Changes to Editing System (August 2007)

Correction of bull identification (ID) numbers
with more than nine digits

By George Wiggans and Lillian Bacheller

Bull ID numbers with nonzero characters in the first three positions are sometimes truncated because of limitations in on-farm software programs. In Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, ID numbers may have more than nine digits. When a new ID number from one of those countries is reported to the Animal Improvement Programs Laboratory by a dairy records processing center and the first three characters are zeros, the database is searched for a bull ID number with the same last nine digits, breed, and country code. If only one such ID number is found and it came from Interbull or a breed association, the incoming ID number is changed to the ID number already in the database. This change was implemented to prevent a bull from receiving evaluations under two ID numbers.