Meet Canada's hottest dairy bulls

📷 WestGen / Grace Kennedy

They’re big. They’re bold. And they’re ready to impregnate a heifer near you.

Often the “silent partner” of the dairy industry, bulls are a key player without whom milk could not be made. For generations, they lived on the farms where their offspring were born. Not anymore.

Artificial insemination, which was pioneered in Russia at the start of the 20th century, took the bull out of the dairy farm. In the 1940s, the Lower Mainland’s farmers began their own artificial insemination associations, providing choice bulls to local farmers.

Now, nearly 80 years later, it’s pretty much the only way a commercial cow gets pregnant. And that means dairy herds need a dating service.

Enter WestGen, the Abbotsford-based genetics giant that studs out many of Canada’s top bulls. From WestGen’s catalogue, dairy farmers can choose what they want for their herd—whether it’s better milk production, more female calves, strong legs, or beef-friendly crossbreeds.

Finding the right baby daddy in the dairy world can be as simple as flipping through a catalogue. Showcasing the genetic traits of each bull, farmers can choose what they want for their herd. It’s like a dating app for cows (and there actually is an app for that).

So today, we are going to take a gander at some of the most popular bulls at Semex Alliance, a semen-collection cooperative that distributes dairy and beef cattle semen. WestGen is one of three partners in the Semex Alliance, which was responsible for more than half of the semen distributed to BC cows. (This is not a paid advertisement for Semex’s bull semen.)

So without further ado, let’s meet some of the hottest bulls impregnating Fraser Valley cows.

Pine-Tree-I Pursuit

More than 17,000 daughters can’t be wrong. If you want a fast-producing girl who can quickly turn feed into milk, then Pursuit has the sperm you need. This six-year-old bull is making waves in Holstein herds with his sexed semen and robot-ready offspring. Pursuit is a proven sire, meaning he has produced enough quality daughters to show that his genetics are as good as advertised. And does Pursuit have daughters! He has sired more than 17,000 cows worldwide, and according to Holstein International, he is “on route to nearly complete perfection.”

Pursuit is a top-producer among Semex’s bulls, and nearing “millionaire status.” Only a handful of bulls have produced more than a million units of semen in their lifetimes. The most recent bull to achieve the millionaire distinction is Mainstream Manifold, who started his career in the Fraser Valley and died in 2018. 

3Star OH Ranger Red

With a legendary mom and famous sons—Ranger-Red is a Holstein superstar. The four-year-old is known for his red-and-white colouring and his daughters’ solid production. Ranger-Red “generates” semen well and was brought through the FastStart program at Semex only three months after his stud debut. He has been at the top of the industry’s Lifetime Performance Index for the last several years thanks to his strong health traits. 

More than 60 of his sons are themselves studs, according to Holstein International, including Claynook Zard. Zard, the best-producing Ranger-Red son, has genes with a profitable combination of production and health. He has also been bred for his daughters to produce milk with more A2 beta-casein, a type of milk protein. Unlike his father or the uber-prolific Pursuit, Zard has so far only sired six offspring, five of which are bulls.

Westcoast Lugnut

Lugnut is another nepo baby of the Holstein world, but is rising in the ranks with early success from his daughters. This local boy started his life in Chilliwack at Westcoast Holsteins, but has since been moved to Semex’s Guelph farm. Lugnut’s father, Westcoast Alcove, is one of the most popular bulls in the Semex Alliance, and Lugnut has inherited his pa’s traits in spades. From the dairy strength for his daughters to survive multiple lactations to the short stature which makes for better fertility, Lugnut is carrying on the Alcove genes. Early tests show that Lugnut’s daughters have excellent feet and udders, and are producing a lot of milk.

Jacobs Bruins

While Pursuit, Ranger-Red, and Lugnut might be bolstering the ranks of working-class dairy herds, Bruins offers something a little more special. This showtime Holstein is a popular sire for those aspiring to greatness at cattle shows, with his mother winning five championships in her lifetime and his full sister being named Grand Champion in 2022. Still relatively new to the stud business, with only 203 offspring, two-year-old Bruins is growing in popularity and turning out to be a looker just like his mom.

Quaker High Cotton

For farmers looking to beef up their dairy herds, High Cotton is rapidly becoming a popular choice. This three-year-old black Angus makes big babies that pop out easily. (High Cotton himself weighed 71 pounds at birth.) He is very fertile, allowing farmers to get Holstein-Angus crosses that spur the mothers’ milk-production with a calf that puts on good weight in a feedlot. He also has male sexed semen available—a bonus for farmers looking to capitalize on turning a traditionally bigger calf into an even-more-efficient meat grower.

Of course, High Cotton isn’t the only popular angus option. Powermix semen straws are also a big hit with dairy producers. The Powermix uses the semen of three different Angus bulls in one unit, upping the fertility of the product while ensuring a good diversity of genes.

Of course, these bulls aren’t the only favourites in the Fraser Valley. Semex’s inventory lists nearly 1,000 Holstein bulls alone, with varying catalogued traits ranging from methane efficiency to milk production to udder placement. WestGen sales manager Paul Meyer said that a typical 200-cow farm would likely purchase 50 to 60 doses of semen every six weeks, and use roughly a dozen different bulls over the course of the year. 

All that choice doesn’t mean Canada’s dairy industry is genetically diverse. Years of selection for the top traits means that Canada’s best bulls are often related, and the result is closer to a gene puddle than a gene pool. Holsteins are the most-inbred major dairy breed in the country, and they are only getting more insular. Places like Lactanet offer inbreeding calculators to help farmers avoid ultra-inbred calves.

Despite the propensity for inbreeding, Canada’s artificial insemination program has created an international reputation for dairy genetics. In 2023, Canada exported $136.9 million worth of semen to dairy farmers across the world. Most of those exports went to the United States, the Netherlands, and Brazil. (The year before, Canada was the second-leading exporter of bull semen globally.)

Although Semex is responsible for more than half of all artificially inseminated calves, not all farmers want those bulls. Other companies send technicians to farms so farmers can use their own bull’s semen on their own cows. And despite the popularity of artificial insemination, it’s still not the only way to get a cow pregnant.

After all, if you have the bull and the cow, you can always just let them have a romp in the hay.