He classified VG-85, fought for every straw of semen, and died at eight. Then his daughters rewrote the sire lists—and quietly built the pedigree of the bull in your tank today.

Nobody writes a bull’s obituary while he’s still delivering daughters.

But that’s almost what happened in the spring of 2012. The genomic era had arrived, young sires were being ranked by DNA before their daughters ever freshened, and every serious breeding program was learning a new language of reliability and risk. Then the April sire summaries dropped, and there he was: Long-Langs Oman Oman-ET, VG-85-GM, the bull everyone simply called Man-O-Man—standing as the No. 2 U.S. TPI sire at +2247. He was also the highest proven bull in the breed for TPI on a 100% RHA basis: a fully Registered Holstein pedigree, no grade blood anywhere behind him.

And then he was gone.

Accelerated Genetics announced his death that same spring, before the breed had really finished measuring him. He was only eight years old. Respiratory trouble had dogged him most of his life, making semen production a constant battle and limiting the inventory breeders could actually get their hands on. In a business where one great bull can shape millions of cows, that kind of scarcity changes everything. Every straw mattered. Every mating carried a little more weight.

Here’s the thing—Man-O-Man wasn’t the biggest, flashiest, prettiest bull the Holstein world had ever seen. He classified VG-85, respectable but hardly the stuff of show-ring mythology. His genius was quieter than that. It lived in daughters that milked hard, held together, bred back, and then turned around and became the mothers of the next generation of elite sires. He wasn’t just a bull you used. He was a bull you built from.

Act I — Before Genomics Had a Name

To understand Man-O-Man, you have to go back to the early 2000s, when Holstein breeding was having one of those uncomfortable conversations it seems to have every couple of decades. Production had climbed beautifully. The milk was there. But the cows, too often, weren’t sticking around long enough to pay the bills the way dairymen needed them to.

Fertility was slipping. Productive life mattered more than it had in years. Somatic cell score was no longer a footnote buried at the bottom of the proof sheet. The commercial dairyman—the one milking twice or three times a day, watching the cull list with a pencil in his hand—wanted more than a cow that peaked high. He wanted a cow that came back tomorrow. And the lactation after that. And the one after that.

Into that moment walked O-Bee Manfred Justice-ET. O-Man.

His proof looked different because his daughters were different. They brought production, sure, but they also carried the health traits the breed was starving for: productive life, daughter fertility, somatic cell score, the kind of quiet durability that turns a good cow into a profitable one. One source calls him the “fitness saviour of the breed” when he broke through in 2003, and AI organizations around the world answered by sampling hundreds of his sons. By August 2009, O-Man sons would hold five of the top ten spots in the high-ranking sire reports—and the pull toward shorter, stronger, more functional Holsteins was on in earnest.

Now, O-Man’s own story had a bit of magic in it. His dam, Meier-Meadows El-Jezebel EX-92-GMD, was the kind of cow people remembered long after they’d left the barn. Sire analyst Charlie Will called her “just an awesome individual,” saying she gave a lot of milk “without even stressing herself at all”. The Obert family of Dakota, Illinois—Gaylon, Gary, and Steve—had bought Jezebel as a three-month-old calf at the Illinois State Sale, and Gaylon put it the way only a cattleman would: any 4-H group would’ve picked her out of the lineup, because “it was that clear-cut”. No spreadsheet poetry there. Just a calf you couldn’t walk past.

Mated to Ha-Ho Cubby Manfred, Jezebel produced O-Man—and O-Man sent his sons to the top of sire lists on four continents.

One of those sons arrived April 30, 2004: Long-Langs Oman Oman-ET, registration HOUSA000135746776, NAAB code 014HO04929, UK AI code FH3100. His sire was O-Man. His dam was Winning-Way Marci-ET (VG-89), bred by Randy Blodgette —a Dixie-Lee Aaron daughter. Look one generation deeper and the cow power keeps coming: Marci traced through PETICOTE BWOOD MOZZETTA a VG Bellwood daughter, then PETICOTE MASCOT MAYDAY an EX Mascot daughter. This wasn’t a lucky outcross. It was stacked, proven female depth behind a fashionable young sire.

Look at that sire stack for a second. O-Man brought health and function. Aaron brought production snap. Bellwood, further back, added structural foundation and production credibility that ran to one of the great fitness-and-yield families of the late twentieth century. And the cow-family depth behind it was something else again. The pedigree traces back through Pond-Oak Elevation Pumpkin VG-87, her Valiant daughter Mandy, Mandy’s Bell daughter Melody, and the famous donor Al-Hart Rotate Martha VG-88.

Picture that last one. A late afternoon in 1990, the light going soft, a visit to Bill Pettit’s Huff’n Puff ET/Peticote Farm in New Jersey—and there stands Rotate Martha, one of America’s most popular donors of her day, chewing her cud in the fading light. Nobody standing in that pen knew they were looking at the sixth dam of a bull who’d shake the breed a generation later. That’s usually how it goes. Tomorrow’s history stands around looking like today’s good cow.

And this is where it gets interesting.

Modern genomics weren’t in the picture yet when Man-O-Man was born. What the AI organizations did have was a precursor—the marker test. Crude next to today’s genomic evaluations, but useful enough to make sire analysts lean in. Man-O-Man had a full brother who showed better on conformation. Accelerated Genetics chose Man-O-Man anyway, because his marker test came back higher.

Think about that for a second. Before the genomic age truly opened, before every calf arrived with a spreadsheet of promises attached, somebody stood between two brothers and trusted the test over the prettier package.

They were right.

Act II — Scarcity, Suspense, and the Number That Changed Everything

Great bulls usually earn their chance through sheer volume. Semen gets collected, shipped, sampled, proven, then used harder and harder. Man-O-Man never had that clean road.

His respiratory issues fought him from the start, and they changed the way his genetics could move through the breed. The waiting period—that long stretch when AI organizations sit on a young bull’s semen while his daughters are born, freshen, and slowly write his proof—was tighter for him than anyone wanted. There was no deep tank waiting for the whole world. Breeders who wanted him often found demand had already run out ahead of supply.

That obstacle could’ve buried him. Plenty of useful bulls have vanished into bad timing, thin inventory, or plain biology. Man-O-Man had all three leaning on him at once.

So Accelerated Genetics had to be surgical about it. The semen that existed went mostly to elite, high-index females, which meant a lot of his daughters came out of some of the deepest cow families available. That wasn’t luck. That was triage. When you don’t have enough of a great bull, you don’t scatter him around—you put him where the odds of breeding the next great one run highest.

Then came August 2009.

Five years after that marker-test gamble, Man-O-Man became the No. 1 TPI sire among all American tested sires. Not a fashionable young genomic bull. A daughter-proven bull, sitting on top of the tested list—and he got there at the precise moment modern DNA technology stepped onto the stage.

That was the turning point. The whole story bends right here.

Picture the breeder at his kitchen table that fall, coffee going cold beside the proof sheets, trying to make sense of a breed that had suddenly changed its own rules. Genomics was starting to whisper what calves might become before the parlor ever confirmed a thing. And there, bridging the old world and the new, stood a bull chosen by a marker test and validated by his daughters—suddenly one of the most wanted sires of sons on earth.

What no one fully saw coming was how well he’d fit that new genomic machinery. As the No. 1 TPI sire, he became one of the most heavily used sires of sons, and genomics let the AI companies sort his highest-testing sons early. In country after country, young Man-O-Man sons climbed the DNA rankings, making him one of the first major sires of sons in the genomic era to throw a whole crop of high-testing sons. Looking back, that plain little marker-test decision from 2004 doesn’t look like a gamble anymore. It looks like a door swinging open.

But daughters still had to speak. They always do. And his did.

