After staying over in Guelph University Accomodation. I was picked up the following morning by Doug Green who is Dairy Genetics officer for a company called Gencor which is part of the Semex alliance in Canada. Firstly we drove to the Gencor headquarters in Guelph where i was given a guided tour. It is here that seman is collected from the bulls between 7am and 10am everyday between monday and friday. This is carried out by 13 full time barn staff. There are 531 bulls of different breeds presently housed at Gencor. The bulls are all fed hay, corn silage, balage and a ration which contains 15% protein. All the bulls are bedded using shavings for there pens, which are 10x14 for the older bulls and 10x10 for the younger ones. All the bulls have an ear tag identification, which includes their name and bullcode aswell as registration numbers. All bulls are photographed when they arrive at Gencor. The bulls start to be collected from when they are 10 months of age. They are collected until they reach about 5,000 doses unless they are royally or high LPI bulls. These bulls usually get collected until 7,500 doses. They are housed here until they get a proof which usually takes 3 years. While here all the bulls get groomed. They are clipped and have their hooves trimmed when they arrive for their picture. The bulls get routine hoof trimming and are clipped regularly. Gencor currently has 550 acreas of land in which they harvest corn and grow hay for the bulls.
We left the Gencor headquarters and headed to Frank and Don Donkers farm, which is based near to Branchton in Ontario. They use the prefix Fradon (Fra -Don). This was a herd with some excellent cow families and a combination of Black and Whites aswell as Reds. This was a well established dairy operation that had been running for a number of generations. It is managed by Frank and Don who are brothers and Dons son aswell as a number of staff. Alot of the animals i saw were show animals and alot of time and preparation went into the grooming of these animals so that they could be taken to shows as the family has a long standing reputation for showing their animals.