Step 3: Choose Your Bulls

The third step, Choose Your Bulls, provides you with options to choose mating sires using multiple filters. You can also use this step to add any existing semen inventory to your genetic plan or set a bull's semen type.

Click the arrow to view a bull's trait data and other details, or click a bull's IDClosed Identifier to view it's profile in a side panel.

Expand the topics below to learn more about choosing your bulls, including additional bulls, setting dose limits, setting a bull's semen type, or viewing a genetic summary: 

Follow the steps below to continue:

1

Set your filters. You have multiple filter options: 

Use this filter to display only the sires you manually selected from the listing on the right side of the page. Quickly locate sires using the Search field to find bulls by NAABClosed National Association of Animal Breeders. www.naab-css.org code, Name, IntRegNum, or country-specific ID. Then, click the checkboxes for the bulls you'd like to select. You can expand individual bulls to view their trait values. See Alta PTA and Trait Data below for a listing of the details that are included for each bull.

Filter bulls by Alta product line.

Filter by specific traits and trait values. You can add a minimum or maximum value for each trait, or add both to set a range.

NOTE: If necessary, the trait value can be set to a negative value to provide additional control and flexibility in filtering bulls by specific traits. Add a - (hyphen) before the number to set a negative value.

Click the delete icon delete icon to remove a filter.

Filter by numeric Index values for the bulls. You can add a minimum or maximum value for each trait, or add both to set a range.

Click Clear filters to remove all filters and start over.

2

Expand individual bulls to view Predicted Transmitting Ability (PTAClosed Predicted Transmitting Ability) and trait details.

  • Milk: PTA for Milk
  • Protein: PTA for Protein
  • Fat: PTA for Fat
  • PL: Productive Life
  • DPR: Daughter Pregnancy Rate
  • SCS: Somatic Cell Score
  • SCE: Sire Calving Ease
  • UDC: Udder Composite
  • FLC: Feet and Legs Composite
  • STA: Stature
  • DCE: Daughter Calving Ease
  • SSB: Sire Stillbirth
  • DSB: Daughter Stillbirth
  • CCR: Cow Conception Rate
  • HCR: Heifer Conception Rate
  • LIV: Cow Livability
  • BC: Body Weight Composite
  • NM$: Net Merit Index
  • A2 Beta Casein
  • DWP$: Dairy Wellness Profit Index
3

View matching bulls in a table or card format.

4

Click the top checkbox to select all bulls that match your criteria, or click individual bulls to select a subset.

5

Click on a bull tier to quickly scroll to that level.

6

Click Continue to proceed to Step 4: Create Your Strategy.

NOTE: You can manually add bulls if you did not find them in Alta BLUE LINK, as well as edit existing bulls that you have manually added or view existing bulls that others have manually added. See Add Bulls to learn more.

To add bulls to your plan that are not on the Alta marketing list, use the Options button Options button and select Include Additional Bulls.

Use the side panel to find the bull by NAAB code, Name, International Registration Number (IntRegNum), or country-specific ID and click Save to include the bull in your plan.

If you make a mistake or want to remove a bull, click the delete icon for that bull.

Click a bull's ID to open its side panel and check the Conventional and/or Sexed checkboxes to set the Semen Type.

NOTE: This setting only applies to the current genetic plan and will reset to the default setting in the marketing list when you create a new plan.

After you have selected the bulls for your plan, you can view a summary of the bulls' traits. Use the Options button Options button and select See Genetic Summary for Chosen Bulls.

The summary displays.

Scroll to the right to see additional genetic traits. If you added third-party bulls to your plan, use the check box at the top to show or hide them.

This page uses interactive column headers that allow you to rearrange the columns, adjust the column widths, and change which columns appear on the table. You can access most of these features by clicking on the column menu in the column you want to change.

Expand the sections below to learn more:

You can reorder the way columns display by clicking in the header of the column you want to move and dragging it to its new location.

To adjust the width of a column, click and drag the right end of the column header left or right to shrink or expand the column accordingly.

From the first tab of the column menu, you can choose to automatically resize the selected column, resize all columns, or restore all columns to their default widths.

To add or remove columns from the page, click the second tab of the column menu and then check or uncheck the boxes to select which columns to display.

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