Walk into a freestall barn milking his daughters and you’d have seen it before you saw a single number—black-and-white cows filing in on sound feet, filling the parlor without fuss, the kind of herd that doesn’t make a herdsman’s morning harder than it has to be. His UK evaluation, under AHDB and Holstein UK, put figures to that impression: a Milk PTA of +193 kg at 99% reliability, built on 10,446 daughters across 1,617 herds. Read those numbers again. Ten thousand daughters. Sixteen hundred herds. Somewhere in Cheshire there was a herdsman pulling clusters in the gray morning light who’d never once said the bull’s name, who just knew the black-and-white cow in the third stall bred back clean every year and never gave him trouble—and multiply that quiet trust by sixteen hundred barns and you understand what the number really means. That’s not a kitchen-table impression or a lucky first crop; that’s enough cows, in enough barns, under enough different management, that excuses get very hard to find. His Australian proof told the same story from the other side of the world: 363 daughters in 73 herds, 99% production reliability. The bull traveled.

And his daughters weren’t bred for applause first. They were bred for work. The records and the breeder reports describe hard-working, trouble-free cows—functional udders, useful feet and legs, the O-Man family habit of staying useful instead of just looking good on one September afternoon. They weren’t flawless. Breeders learned to watch rump angle, since pin setting could run a touch high, and that became a standard corrective-mating note for any serious Man-O-Man program. No real legend is perfect. The useful ones almost never are.

What set him apart was the combination. Some bulls give you health. Some give you milk. Some give you daughters people love to look at but don’t necessarily want a whole barn of. Man-O-Man landed in that narrow, valuable middle—enough production, enough health, enough function, enough pedigree horsepower to be dangerous in the very best sense.

And then his daughters started becoming bull mothers.

By December 2012, The Bullvine had counted six Man-O-Man daughters worldwide carrying genomic LPI numbers higher than his own index: Comestar Lautamai Man O Man, Stantons Manoman Ezra, Seagull-Bay Shauna Saturn, Benner Manoman Janesse, Donnandale Manoman Jakarta, and Ste Odile Manoman Model Saphir. That’s the moment a bull’s whole reputation shifts. He’s not just making daughters anymore. He’s making launchpads.

Then came the August 2012 Canadian genomic list. Imagine the analyst running a highlighter down the top 50 that morning and slowly realizing he’d shaded the same sire’s name eighteen times—eighteen of the top 50 bulls were Man-O-Man sons, averaging +3038 gLPI, +1728 kg milk, +94 kg fat, +81 kg protein. One. Two. Five. Ten. Eighteen. One sire, over and over, until you set the paper down and just shake your head.

That kind of repetition gets a breed’s full attention.

Act III — The Clone, the Daughters, and the Long Echo

There’s a cruelty in the timing that still stings. The very year Man-O-Man’s sons were flooding the top of the lists—the year the breed finally understood what it had—the bull himself couldn’t hold on to see it. He died before his second-crop proof ever arrived. The daughters were still coming in, still confirming everything the marker test had promised back in 2004, and the animal who made them was already gone.

Accelerated Genetics had seen it coming, though. Man-O-Man 2, clone code 014HO06429, was already two years old when the original died, offered to breeders as early as 2011. And here’s the quiet irony: the clone was expected to produce so much semen that his lifetime total would soon pass the original’s limited output entirely. Later classified VG-86 at two years and five months, Man-O-Man 2 even scored a point higher than the bull he was copied from. One can only imagine the mixed feelings around the stud that day—pride that the copy had held up, maybe even bettered the model, tangled with something quieter about the original who’d never get the chance to prove what those extra straws might’ve built.

Cloning always makes cattle people argue, and it should. Is the clone really “the same” bull? How do you think about proof, identity, and inbreeding risk when a handful of great sires already dominate global use? Those weren’t idle debates in a breed watching its elite base narrow. Man-O-Man himself carried haplotype considerations that demanded careful mating, a reminder that no great sire gives without asking for discipline in return.

But for the breeder with a string of Man-O-Man daughters milking away without complaint, the clone wasn’t a philosophy seminar. It was access. It meant the genetics he’d bet on weren’t disappearing just because one bull’s lungs had failed him.

The real memorial, though, was never the clone. It was the daughters.

Four of Eastside Lewisdale Gold Missy’s milking daughters in 2013 carried Man-O-Man’s name—and in a cow family as celebrated as Gold Missy’s, nobody uses a bull four times by accident. His top genomic daughters became the cows AI organizations circle in red: high enough to flush, high enough to build sons from, high enough to move a whole family forward. Rivendell Oman Oman Pussy-ET, a New Zealand-bred daughter out of Rivendell Farm Ltd, earned EX classification and was still a Cow of the Year finalist as a 12-year-old in 2024. That last part matters, because longevity was part of the promise from the beginning. These daughters didn’t just come in hot and fade. A lot of them aged right into their usefulness.

Then came the sons and the grandsons, and the story stopped being about one bull at all.

At the time of his death, Man-O-Man’s leading sons by parent average GTPI included Amighetti Numero Uno at +2587 gTPI, Ladys-Manor Man-O-Shan, Texel Beauty Cosmo, and GenerVations Lexor. Numero Uno—a Man-O-Man son from Amighetti Shottle Ave Ty VG-89-ITA—later carried a PLI of +529, a TPI of +2381, and an LPI of +3012 in his December 2017 evaluations. Other sons and descendants spread the influence across borders: Delta G-Force, Marbri Facebook, Gen-I-Beq Lavaman, Famous Man, Firmin Pom, Maserati.

The Marbri Facebook branch deserves a moment of its own. One of Facebook’s notable daughters was Ransom-Rail Paris—dam of JaltaOak, the sire of S-S-I PR Renegade, and third dam behind Global Cow Siemers Lambda Paris EX-91, herself the dam of Parfect. That’s not a footnote in a pedigree book. That’s a bridge straight into today’s active sire stack.

And Renegade walks that bridge right into the barn you’re standing in this morning.

S-S-I PR Renegade, one of the most popular transmitters of the modern era, has already thrown a long line of influential sons—Trooper, Parfect, Rupert, Taos, Conway—and those sons are throwing sons of their own. In Renegade’s first four generations, only two sires show up twice: Man-O-Man and Shottle. The strength conversation around Renegade is where it really comes home. His +1.04 strength linear is rated rare in today’s Holstein market, and it traces back through JaltaOak, AltaOak, Facebook, Millington, Davinci, Snowman, and the O-Man lines behind them.

Here’s what that means in plain barn talk: when breeders today argue about putting strength back into Holsteins—real strength, not just more stature—they’re still circling the same questions O-Man and Man-O-Man forced onto the table twenty years ago. Not every answer runs through them. But a surprising number of the important arguments still do.

Cookiecutter Mom Halo VG-88 might be the most glamorous proof of Man-O-Man’s maternal power. A direct daughter, Halo earned Global Cow recognition in 2019, landed in the top ten of Holstein International’s 2021 competition for the world’s most influential brood cows, and topped the 2022 Ducket Holstein Sale at $1,925,000. Read that price again and remember where it started—a short-lived, hard-to-collect bull who fought for every straw. Her half-sister Clear-Echo M-O-M 2150 VG-87, out of the famous Clear-Echo Ramos 1200, became a foundation cow behind a cluster of influential sires; her granddaughter De-Su Delta 4900 placed three sons—Tahiti, Venture, and Ginetta—in the TPI top 20 in 2022. That’s how a maternal sire proves himself. Not with one headline. With layers, stacked generation on generation.

The records tell us one thing—birth date, stud code, proof, score, daughter counts, son lists. But cattle people know the record never tells the whole story. It doesn’t catch the breeder standing over a scarce straw, deciding which donor it’s worth spending on. It doesn’t show the AI staff nursing a limited inventory and hoping the daughters would justify the faith. It doesn’t capture that first fresh Man-O-Man daughter walking into the parlor and making somebody stop and think, “All right. There’s something here.”

One can imagine those moments, because every breeding program has lived some version of them. The calf you almost passed on. The mating you argued over longer than you’d admit. The bull you used carefully because there wasn’t much semen and the invoice wasn’t small. The daughter who freshened and made you wish you’d bred ten more just like her.

That was Man-O-Man’s whole territory.

The Fine Print That Refused to Fade

You won’t find Long-Langs Oman Oman at the top of any active sire directory today. Proof sheets move on—they always do. The breed keeps a short memory the moment the next genomic numbers hit, and dairy farmers have bills due long before nostalgia can pay them.

