Simplified Jersey Breed Registry

By Leah James, Dairy Marketing Manager, Genex Recent decisions by the American Jersey Cattle Association (AJCA) board have made deciphering Jersey registrations easier. With the March 2016 board action, the AJCA simplified the registration recording process. The two major changes are the incorporation of Generation Count and Breed Base Representation (BBR). Generation Count Under the new Generation Count system, you will no longer see OA, PR and GR or J-levels on papers. Instead, there will be a straight numeric counting system following the animals full registered name representing the point at which the animal was first recorded in the AJCA herd book. This new system starts with a ‘1’ designation and moves through a ‘6’ before no designation is needed on a pedigree.  The graph below lays out how generation counts will be handled for resulting offspring of generational sires. The general rule of thumb is to add one count to the dam’s generational level. Breed Base Representation (BBR) The Council of Dairy Cattle Breeding (CDCB) has distributed Breed Base Representation (BBR) values to the respective breed associations. The disclosure and publication of these values is up to the individual breed associations. AJCA is the only breed association that has chosen to publish BBR values at this time. In very simplified terms, BBR is a reference number (up to 100) of an individual’s relation to a known (genotyped) reference population. Because the base population is always changing, growing and adding new data points, it is the CDCB’s policy that a BBR of 94 or greater will be reported as 100. Under the new system, a sire needs to have a BBR of 83 to be listed on the AJCA active reports. 100% of our active sires meet this requirement. Once again, this is ONLY a reference number and should be used as such. *Please note these Generation Count and BBR changes can potentially affect a few of our active sire’s ability to be recognized by the AJCA registration standards. Any sire that does not meet these standards will be clearly designated in the sire catalog and in any marketing materials with a UR (Un-registered) suffix following the given short name.  For more detailed information, check out the  AJCA  fact sheet.