think it would tell you a whole lot about sires and their viability on-farm vs off-farm however for me the major thing is the 13%+ margin between the mares that the stallions get in foal and those that go on to produce a live foal.
While there's obviously no way that figure can be reduced to zero it nevertheless serves to rather starkly highlight that there is a MASSIVE Husbandry issue here in Australia.
The fact that around 74.5% of all mares served actually go in foal...but only 61.7% go on to produce a live foal speaks to a general lack of mare care post breeding through to foaling and to a general lack of foal care beyond that.
At present many within the Breeding fraternity are extremely fond of assigning the poor reproduction figures to the sires & the studfarms...as they invariably do with almost anything that goes against them in that arena...however, the loss figures speak for themselves. Fault lies a whole lot closer to home, in fact squarely upon their doorstep in many instances.

[justdoit]

Hi TripleV123,
The 13+% of mares need to be looked at individually and then IMO their will be little surprise as to which mares have failed to produce live foals.

[triplev123]

G'day justdoit,

Agreed. You said that "their will be little surprise as to which mares have failed to produce live foals".
I think we might be on the same wave here.
Are you alluding to the owner/s of mares that failed to produce a live foal?...that this group is more than likely made up of multiple repeat offenders in that regard?
Or are you getting at something else?