Economic Evaluation of Alternative Breeding Programs for Commercial Artificial Insemination Firms

have led.and will continue to lead, to the de~elopment of techniques that can aid in genetic Improvement of dairy cattle.Optimum ~se of these technologies will require adaptation or replacement of currently practiced breeding programs.Due to the expense of most of these techniques, or associated breeding schemes, and due to the organizational structure of the dairy cattle breeding industry, AI firms are the most likely candidates for implementing these technologies.Whether and how new technologies are implemented will be based on their profitability for the individual AI firm in comparison with currently practiced breeding schemes.An objective and realistic economic evaluation . of alternative breeding schemes, therefore, IS important.~as! studies on economic evaluation of genetic trnprovement programs in dairy cattle, except Oltenacu and Young (16, 17), considered breeding programs for closed populations (3, 11, 13, 18, 20).In all studies, additional income from sale of milk, after substraction of extra feed costs, was considered as revenues from the breeding program.Oltenacu and Y~ung (16, 17) dev.eloped methodology appropnate for the genetic and economic evaluation of breeding programs for a medium-sized AI firm in the contemporary US.The breeding structure was open with respect to use of sires of bulls, which were selected from all proven bulls available in the country.Their study was confmed to optimization of the utilization of young and proven bulls in the population serviced by the AI firm.Selection of darns of sons was not addressed.Returns to the breeding program were based on income over feed costs from sale of milk per unit of genetic improvement in the population.Since these studies several changes have taken place in the structure of the dairy cattle industry in the US that warrant adaptation of the model used by Oltenacu and Young (16, 17).These changes have recently been dis- 1902