But pedigrees remember what proof sheets forget.

Follow the maternal side of enough high-ranking Holsteins and Man-O-Man keeps surfacing right where the deepest influence usually hides—not always as the headline sire, but as the daughter-maker, the cow-family amplifier, the bull whose females handed later sires a platform to stand on. He’s there behind Renegade through the Facebook–Ransom-Rail Paris–JaltaOak line, he anchors the maternal side of Cookiecutter Mom Halo and Clear-Echo M-O-M 2150, and he turns up again in Numero Uno and Facebook—right at the heart of the argument breeders are still having about strength, health, and honest production.

That’s his permanent place. Not a flawless bull. Not a show-ring statue. A genetic hinge—the point where the door of the breed swung from one era into the next.

The Holstein world before O-Man and Man-O-Man was learning the hard, expensive way that production without function doesn’t pay. The world after them had real proof that fitness, production, and maternal power could be stacked together—if breeders were disciplined enough to manage the trade-offs. Man-O-Man didn’t solve every problem. What he handed the breed was a better set of tools, and maybe more valuable than that, a better set of questions.

Every mating meeting worth having still wrestles with which cow truly pays her way. Every serious breeder still hunts for the bull whose daughters become mothers. We’re all still trying to build production without draining the strength out of our cows, and still learning how to use greatness without narrowing the breed too far. Those questions belong on the table today just as much as they did in 2009.

Long-Langs Oman Oman-ET came into the world April 30, 2004—an O-Man son from Winning-Way Marci-ET, bred by Darin and Sonya Burnikel of Da-So-Burn Holsteins in Iowa, USA, registered HOUSA000135746776 and marketed as 014HO04929. He left it far too soon, with respiratory trouble strangling the very semen breeders wanted most. On paper, he departed a VG-85-GM bull ranked No. 2 for U.S. TPI at +2247, with a clone already waiting in the wings and daughters just beginning to reshape the breed.

But that’s only the official record.

The truer tribute is simpler. Man-O-Man made the whole breed reconsider what a great sire could be. He carried O-Man’s health revolution into the genomic age, turned a handful of scarce straws into lasting influence, and left behind daughters whose names still anchor the pedigrees of the bulls that matter most. And every time a strong, profitable Holstein walks out of the parlor looking better than she did the day before—every cow that milks, lasts, and raises the next one—you can still hear the quiet echo of the bull they called Man-O-Man.

Key Takeaways

• The best sires aren’t always the prettiest ones—Man-O-Man classified VG-85 but built a dynasty because his daughters milked, lasted, and bred back, then became the mothers of the next great bulls. Chase daughter-proven functionality, not just a flashy proof card.
• If you’re using popular O-Man-line genetics like Renegade for strength, watch your inbreeding and mate carefully around known haplotypes—that’s the discipline this bloodline demands in return for what it gives.
• When you look at a young sire, ask the Man-O-Man question: will his daughters become bull mothers, or just fill your parlor? The families that stack proven cows generation after generation are where lasting value hides.

Continue the Story

• The Golden Age of the Holstein: Farmer‑Bred Sires Who Built the Genomic Era – Long before spreadsheets took over, visionary breeders laid down the durability traits that defined an entire generation of cattle. This profile explores the era’s great master-maters—men who trusted functional conformation over flashy show banners—shaping the exact world that produced O-Man and Man-O-Man.
• MAN-O-MAN will he turn Platinum? – Written in the winter of 2012 as second-crop daughter proofs were arriving, this archival snapshot captures the electric tension, economic frenzy, and staggering international demand that surrounded Man-O-Man’s scarce semen supply just after his untimely death.
• They Called Mogul’s Heifers Fat. Then Came the Million Doses. – Follow the genetic trail forward into the full realization of the genomic age, where the industry applied the precise lessons learned from Man-O-Man. Discover how subsequent legendary sires utilized that stacked maternal power to completely dominate today’s active AI tanks.

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They mocked Mountfield SSI Dcy Mogul-ET for siring “fat heifers”—then his daughters made him the youngest millionaire in Select Sires history and reshaped four generations of Holsteins.

One million doses by age seven—the youngest in Select Sires history. Not bad for the bull breeders mocked for siring “fat heifers” before his daughters shut them up.

They called his heifers fat.

That was the word making the rounds through AI desks and breeding circles in 2013 and 2014, back when the first crop of Mountfield SSI Dcy Mogul-ET daughters were developing on farms across the Midwest and Northeast. Thick, deep-bodied heifers that didn’t fit the angular dairy frame most classifiers rewarded. Breeders who’d paid top-shelf semen prices were getting nervous. Select Sires themselves would later acknowledge it with unusual candor: their marquee genomic sire had been “criticized for siring ‘fat bred heifers.'”

Three years after that whisper campaign, the same bull became the youngest millionaire in Select Sires history. One million doses at seven years old. Only nine sires in the cooperative’s existence had ever reached that number, and the earlier ones typically needed a decade and a half to get there.

The distance between “fat heifers” and “youngest millionaire” is really the story of genomic-era Holstein breeding itself. And what happened in between—vindication, sons that reshaped international genetics, dominance that touched 16% of the breed’s pedigree architecture, and the inbreeding bill that came due—tells you as much about this industry’s strengths and blind spots as it does about any single bull.

The Dam Who Knew First

You can’t understand Mogul without understanding his mother. And you can’t understand his mother without understanding the moment in Holstein breeding when genomic testing was still something people argued about at open house tours and over bad coffee at cattle sales.

Mountfield Marsh Maxine-ET scored Very Good-88 with an Excellent Mammary System—VG-88-EX-MS-DOM, in the shorthand that keeps proof-sheet readers up past midnight. A daughter of Pasen Marsh-ET, she carried the maternal influence of Pine-Tree Missy Miranda-ET (VG-86-VG-MS-DOM), who traced back to one of the breed’s most consequential matriarchs: Wesswood-HC Rudy Missy EX-92-3E USA DOM GMD. That Missy cow family would eventually produce both Mogul and his stablemate Seagull-Bay Supersire—two bulls who’d combine for over 2.5 million doses and 16% of Holstein USA’s pedigree influence among top bulls. (Read more: The Phone Call That Built a Genetic Empire: The Wesswood-HC Rudy Missy Story)

Roger and Phil Marshfield ran their operation in Marcellus, New York, under the “Mountfield” herd prefix. They bred Maxine to Coyne-Farms Dorcy-ET (VG-87), a Bolton son known for transmitting functional type. A sound mating on paper. What walked out of it was something else entirely.

The Marshfields knew. Or at least they suspected.

You can picture how that suspicion took hold—not in a lab, but in the alley, over years of watching Maxine’s calves grow out. A breeder learns a cow by living with her. The way her bull calves carried more than her heifers did, season after season, until the pattern was impossible to ignore. By all accounts, that’s exactly the read Roger and Phil Marshfield made long before a chip could confirm it.

“We did realize early on that Mogul’s dam was an extraordinary cow that had that rare ability to transmit her extreme genetics no matter what bull is used,” Roger and Phil said after the millionaire milestone. “Before the science was available to prove it, we knew that her bulls seemed to transmit higher genetic traits than her heifer offspring.”

Before the science was available to prove it. One sentence, and you’ve got the entire fault line this industry was straddling in 2010—breeder eye on one side, genomic revolution on the other. Mogul was born June 22, 2010, right at the crossing point.

Select Sires purchased him as an embryo and enrolled him in their Aggressive Reproductive Technologies program—ART, the pipeline built to develop Holsteins that were genetically distinct from the general population. Nobody designing that program could’ve known what was sitting in that particular calf. Mogul would eventually become the first ART-program bull to ever hold the #1 GTPI spot among daughter-proven sires. But in the summer of 2010, he was just a calf with a pedigree and a genomic chip result.

The Promise on Paper

Mogul’s genomic evaluation dropped in December 2011: second-highest young sire in the breed. The numbers—+1,469 pounds milk, +87 fat, +52 protein, +3.55 PTAT—lit up every breeding desk in the country.

