For the first time in more than a decade, COBA/Select Sires offered facility tours and a parade of bulls at an open house for customer-owners on August 10 at the Select Sires Inc. headquarters. While the A.I. company has hosted several smaller groups over the years, it has not held an event of this size, with more than 700 attendees, since the 1990s.
The open house featured a behind-the-scenes look at semen collection, analysis and processing. Last year, Select Sires produced and shipped more than 12.8 million units of semen.
Select Sires also provided a tour of some of the bull facilities, including the young sire facility which individually houses 630 bulls. Semen from most bulls is collected twice a week.
Some of the higher-demand bulls may be collected every other day, with those bulls producing about 1,000 straws per collection. The younger sires are collected once a week.
Customers enjoyed the opportunity to see several of the company’s best offerings through a “parade of bulls,” where Select Sires staff provided information about the pedigree and offspring results.
Attendees were also able to tour the Ohio location of Sexing Technologies and learn about how semen is sorted and processed for sexed semen. PD
Photos by Emily Caldwell
