Guelph, Ontario – As the only company offering immune genetics for greater disease
resistance, Semex is excited to announce that dairymen everywhere can feel even
more confident in Immunity+™ as recent studies show heritability to be 30%.
“This is huge,” says Paul Krueger, Immunity+ Global Brand Manager and Director,
Sales and Business Development, United States. “Our clients worldwide have been
looking for a simple, genetic answer to herd health and Immunity+ is it! It’s got 20 years of research behind it, over 100 incidence by at least 4-8%. With heritability estimated at 30% it’s one of the easiest decisions you can make to improve the health of your entire herd.”

The original immune response research, based on a population of females tested for
immune response, estimated heritabilities of 29% for Antibody-Mediated Immune
Response (AMIR), 19% for Cell-Mediated Immune Response (CMIR) and 25% for
overall Immune Response.

Over the past 12 months, there have been two separate genome association studies
conducted where as part of each study, the heritabilities for AMIR and CMIR were reestimated. The first study published one year ago was based on a moderate population size including only males tested for immune response, and the latest study just completed was based on a much larger group of both males and females. The two
studies showed very similar heritabilities of 46% and 44% for AMIR, and both had a
matching heritability of 22% for CMIR. The three research studies were combined to
calculate the new 30% heritability figure for overall immune response.

For more information on Semex, Immunity+ or any of Semex’s products and services visit www.semex.com