During their Innovation Awards ceremony last night at World Dairy Expo, Dairy Herd Management announced that Semex’s Immunity+™ was named a Top 10 Innovative Product of the Year.

“Immunity genetics is an emerging technology that provides dairymen with an effective means to improve the health of their dairy cattle with each generation,” says Jay Shannon, Semex Global Dairy Solutions Manager. “At Semex, we’re extremely excited to have acquired this technology for our customers, who can now utilize Immunity+ sires that combine high overall genetic merit in a package with the added benefit of higher immunity.”

Using a patented technology, Semex is now able to measure an animal’s immune response and their ability to combat infection and disease. These animals are considered High Immune Responders (HIR) and Semex’s HIR sires are known as Immunity+ bulls.

By using this information in breeding decisions, dairymen can ask how well a bull’s daughters respond to infection instead of how often they get diseases like mastitis. This is important because traditional health-related genetic traits such as Productive Life, Somatic Cell Score and Daughter Pregnancy Rate are result-oriented measurements, with an indirect association to health. Even more restrictive, these traits are less than 10% heritable. By contrast, immune response is highly heritable at 25%, making genetic gain in health traits much easier.

To find out more about Immunity+ or any of Semex’s suite of solutions, stop by Semex at World Dairy Expo at the Semex Tent or in the Exhibition Hall at booth #2608-2709 or by visiting www.semex.com