Canada also has excellent milk recording and conformation evaluation systems, along with effective and expanding farmer-recorded evaluations on utility traits, and very accurate sire and cow evaluation systems that are built on top of the accurate record systems. This has not happened by chance nor over a very short period of time. As one who has spent a lifetime working on this system, helping breeders derive more accuracy and profitability from their selection decisions, I am very pleased with what has evolved in Canada. There can be little doubt that we also have some of the very best germ plasm in the world when one considers profitability.
All studies point to the supremacy of production as an indicator of profitability.
I can well remember an era in Canada when sires were selected mainly on show ring winnings. It will, no doubt, continue to reduce as more and more dairy farmers recognize that commercial profitability is not at all related to show ring winnings. There are two profitability indexes used in Canada and while they have had quite different histories in development, they rank sires similarly, although there is considerable re-ranking. Both indices are based primarily on production and conformation ratings of dairy sires. The production component of the index in each case has many common features.