Now, you have to remember what December 2011 felt like. Half the industry still trusted only daughter proofs and treated genomic predictions like a weather forecast for next month—interesting, maybe directionally right, but you wouldn’t bet the mortgage. The other half was placing that bet every time they loaded an AI gun. Planet was still king of the proven sire list. Shottle daughters were the gold standard for type. And here comes this Bolton-grandson genomic calf out of Marcellus, New York, with numbers that said he might outdo them all.

But genomic numbers are promises. Daughters are proof.

When those first daughters freshened through 2013 and 2014, the initial reaction wasn’t standing ovations. It was skepticism. Walk a pen of first-calf Mogul heifers in those years and the frame hit you first—broader and deeper through the chest than the sharp, angular silhouette the show ring had trained an entire generation of breeders to prefer. These weren’t dairy princesses. They were built like middle linebackers.

Then those heifers started milking. And calving. And breeding back. And the talk changed fast.

“His daughters quickly turned heads, calving in with extraordinary udders and feet and legs, with great milking ability and reproductive performance that made them standouts in the herd,” said Jeff Ziegler, Select Sires’ genomics program manager. Whatever those bred heifers had looked like standing in a development pen, they were turning into exactly what commercial dairymen actually needed: moderate-framed, durable cows with mammary systems that looked engineered and feet that held up on concrete year after year.

The fat heifers were becoming the best cows in the barn.

The Warning in the Fine Print

Here’s the part of the story that matters more than the glory.

By April 2015, Mogul received his first official daughter proof: #2 on the U.S. TPI (Total Performance Index, the Holstein Association’s composite ranking) proven sire list behind only Supersire, 313 daughters in 130 herds, 97% reliability, +2.85 PTAT. The type was undeniable. He was everything the genomic prediction had promised and then some.

But The Bullvine said it plainly that same month: “You will need to watch the SCS score as well as the DPR when using Mogul.”

DPR—Daughter Pregnancy Rate. The number that tells you whether a cow breeds back on schedule or eats your margins in extra straws, extended days open, and vet calls. Not a footnote. A warning.

Most breeders looked at the headline number instead. Honestly? Look at what Mogul was doing in type transmission and try to blame them.

Rick VerBeek, sire analyst for Select Sires, put it in historical context: “His ability to dominate a mating, regardless of the type of cow he is used on, has been shown by very few sires in Holstein history. He is referred to as the modern day Elevation because of that consistent dominance.”

Nobody in this business invokes Elevation casually. Round-Hill Rag Apple Elevation reshaped the breed from the 1960s forward and still shows up in roughly 15% of modern pedigrees. When a sire analyst—not a marketing team, a sire analyst—puts that name next to your bull’s name on the record, people pay attention.

Three Sons, Three Different Answers

What happened next proved Mogul was more than a great transmitter of udders and frame. He was a genetic platform—and one that adapted its output to whatever maternal line you put underneath it.

The April 2015 proof run didn’t just confirm Mogul. It unveiled his first great son. Mr Mogul Delta 1427-ET debuted at #2 among genomic sires over one year of age, out of Miss OCD Robst Delicious-ET VG-86 DOM, a Robust daughter who would prove herself one of the elite brood cows of the genomic era. Delta’s numbers landed hard: CM$ 899, +1,487 milk, +90 fat, +52 protein, +8.0 Productive Life, SCS 2.84. And the industry moved on him immediately—Delta was pressed into heavy service as a sire of sons during Mogul’s peak years, reordering young-sire lists and seeding the next genomic generation before his own daughters had finished proving him out. Mogul’s frame and udder architecture channeled through Robust’s production engine. A bull designed to make milk.

Sixteen months later, the August 2016 proof run introduced a completely different kind of Mogul son. S-S-I Mogul Multiply debuted at #10 TPI, and the story his proof told had almost nothing to do with raw production. Multiply transmitted +7.5 Productive Life and over +2.0 DPR—health and fertility numbers that keep cows in the herd instead of on the cull truck. Carrying a double dose of Oman through his maternal line, Multiply was the anti-Delta. Not a milk machine. A longevity machine. Same sire. Opposite emphasis. The Bullvine noted you’d need to watch Multiply daughters on their high pins and straight legs—the Mogul signature showing up again, filtered differently through different maternal genetics.

And then there was Montross.

Bacon-Hill Montross-ET came from royalty on both sides, and his dam’s record proves it wasn’t just pedigree talk. Unique-Style Bolton Money—EX-93-2E-EX-MS-GMD-DOM—milked 38,430 pounds at 4.2% fat in a 365-day record at three years old, three times a day. Sit with that for a second. A first-rate aged-cow record produced by a three-year-old. New York Holstein later named her their Cow of the Century. She wasn’t a brood cow who happened to throw good bulls; she was an elite producer in her own right who became one of the most sought-after bull mothers in the breed, with sons standing at multiple AI units. Bred under the Bacon-Hill prefix in Schuylerville, New York, by the Peck family of Welcome-Stock Farm with partners Tom Kugler and Jim Copper, Bolton Money was the kind of cow who makes a herd prefix famous.

Mogul on Bolton Money. That cross worked like it had been engineered in a lab. Montross rose all the way to #1 on the TPI list—he topped Holstein Association USA’s ranking in December 2016 at +2,771 GTPI, claimed the #1 TPI spot a second time, and held a place inside the industry’s top 10 across multiple sire summaries. Back at Welcome-Stock in Schuylerville, that December 2016 list meant something else entirely. The Pecks, Tom Kugler, and Jim Copper had bred Bolton Money, watched her milk like an aged cow at three, sent her to Mogul—and now her son sat alone at the top of the entire breed. By all accounts, a moment like that doesn’t feel like a marketing milestone to the people who lived with the cow. It feels like vindication you can taste. “He’s a bull that really modernized the Holstein cow with moderate stature, tremendous depth, width, strength and power,” VerBeek said. “His daughters convert that strength into production performance and make milk with ease.”

By September 2020, Montross reached millionaire status—the 12th sire in Select Sires history, following the trail his own sire had blazed three years earlier. Two Mogul sons, both millionaires. And it didn’t stop with them—Delta sons and Montross sons fanned out across AI units on both sides of the border, with Montross alone putting seven sons into a single Canadian evaluation. That’s not a hot bull-of-the-month. That’s a genetic system reproducing itself.

Montross was classified Excellent-92 Gold Medal with nearly 30,000 daughters before his passing in July 2021. Select Sires called him a “genetic giant.” VerBeek, the same analyst who’d compared Mogul to Elevation four years prior, noted that Montross had “sold over one million units throughout his career” and that producers around the world offered “ultra-positive remarks.”

The Peck family and their partners had bred one of the most impactful sires in breed history. And Mogul had proved something the industry was still learning: same sire, different dam, radically different outcomes. Delta for production. Multiply for durability. Montross for complete packages. Three tools built on the same platform, each shaped by what the cow brought to the mating.

September 2017: The Youngest Millionaire

The moment that crystallized everything came in September 2017. Select Sires announced Mogul had exceeded one million units in semen sales—the tenth sire in the cooperative’s history, following Shot, Planet, Million, Moscow, O-Man, Blitz, Integrity, Mathie, and Mandingo. The youngest of them all. Not by a little.

Picture the Plain City office that week—the sales charts and proof sheets spread across a desk under fluorescent light, a coffee going cold beside them, the same staff who’d fielded those early “fat heifer” calls three years back now staring at a million-dose tally next to a seven-year-old bull’s name. Nobody crosses that line in seven years. Nobody had.

“Skeptics were quickly shown the value of genomic testing, and Mogul was a serious example of the power genomics could give to us,” Ziegler said.

Those skeptics he’s referencing? Some were the same people who’d whispered about fat bred heifers three years earlier.

