For those of you who are unaware, genomics are a way to analyze DNA from an individual animal to tell with reasonable accuracy what that animal will look like and milk like when she grows up, and which traits she inherited from Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, etc. There's alot more to it than that, but that basically is the ballpark idea of the whole process.
This is an incredibly useful tool for a variety of reasons. It helps us make more informed decisions about breeding and sire selection, and more informed decisions about culling and genetic advancement, it also is a way to uncover different undesirable genetic haplotypes which affect fertility. Obviously, more information is better!
If you couldn't tell by all the exclamation points, I am incredibly excited about this... The test takes about a month to process, so we are due to be getting our results back in the very near future! I am working on picking out some fancy new bulls to breed the heifers with, and will be matching them up once I know who fits with whom best!
Hopefully I will be able to show you our top genomic heifer soon! Any guesses who it will be?