Episode Details

The day Dann Brady pulled his herd’s inbreeding report, the number on the page didn’t match the cows in his head. On paper, they were elite: high indexes, big genomic promise, all the “right” sires stacked three deep. In the barn, he was watching fertility slip, mastitis cases creep up, and young cows that never made it to the kind of mature cow he’d grown up loving. Everyone told him this was just the price of progress. Instead of accepting it, he did something that went against every “play it safe” instinct in dairy: he stopped trusting the catalogs, walked away from the standard contracts, and started building his own stud from the ground up. This episode follows what happened next—and why it might change the way you look at the genetics flowing through your own bulk tank.

The Story You’ll Hear

• The quiet moment in the office when an inbreeding number on a report made Dann realise his “elite” herd was carrying a hidden bill.
• Why flipping through major AI catalogs felt less like choosing sires and more like choosing the same bull in twenty different jackets.
• The conversation where he and his partners finally said out loud, “If we can’t buy the bulls we want, we’ll have to make them ourselves.”
• What it really looked like—financially and emotionally—to hang a new stud code on the wall and wait to see if anyone would trust it.
• The first time a customer called back, not to complain, but to say, “These daughters are different,” and what that did to their belief in the model.
• How it felt to stand at World Dairy Expo holding three Premier Sire banners and know they’d built that success with cows and cow families most catalogs had ignored.
• The late‑night doubts about whether boutique genetics could ever stack up against three global powerhouses—and the data that finally answered that question.
• The moment Dann realised this wasn’t just about his own herd anymore, but about giving other farms a way to buy genetics that actually matched their values and risk tolerance.

Every dairy farm has that tension between chasing the latest proofs and protecting the kind of cow that actually survives in your system. Dann Brady’s story puts a human face on that conflict. Before he became the co‑founder of Blondin Sires, he was in the same spot as thousands of producers: trusting big‑name bulls, watching inbreeding creep up, and wondering why his replacement pen didn’t look like the glossy semen catalog.

Whether you’re running 80 cows or 8,000, wrestling with semen contracts, or just uneasy about how tight Holstein bloodlines have become, you’ll hear a story that speaks to the same question you’re asking: how do you keep moving forward without sacrificing the future of your herd?

Want to go deeper into the numbers, the bulls, and the business model behind this episode? Visit https://www.thebullvine.com/a-i-industry/9-99-inbreeding-and-rising-how-blondin-sires-turned-a-holstein-bottleneck-into-75-growth/ to read the full feature on Dann Brady and Blondin Sires, along with data‑driven articles on inbreeding, independent studs, and breeding for long‑term profit.

If this episode sparked something—made you pull a report, question a contract, or rethink what “genetic progress” really means—hit follow on The Bullvine Podcast and share it with someone else who’s making big decisions in dairy.

Have your own story of pushing back against the status quo in genetics or herd strategy? Reach out through The Bullvine website or tag The Bullvine on social media. Your next hard‑won lesson might be the one that helps another farmer sleep better at night.