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svennis wrote:

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Christof wrote:
There are farmers here in Germany that even don´t get the German young bulls of their herdbook organisation because their herd average or herd size is not high enough! Not the right way in my eyes!

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Testing in very small herds makes no sense at all! You need enough contemporary animals calving in the same herd and season to calculate reliable indices. Daughters in herds with few contemporary animals deliver nearly no information for breeding value estimation. Bearing in mind that testing one bull costs roughly about 25,000€ why should AI companies waste their money with testing bulls in herds where their daughters would contribute nearly nothing to the bulls breeding value.
Furthermore it also makes no sense to test bulls in low yielding herds (average e.g. 6500 kg). In these herds the genetic differences between the animals won`t become apparent enough, because the best cow probably yields 7500kg and the worst maybe 5500kg. In higher averaging herds the genetic differences will become more apperent and therefore the estimated breeding values will be more accurate.

By the way restricting young sire sampling to certain herds is not only done in Germany. Many other international AI organisations are doing this and often much more restrictive. Look at Alta... CRI announced to reduce the amount of cooperator herds and Acclerated and Select Sires also have special cooperator herds. To cite the prerequisites for being a PGA herd you should have at least 40 cows and an average or higher production in the area in which you herd is located.
In my opinion there is much more room to optimise German breeding programs in terms of testing efficiency! Apart from that I agree with you that a neutral classification system should be established. I think I already mentioned this somewhere on this board before.

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