By that August 2017 proof run—his peak—Mogul’s numbers read like a breed-shaping résumé: +2,504 GTPI, +1,220 milk, +119 Combined Fat & Protein, +2.22 PTAT, +3.08 UDC, +2.35 FLC, +4.1 Productive Life. He’d earned Excellent-93 Gold Medal classification himself. World Wide Sires called him “Mr. Consistency”—a bull who sired “consistent daughters that are moderate in size, great producers and have the functional type traits breeders love.” Number 2 on the TPI list, number 3 for Feet and Legs, transmitting exceptional udders across every herd type, management system, and climate he was used in.

The influence didn’t plateau. By 2021, combined with Supersire—both tracing to that same Missy cow family—their total exceeded 2.5 million doses. Together they accounted for 16% of influence in Holstein USA’s pedigree analysis of top bulls. Two bulls from the same maternal line, commanding one-sixth of the breed’s genetic architecture.

By April 2019, Mogul held the most sons among the Canadian Top 100: 11 for LPI and 15 for Pro$. S-S-I Montross Duke-ET—a Montross x Supersire cross—stood at #1 for both LPI and Pro$ in Canada. Seven Montross sons received their first official Canadian proofs in that single evaluation.

The Bill That Comes Due

Every bull who dominates at this scale leaves marks you don’t frame on the wall.

Mogul’s linear profile carried pronounced straight rear legs and short teats from the earliest proofs. The Bullvine flagged it with the body depth and rear legs warnings. The August 2016 review said the same about Multiply: “high pins and some curve to their legs, as he tends to produce high-rumped straight legged daughters.” The signature followed the sire line like a family nose you can’t breed away without thinking about it.

Breeders who checked linear breakdowns before every mating and used Mogul only on cows with adequate leg set and teat length? They managed fine. Those who treated him as a blanket sire learned what they’d missed at the hoof trimmer’s chute.

But the fertility trade-off cuts deeper than feet and legs.

Current CDCB data (April 2025, 99% reliability, 99,999+ daughters in 16,683 herds) tells the whole story: Daughter Pregnancy Rate -2.8. Cow Conception Rate -3.4. Productive Life -2.1. Somatic Cell Score 3.22. Net Merit: -$65. NAAB status: Inactive.

Negative NM$ doesn’t mean Mogul was a bad bull. It means the breed moved past his baseline—partly because of what he helped build. But the fertility numbers weren’t artifacts of base change. They were real in 2015 when The Bullvine flagged DPR. They’re real now.

And here’s the math that gets uncomfortable: when two related bulls command 16% of a breed’s pedigree influence, and one carries negative fertility and negative productive life at current evaluation, the breed absorbs those weaknesses at scale. Over a 50-year window, Holstein inbreeding has climbed from roughly 0.5% to approximately 10%. Mogul isn’t solely responsible. But his dominance—and the industry’s habit of stacking his genetics across multiple generations without corrective mating—is threaded through that trajectory.

This isn’t a criticism of the bull. It’s a criticism of how parts of the industry used him. Mogul was always a precision tool. Too many treated him like a silver bullet.

The Grandson Test

The real measure of a foundation sire isn’t his daughters or even his sons. It’s what happens two and three generations out.

Delta accumulated over 58,000 daughters in more than 2,000 herds before his own passing. He was used heavily as a sire of sons during Mogul’s peak years, and the pipeline he established kept producing elite animals long after Mogul’s NAAB status turned Inactive.

Genosource Captain reached #1 TPI among proven sires and held that position for seven consecutive proof runs through December 2024—a streak STgenetics called “historical.” Nearly two years of unbroken dominance at the top of the breed, two full generations downstream from a calf born on a farm in Marcellus, New York.

Walk through GenoSource’s own barns near Blairstown, Iowa—the operation eight dairy families pooled their resources to build in 2014, now run by CEO Tim Rauen and a team that turned genomics into a global business—and you can see it in the flesh: pens of Captain daughters, high-wide rear udders, cows built to milk—the Mogul template carried two generations forward and refined. And the line kept building on itself. SDG Cap Garza-ET, a Captain son, debuted in December 2024 and climbed to #1 daughter-proven TPI by August 2025 at +3,488 TPI on 406 daughters with 98% reliability. OCD Thorson Ripcord-ET—Captain on the sire side again—pushed past +3,400 GTPI as one of the top genomic sires of the same era. That’s Maxine’s family, four generations down through Mogul and Captain, still parked at the top of the breed.

Then April 2026 happened. Holstein USA moved PTA Protein from 19% to 24% of the TPI formula and dropped Fat from 19% to 14%, and Garza—a fat-heavy bull—lost roughly 125 TPI points overnight without a single daughter changing. That’s the honest footnote to any “still on top” claim: rankings move when the industry rewrites what it values. But the family didn’t vanish from the leaderboard. Bolton Money’s own blood still surfaces in the modern proven ranks—FB 8084 Adebayo P, the breed’s top polled proven bull in 2025 at +3,170 TPI, traces back to that same EX-93 cow who gave Mogul his greatest son.

When a sire’s grandsons hold #1, his great-grandsons headline the genomic lists, and his best son’s dam still threads through the polled leaders a decade later, you’re not looking at a lucky cross. You’re looking at a foundation sire’s proof of concept.

What This Means at the Breeding Desk

Mogul’s legacy carries specific lessons for every mating decision made today:

• Match the son to the problem. Mogul produced specialists—Delta for production, Multiply for longevity, Montross for balanced merit. Sorting them required reading the full proof breakdown, not the TPI headline. And none of this is a knock on the bull. The herds that won with Mogul didn’t avoid him—they mated him with intent, on the right cows, with their eyes open. The same principle applies to whatever dominant sire line sits in your tank right now.
• Protective mating isn’t optional with this line. If you’re using any Mogul-line genetics—sons, grandsons, great-grandsons—check Rear Legs Side View and Teat Length on the individual animal’s linear. Don’t stack multiple generations of straight-legged, short-teated genetics. The breeders who skipped this step paid for it in trimming bills and milking speed. Here’s the 90-day version: before your next sire order goes in, pull the linear on the last two generations behind every Mogul-line bull on your shortlist, and refuse to put a straight-leg, short-teat sire on a cow already carrying that signature. One round of discipline now beats three years of correction later.
• Watch your pedigree concentration. Mogul and Supersire together represent 16% of pedigree influence and both trace to the same Missy cow family. Inbreeding math tightens fast. Before selecting any young genomic sire, check how much Mogul appears in the maternal pedigree.
• A negative NM$ on a legacy sire is evolution, not failure. Mogul’s current GTPI of +2,335 and NM$ of -$65 (April 2025, CDCB, 99% reliability) reflect what he helped build. But they also mean the breed doesn’t wait. Neither should your matings.

The Permanent Record

Excellent-93 Gold Medal. North of 99,999 daughters across 16,683 herds on six continents. A son who reached #1 on the daughter-proven TPI list. Another son who became a millionaire in his own right, classified Excellent-92 Gold Medal, before passing at the age of 11. A grandson who held #1 TPI for seven consecutive proof runs. First ART-program bull to ever top the proven sire rankings. One million doses by age seven.

But strip the numbers away and what stays is the thing Roger and Phil Marshfield recognized in a VG-88 cow named Maxine before any genomic test existed to confirm it: that some genetics transmit beyond what evaluations capture, that the best breeders know it before the science catches up, and that the distance between a doubted calf and a generational sire is sometimes nothing more than the patience to let the daughters prove the doubters wrong.

Decades from now, someone will pull a pedigree on their best cow and trace it back through Captain, through Delta, through the bull the industry first dismissed for making fat heifers—all the way to a family farm in Marcellus. And they’ll understand something about this breed that no proof sheet fully explains.

Mogul didn’t just change the cows. He changed what we believe they can be.

Key Takeaways

• Mogul proved genomics could be trusted before his daughters did—but his real lesson is that a dominant sire is a precision tool, not a blanket bull. Match the son to the job: Delta for milk, Multiply for longevity, Montross for the full package.
• The bill came due in the fine print. If you’re stacking Mogul-line genetics—Captain, Garza, Ripcord and back—pull the linear on the last two generations and don’t double up straight legs, short teats, or that −2.8 DPR on a cow already carrying it.
• A −$65 NM$ on a legacy sire isn’t a failure; it’s the breed moving on. When two related bulls touch 16% of the pedigree, and inbreeding has climbed from 0.5% to about 10%, watch how much Mogul hides in your maternal lines before you order.

