VIKRANK Customized index

VIKRANK - VikingGenetics customized Ranking To help farmers select the right bulls for their herd depending on their own wishes and breeding goals, VikingGenetics has developed a new tool: VIKRANK. There are 7 different groups of bulls and all of them could be find on the top NTM list from VikingGenetics. From the next page you can read the explanation behind each of the seven groups. There is also a possibility to create your own customized ranking based on your specific criteria you want to focus on in your herd. The unique Nordic health traits Health and functional traits have included in the Nordic Total Merit (NTM) for many decades to ensure a profitable and sustainable development of the breeds. In the VIKRANK the following traits are ALWAYS included: female fertility, birth and calving indices, resistance against mastitis, resistance against other diseases, hoof health, feet and leg and udder conformation. Customized ranking and expected outcome The correlation between the customized ranking and the sub-indices express the expected gain in the sub-index compared with a situation when selection only includes the individual sub-index. The correlations are compared with the corresponding results between the sub-indices and NTM. A high correlation indicates a large genetic gain for the sub-index A value near zero express no or just a little genetic change of the trait A negative correlation alerts of a deteriorating genetic trend for the sub-index Visit http://rank.vikinggenetics.com

GRACEVIK The bulls ranked high on GRAZEVIK are superior in traits important for a profitable pasture based milk production. Additional attention is on traits such as daughter fertility, calving and hoof health. A premium is also given to bulls breeding high components of fat and protein in the milk. HEALTHVIK The HEALTHVIK concept is targeting trouble free and healthy cows. Bulls with a high rank on HEALTHVIK breed advantage in mastitis resistance and resistance to other diseases, as well as a good hoof health. The proof of other disease includes information on disorders express early and late in lactation, metabolic disorders and hoof treatments. ROBOVIK Bulls superior in ROBOVIK are selected to give daughters suited to be milked by robots. Milk flow, resistance against mastitis and good hoof health are traits given special attention. Bonus is given to bulls breeding increase fat and protein components in the milk. Also udder balance and distance between rear teats is taken into account. YIELDVIK Bulls ranked high on YIELDVIK breed positive proofs for traits important for a healthy cow with a high milk production. Traits with a special interest are milk yield, resistance against mastitis and udder conformation. CHEESEVIK The CHEEZEVIK concept is targeting traits that are important for a profitable cheese production. Bulls ranked high on CHEEZEVIK inherit advantage in yield, udder conformation and resistance against mastitis. A premium is also given to a bull inherits high components and if the bull is a carrier of the B-variant of Kappa Casein. FERTIVIK The scope of FERTIVIK is to improve the genetic level of female fertility in the herd. Bulls ranked high in FERTIVIK have an additional focus on female fertility and hoof health. FEEDVIK Indirect measures of feed efficiency are used to rank the bulls on the FEEDVIK concept. Improved production and a restriction of the cow size measures used to distingue the bulls. Special attention is also taken to bulls that breeds improved fat and protein content in the milk.

This is a tool to enable you to rank our bulls from your own needs and wishes. The VikingGenetics bulls are tested for all economical important traits and that facilitate a great possibility for you to choose bulls that is the best fit for your conditions. Login If you like to save your lists or selection of bulls, for example the ones that you have available in your tank or if you like to be able to run the tool offline you have to log in. You log in by clicking here When you get to the log in page you can create an account: Now you are ready to start! General settings The menu you find here: Here you can manage your lists, different weights in CustomVik and choose language

Choose breed and save your list Start by choosing breed VikingHolstein, VikingJersey or VikingRed. Then you will see a complete list of all bulls, sorted on NTM (Nordic Total Merit). You can now choose the bulls you have in your container by clicking in the boxes and save a list like this: 2 3 1 You can have several lists saved. You can also decide if you want only Genomic or Daugther proven sires to be shown. You can search for individual bulls in the right corner. Then it is time to start, and you can do it from the bulls you have listed or the total bulls, there is two ways to do it: Predifined groups Either you chose to use one of our predefined groups; HealthVik, RoboVik, YieldVik, GrazeVik, CheeseVik, FertiVik or EfficencyVik for explanation about the indexes see page 3 OR you press the button Custom- VIK. The predefined groups has been composed to fit different strategies in the herds and we have taken into account the correlation between the traits to give the optimal genetic output. When pushing the RoboVik the bulls will be re-ranked and shown on the RoboVik ranking not on NTM.

CustomVik In CustomVik you can decide the weights depending on what your customer like to focus on. The total of all the traits is 100%. You can lock the weights you decide but the max will always be 100% - so if you lock one of the traits at 30% you have 70% to divide among the rest of the traits. You can save the weights in your index by pressing here and give it a name, Farmer Johns choice so you can use it again. You can lock the weight when you have decided You can slide the point to decide the weight You can press here to see the expected output from the weights put in and it will look like this

Now you can print the list of bulls: By clicking on the name you can see the breeding values for the bulls Press here to get to the print function and it will look like this, and then press print: Select the ones you like to print