Monday, February 2, 2015

News: Farmers Say Goodbye To Bull Who Sired 500,000 Offspring

I'm guessing he died from exhaustion.
Farmers Say Goodbye To Bull Who Sired 500,000 Offspring

SHAWANO, Wis.—Atop a wooded hill here in the heart of America’s Dairyland, an industry legend was recently laid to rest.

It wasn’t some milk magnate or a famed innovator, but an ornery, 2,700-pound bull named Toystory—a titan of artificial insemination who sired an estimated 500,000 offspring in more than 50 countries.

“He was a dream bull,” said Jan Hessel Bierma, editor in chief of dairy-breeding magazine Holstein International.

In the increasingly high-tech world of cow reproduction, a top bull’s career tends to last just a few years as farmers chase better genetics to boost milk output and animal durability. Rare is the bull with the genes and testicular fortitude to sell a million units of semen, known among breeders as the millionaires club.

Over nearly a decade, Toystory shattered the record for sales of the slender straws that hold about 1/20th of a teaspoon and are shipped using liquid nitrogen to farmers around the world. A unit fetches anywhere from a few dollars to several hundred.

(read more)



source

0 comments:

Post a Comment