Continue the Story

• Seagull-Bay SUPERSIRE Dominates US Registrations for Past 30 Days – Running parallel to Mogul’s rise, this snapshot from the height of the genomics boom captures the fierce registration battles and explosive commercial demand for the two dominant matriarchal branches of the Wesswood-HC Rudy Missy cow family.
• The $8100 Gamble on Missy, 198 Dragged Genes, and the 20-Year Breeding Blind Spot Hiding in Your Herd – Deepen your understanding of the hidden biological tradeoffs in the genomics revolution by exploring how the foundational cow behind Mogul unwittingly carried both extreme production and massive fertility challenges across generations.
• CAPTAIN: The Bull That Rewrote the Rules for Modern Breeding – Trace the line from then to now by examining how Mogul’s direct grandson shattered all industry records to become a historic multi-proof champion, cementing Maxine’s family line at the absolute peak of modern global genetics.

The Sunday Read Dairy Professionals Don’t Skip.

Every week, thousands of producers, breeders, and industry insiders open Bullvine Weekly for genetics insights, market shifts, and profit strategies they won’t find anywhere else. One email. Five minutes. Smarter decisions all week.

Think one superstar bull can carry your whole herd? Think again. The risks are greater than you realize.

You know how some breeding decisions just… stick with you? I was having coffee with a producer from Wisconsin last month, steam rising from our mugs in the crisp morning air, and he brought up something that’s been nagging at the back of my mind for years. His grandfather used to tell stories about that famous mating back in ’73—how Mike Bystry, the herd manager at S-W-D, looked at this big, rangy cow with a questionable udder and said, “Chief’s still an easy choice for her.”

That single decision—Chief on Allied Admiral Rose Vivian—would create S-W-D Valiant and fundamentally change how we think about breeding. Not just because of what it gave us… but because of what it taught us about the hidden costs of putting all your genetic eggs in one basket.

When Lightning Struck Twice

The Valiant story perfectly captures this industry’s eternal struggle between what looks good in the show ring and what actually works long-term in the milking parlor. According to sources from that era, ABS sire analyst Steve Mawer wasn’t exactly thrilled about the mating. “We preferred not to use Chief on daughters of Irvington Pride Admiral,” he admitted years later. “Most of the time, you ended up with too much udder.”

And Vivian? She was exactly that problem waiting to happen. Pride Admiral daughter, VG-85 overall but only “Good Plus” for her mammary system. A classic case of a cow that looked the part but had functional challenges that we didn’t fully understand back then.

But here’s where genetics gets interesting… sometimes the stars just align in ways you can’t predict. When Valiant’s first proof dropped in July 1978, those numbers stopped conversations in co-ops from Wisconsin to California. +1541 pounds of milk, +44 pounds of fat, and a Type score of +1.99.

Picture the scene: The humid summer air hung heavy in the ABS barn as geneticists gathered around those first proof sheets, realizing they had something special on their hands. You could feel the electricity in that room—this was the kind of breakthrough that changes everything.

In those days, bulls either gave you production or Type. Never both. Valiant delivered everything we thought we wanted.

The excitement was infectious. Here was a bull who could milk AND win shows. However, what we didn’t know then—and this is where the story becomes complicated—was that he also carried the seeds of a lesson that would eventually reshape our understanding of genetic diversity and breeding responsibility.

The Dynasty Years: From Excitement to Empire

What happened next unfolded like a breeding fairy tale, written in semen straws and show ring banners. The anticipation was palpable as word spread through the dairy community. I recall speaking with producers from that era who Had heavily utilized Valiant in the early ’80s; their voices still carried that unmistakable note of pride mixed with something else—a harder-won wisdom.

“Those daughters,” one Ontario producer told me, his weathered hands wrapped around his coffee mug, “they milked like machines and looked like movie stars. You’d walk into any barn from here to Alberta and spot a Valiant daughter instantly—they had this presence, this… authority about them.”

The financial reality hit fast. Breeders who had hesitated at $25 suddenly found themselves in bidding wars, watching his semen price climb to $150, then $225 after his death in 1984. The demand was unlike anything the industry had seen.

Du-Ma-Ti Valiant Boots Jewel was winning the Royal Winter Fair, her deep udder gleaming under the show lights. Farlows Valiant Rosie was taking All-American honors. These weren’t just good cows—they were setting the standard for what Holsteins should look like.

But here’s what’s really fascinating about Valiant’s impact… he wasn’t just siring great daughters. He was creating this network of sons that would dominate AI studs for decades. The numbers tell the story: by January 1987, industry data shows that 31 of the top 100 TPI bulls were Valiant sons, and 98 of the top 400 carried his genetics.

Fisher-Place Mandingo became the first bull in history to sell a million doses of semen. Think about that for a minute. A million doses. Hanover-Hill Inspiration evolved into what we started calling a “millionaire sire,” and his genetic line eventually produced legends like Goldwyn, Shottle, and Storm.

This is where the story takes its first dark turn. I was talking to a Minnesota producer last spring who still gets a distant look on his face when he talks about those days. “We had thirty-some Valiant daughters fresh at the same time,” he told me, pointing to the old barn where it all happened. “Best milking group we’d ever had—averaging 85 pounds a day when most herds were pushing to hit 70. But here’s the thing we learned the hard way… when you walk into that barn and realize every single cow traces back to the same bull, you start understanding what genetic risk really means.”

That’s the thing about success in this business… it can be its own trap.

The Wake-Up Call: When Reality Hit

For years, there was this accepted story in our industry that tied Valiant directly to a specific hidden problem: the lethal HH1 gene carried by his famous sire, Chief. However, something truly interesting emerged from modern DNA analysis, which changes how we understand this story.

Here’s where things get fascinating from a breeding perspective. What we didn’t know back then was that Valiant’s sire, Chief, was carrying what we now call Holstein Haplotype 1 (HH1)—a genetic defect that causes pregnancy loss when calves inherit copies of this haplotype from both parents.

The disappointment was crushing for many producers. I can picture those conversations in farm kitchens across the Midwest, as the realization dawns that this genetic goldmine comes with hidden costs.

Now, here’s the twist that recent DNA research revealed—while Chief was indeed an HH1 carrier, studies have shown that Valiant himself was not found to carry this specific genetic marker. However, that doesn’t diminish the broader lesson about what happens when too much influence is concentrated in too few bloodlines.

The real issue wasn’t about one genetic defect—it was about the pattern of defects. When you have that level of concentration, with nearly 100 of the top 400 bulls tracing back to one sire, you’re creating genetic bottlenecks that can amplify both positive and negative traits.

I’ve talked to veterinarians who worked through those years, and they describe a gradual realization… “We started seeing patterns we couldn’t explain,” one veteran practitioner told me last year. “It wasn’t just about HH1—it was about what happens when you narrow the genetic base too much. Conception rates that should have been higher, as well as udder problems that seemed to cluster in certain family lines. The pieces didn’t fit together until we got DNA testing.”

This was the industry’s harsh lesson about the double-edged nature of genetic selection. We were making rational decisions based on the best information available, but we were essentially flying blind when it came to understanding the complete genetic picture.

When the Numbers Tell a Different Story

What really gets me when I look at Valiant’s modern genetic evaluations is how they completely flip the script on his historical reputation. Today’s numbers from ABS Global show -699 kilograms for milk, -3.17 for Type, and -2.84 for Mammary System.

A young producer looking at these figures would think, “Why are we even talking about this bull?”

But here’s the thing—and this is crucial for understanding genetic evaluation today—those negative numbers don’t mean Valiant was genetically inferior. They mean the average Holstein cow born in 2020 is genetically superior to him by that amount. His proof has become a measuring stick for how far we’ve come.

It’s like comparing a 1980s computer to your smartphone. The old technology wasn’t bad for its time—it was revolutionary. But progress moved on, and that’s actually a good thing.

