Since 1998 the partners have a common breeding program next to their own conventional programs, to offer 50% of the bulls to be tested in the future. Positive sires out of this common breeding program will carry the prefix “NOG”. The conventional breeding programs take their breeding material out of the world Holstein population, the NOG young animal and heifer program is based on a down-to-earth population.

The most interesting and exterior strongest young animals out of the best cow families are matched. Out of those pairings offsprings are produced by using the conventional embryo transfer (ET) and the in-vitro production of embryos (IVP). The selection of young animals takes place according to a heifer list that is produced by the computer center in Verden (VIT) after each breeding evaluation. The NOG gives the minimum conditions. With the help of this heifer list another selection of the listed animals takes place where the quality of the pedigree is judged.

After this pre-decision the young animals have to be inspected on the farms to judge their exterior. Then it is decided if they match the high demands of the NOG and if they can qualify for the NOG breeding program.

The selection has to be done very careful because working with young animals bears some risks that the breeders have to carry. This also shows the selection rate of 1:15, which means that only 200 animals out of 3000 that appear on the list, qualify for the NOG breeding program.

This intensive young animal breeding program is complemented by a stationary bull mother test since April 2001. This is done to have a direct comparison of calved in heifers under uniform and practical conditions. This excludes the influence in the milk production of different management systems and different barn conditions of the farms.