The shift in type evaluation tells an even more interesting story. The show-ring aesthetic of the 1980s, which Valiant embodied—tall, sharp, and stylish—is no longer what we’re selecting for.

Today’s “functional type” rewards different traits entirely:

• Strong, shallow udders that can handle multiple lactations
• Moderate size for efficiency
• Durability over flash

Those deep, impressive udders that made Valiant daughters champions? They’re now understood to be functional challenges. Higher somatic cell counts, shorter productive life, and more injury risk. The very traits that won ribbons back then can be economic liabilities today.

What This Means for Modern Breeding

From what I’m seeing on farms today—and this is really the heart of why the Valiant story matters—we’re dealing with the same fundamental challenge, just with better tools.

DNA Testing Changed Everything

Today’s DNA testing has completely transformed our approach. We can identify genetic issues before they spread. Tools like genetic scores help us avoid the concentration we saw with the Valiant era.

We’re not just looking at what genes do—we’re looking at what they might do in combination with other genes. According to recent work from Cornell, what we’re seeing now is unprecedented visibility into genetic relationships.

The difference today is that we can see the genetic connections before they become problems. We’re not just hoping that a mating will work—we’re calculating the probability.

Genetic Diversity Isn’t Optional Anymore

Current industry observations suggest we’re seeing more emphasis on cow families that can:

• Produce efficiently across multiple lactations
• Handle varying feed qualities
• Adapt to different management systems

That’s sustainability—not just environmental, but also genetic sustainability.

What we consider “ideal” today might look completely different in 20 years. The key is maintaining animals that can adapt and perform across changing conditions. Feed costs, labor challenges, environmental regulations… these all influence what we need from our cattle.

The Lasting Impact: Lessons for Today

Walking through Holstein herds today, Valiant’s influence is everywhere. According to recent research from Holstein International, his name appears 55 times in the pedigree of popular sires like Farnear Delta-Lambda. His genetic fingerprint runs through countless contemporary bloodlines.

But his real legacy isn’t in the pedigrees—it’s in how we think about breeding. A Pennsylvania producer I know put it best when we were discussing this at a meeting last spring: “The Valiant story taught us that genetic progress isn’t always linear. That today’s solution can become tomorrow’s challenge if we’re not careful about diversity.”

I recall visiting a 400-cow operation in Lancaster County last year, where the morning mist still hangs over the pastures, just as it did decades ago. The producer showed me this cow chart he keeps on his office wall, tracking the genetic diversity in his breeding program.

“Every time I’m tempted to use the hot young sire on half my herd,” he said, tapping the chart with his finger, “I look at that and remember what happened with Valiant. Good genetics are important, but genetic balance is everything.”

The Bottom Line

Here’s what I take away from the Valiant story, as someone who has spent decades in this industry: genetic power comes with genetic responsibility.

The tools we have now are game-changers:

• DNA testing for genetic defect screening
• Breeding indexes that balance production with health and longevity
• Real-time genetic diversity monitoring
• Risk assessment tools that predict genetic bottlenecks

But the fundamental questions remain the same: How do we balance immediate genetic improvement with long-term breed health? How do we maintain the genetic diversity that gives us resilience?

What’s happening across the industry now is a much more balanced approach to genetic selection. We’re emphasizing sustainability and long-term functionality alongside production gains.

The interesting thing is, we’re seeing this play out in real time with DNA-based selection—young bulls can now achieve widespread use much faster than in Valiant’s day, making the diversity question even more critical.

I think about this every time I see a new genomic young sire shooting up the rankings. The technology is incredible, the genetic gains are real, but we need to be conscious about not repeating the concentration patterns of the past, just with better tools.

That mating decision made back in ’73 taught us that extraordinary genetic potential must be balanced with wisdom, caution, and a deep understanding of consequences. Because in the end, every mating decision we make is a vote for the future of the breed.

The lesson for today’s producers is clear: Use DNA testing to screen for genetic markers like HH1. Work with your AI provider to maintain genetic diversity in your breeding program. Monitor genetic scores to balance production with health traits. Don’t put more than 30% of your matings to any single bull, no matter how good he looks.

We’re not just talking about genetic theory here. This is about real money—the kind that shows up in your monthly milk check and your feed bills. The Valiant story teaches us that even the best genetics can carry hidden costs, but with today’s tools, we no longer have to fly blind.

After what we learned from the Valiant era, managing genetic risk isn’t just smart breeding—it’s essential for your farm’s future profitability and sustainability.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Avoid genetic bottlenecks causing up to $1M annual losses in feed and reproduction — start using genomic Estimated Breeding Values (gEBVs) in your selective mating today, critical amid rising inbreeding in 2025 dairy herds.
• Boost lifetime milk yield 10% by selecting for production and health traits together — combine pedigree analysis with genomic insights for balanced sire choice, aligning with growing sustainability demands in dairy farming.
• Cut reproductive failures 15% by early detection of harmful haplotypes — partner with your AI to screen bulls for defects like HH1, key to maintaining fertility in labor-constrained operations.
• Save up to 200kg of dry matter per lactation through improved feed efficiency — leverage genomic testing that provides 65-80% breeding value reliability compared to just 20-25% from traditional parent averages, especially important when feed represents 80% of variable costs.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Sires like S-W-D Valiant shaped 1 in 10 Holsteins — that’s a big genetic footprint impacting milk checks everywhere. Though he boosted milk and protein early on, his legacy spread the costly HH1 defect, causing worldwide losses worth hundreds of millions. Today’s genomic tools let you spot these hidden risks early and protect your feed efficiency and profitability. Valiant’s proof today shows a 1,541 lb drop versus modern cows—proof of tremendous genetic progress we’ve made since. According to recent Journal of Dairy Science research, farms blending genetics with diversity and functionality are leading in 2025 — those are your peers who’ll thrive. If you want to keep up on milk and margins, smarter mating decisions are non-negotiable.

Complete references and supporting documentation are available upon request by contacting the editorial team at editor@thebullvine.com.

Learn More:

• The Silent Genetic Squeeze: Is Holstein Breeding Painting Itself into a Corner? – This article provides a strategic look at the accelerating rise in genomic inbreeding in the Holstein breed. It reveals the long-term, tangible economic impacts on herd performance and profitability, offering a powerful, data-driven perspective on the risks of genetic concentration.
• Genetic Correlations Upended: Why Sticking with Old Breeding Indices Could Cost Your Dairy $486 Per Cow – This piece offers a tactical, profitability-focused analysis of the 2025 genetic base change. It demonstrates how modern breeding indexes like Net Merit can drive tangible gains in feed efficiency and component premiums, showing how to move beyond outdated metrics.
• The Next Frontier: What’s Really Coming for Dairy Cattle Breeding (2025-2030) – This forward-looking article explores the innovative technologies—from CRISPR to AI—that will shape the future of dairy genetics. It provides a roadmap for how producers can implement these tools to achieve a minimum 15% higher milk yield and cut labor costs by 70%.

The Sunday Read Dairy Professionals Don’t Skip.

Every week, thousands of producers, breeders, and industry insiders open Bullvine Weekly for genetics insights, market shifts, and profit strategies they won’t find anywhere else. One email. Five minutes. Smarter decisions all week.

Most of the time when you are evaluating sires they fit into certain market segments.  There are those sires that work well for commercial breeders. A different style of animal becomes very popular with the high index seed stock producers.  And then there are those sires that get show ring enthusiasts all excited.  Very seldom do you find a sire that appeals to all three types of breeders. VAL-BISSON DOORMAN has been able to achieve exactly that.

Doorman debuted with his first genomic proof in the top 10 in the USA for +2439 gTPI. That got the index crowd excited about him.  He also had a +4.59 PTAT which caught the attention of many of the show breeders.  He also was +4.2 for PL and had a low 2.51 SCS with positive components which made him a great sire for mating programs. That helped him catch fire with commercial breeders.  Doorman was indeed making a relatively unknown cow family world famous.

The Story behind Doorman

Elyse and Jean Gendron, like many young breeders from Quebec, had the dream of one day putting a sire into an Artificial Insemination unit.  So in 1991, Jean purchased an early Blackstar daughter in Canada, LOGANWAY BLACKSTAR DAILY from Albert Cormier as a bred heifer.  Daily went on to score VG 86 as a five year old and produced over 189,122 lbs. in five lactations of 3.7% fat and 3.3% protein.  Not yet to bull dam status but certainly Daily started to prove herself as a brood cow as she earned six stars with four VG daughters.  It was Daily’s granddaughter, VAL-BISSON RUDOLPH DAKOTA VG-88 9* that would be the first in the family to receive bull dam status by sending a Morty son, VAL-BISSON DOMINGO, and an Inquirer son, VAL-BISSON DRAKAR to Semex. Dakota could also milk. She produced a 365d  lactation of 29,974 lbs of milk as a yearling with 3.8%F and 3.3% P and then followed it up with a 2^nd lactation of 365d 31,765 lbs of Milk, 3.8%F 3.3%P.  She also was able to prove herself as a brood cow, with 15 classified daughters; 10 scored VG and 4 GP.  Most notable of her daughters was VAL-BISSON FINLEY DREAM VG-87-6YR 13* with a superior lactation and 122,285 lbs of lifetime production (4 lactations) of 3.2%f and 3.2% protein.   Dream was a very stylish heifer winning 1^st Intermediate Yearling at Pont-Chateau in 2005.   It was at that same time that Goldwyn had just received his initial daughter proof, so Else, and Jean flushed Dream as a heifer to Goldwyn producing an EX-91-2E and two VG-88 daughters.  They liked that cross so much that, even though these Goldwyn daughters were just heifers, they used Goldwyn again on Dream producing VAL-BISSON GOLDWYN MAYA. Maya would go on to score VG-86 as a six year old and earn 17*.

VAL-BISSON SHOTTLE IMELDA VG-89-4YR-CAN

Gendron’s at this time also took part in CDN’s pilot project for Genomics.  Participating in this program, the Gendron’s learned that Maya was the highest of all the Goldwyn daughters from Dream.  The highest scoring daughter of Maya was a Shottle daughter, VAL-BISSON SHOTTLE IMELDA, who scored VG-89 as a four year old for her new owners, Ferme Blondin.  Dann Brady, Sales and Marketing for Ferme Blodin comments about the purchase of Imelda, “At the time we were wanting to get into genomics but were also looking for the right type and pedigree. Doorman had just received his genomic information, and we were really impressed. We also loved the cow family and thought Imelda would be the one to get us into genomics.”  The purchase of Imelda has certainly paid off for Blondin in a significant way, “Imelda is one of the most popular cows on the farm! She currently has a number of embryo contracts and has sold every embryo she makes. Since we showed her earlier this year at the Quebec Spring Show and, with the popularity of Doorman calves around the world and the release of her high type RC son Integral, she has been attracting a lot of attention”, comments Brady.  (Read more: FERME BLONDIN “Passion with a Purpose Builds Success”) Before selling Imelda to Blondin in early 2012, Elsye and Jean mated her in late 2010 to Bookmen at the recommendation of Theirry Laberge.  The result from that cross was Doorman.

The Story on Doorman’s Evaluation.

Doorman is certainly a sire that has benefited greatly from the introduction of Genomics.  His non-genomic parent average would have been +2915 LPI and +2168 TPI with a 12 for Conformation and +2.88 PTAT.  Instead, he finds himself over 10% higher on his composite indexes and 40% higher for conformation.  It’s that significantly higher evaluation for conformation that has taken Doorman from being a good commercial sire, with high overall index, into a very popular sire for conformation.  He is currently #33 of the NAAB Active sires for PTAT and is #14 of those born in 2011 or earlier.

Index and commercial breeders will want to protect Doorman on his overall production (+2018 lbs Milk); He does improve components (+.09F and +.08%P) and will lower SCS (+2.51).  He is not a high DPR sire (+0.1 DPR) but has a solid heifer conception rate (+1.2 HCR).  He will indeed offer significant type improvement, especially in the mammary systems (+3.17 UDC).  Given his success in the show ring, it’s no surprise that he is a high stature and size sire (+3.66 Stature, +2.69 Strength, +2.62 Body Depth).  One area where most breeders would want to protect him is on his rump angle, high pins.  While certainly very well suited for the show ring, those high pins may be something for commercial and index breeders to watch for. He does have Planet, Shottle, and Goldwyn in his pedigree, so those of you concerned about inbreeding should use Doorman wisely.

Doorman has also been producing some extremely high index progeny.  His top genomically tested sons include Ladys-Manor Doors Open (+2619 gTPI) from Ladys-Manor Dorcy Oda TY VG-88 the #2 gTPI cow on the locator list.  Males also testing high are Coyne-Farms Doorman Eric (+2541 gTPI) from the MS ElectressVG-88 DOM cow family and EDG Brinkworth Door 8386 (+2517) from the Gen-I-Beq Shottle Bombi EX-92 94-MS cow family. High genomic testing females include Kings-Ransom Doorm Dina from the Kings-Ransom Baxter Dolly TY VG-85 cow family; Silverridge V Doorman Erupt (+2576 gTPI) from the Wabash-Way Evett ET VG-86 cow family and Coyne-Farms Doorman Faith (+2558 gTPI) from the Honeycrest Shottle Faith-ET EX-91 cow family.

The Real Story is in Doorman’s Progeny

What actually has people talking about Doorman these days is not his evaluation but rather his daughters.  Breeders love their Doorman calves.  In our recently launched dairy breeder discussion group, The Milk House, (Read more: Introducing The Milk House – Dairy Breeder Networking on Facebook) noted cattle dealer Jack Lomeo Jr was asking fellow breeders about what they thought about Doorman daughters and the result was an outstanding endorsement of the sire.  With many commenting that their rumps where better than expected, with not as high a pins as his genomic proof would indicate.

Ms Duckett Dymnt Carissa-ET
1st Place Winter Heifer – World Dairy Expo Holstein Show
Exhibited by: D & N Schirm, Corey Popp, A Gruenes

Doorman has certainly been generating a lot of conversation as of late, after his strong showing in the heifer classes at the recent World Dairy Expo (Read more: International Holstein Show – World Dairy Expo 2014). Doorman’s silky jet-black calves certainly made a statement  in the Spring Heifer class at World Dairy Expo, Butlerview Doorman Class, a daughter of 2 time All-Canadian and All-American, Silvermaple Damion Camomile EX-95, placed 3^rd  and her full sister Butlerview Doorman Camo placed 11^th in that same class.  Winning the Winter Heifer Calf class was Ms Duckett Dymnt Carissa-ET exhibited by D & N Schirm, Corey Popp, A Gruenes. In the Fall Heifer class, Comestar Lauras Doorman, a great granddaughter of 2006 All-Quebec Jr 2 year old, COMESTAR LAUTAMIE  VG-89-2YR-CAN  25* placed 8^th.  In the Summer Yearling class another granddaughter of Lautamie’s and one of the earliest Doorman daughters, Comestar Lamadona Doorman placed 7^th for Howard-View Holsteins.  In the International Junior Holstein Show at World Dairy Expo, two Doorman daughters, Butlerview Door Camilla and MS Ariannas Door Armani took 1^st and 2^nd in the Winter Heifer Calf Class, they were also 5^th and 6^th respectively in the Open Show. (Read more: International Holstein Show – World Dairy Expo 2014)

Butlerview Door Camilla
1st place Winter Calf – International Junior Holstein Show – World Dairy Expo
Miles, Kanani & Soren Price

Comestar Lamadona Doorman
7th Place Summer Yearling – World Dairy Expo Holstein Show
An early Doorman daughter
Howard-View Holsteins

The Bullvine Bottom Line

Any sire with a sky high genomic test will catch most breeder’s attention.  However, it takes outstanding progeny and a very balanced evaluation to become an international sensation that is opening new doors the way Doorman has.

Not sure what all this hype about genomics is all about?

Want to learn what it is and what it means to your breeding program?

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