A Breeder Apart: Farmers Say Goodbye to the Bull Who Sired 500,000 Offpsring

A Breeder Apart: Farmers Say Goodbye to the Bull Who Sired 500,000 Offpsring

Fans Commemorate ‘Toystory,’ a Dairy Legend With a Ravenous Libido

By Mark Peters and Ilan Brat in the Wall Street Journal

SHAWANO, Wis.—Atop a wooded hill here in the heart of America’s Dairyland, an industry legend was recently laid to rest.

It wasn’t some milk magnate or a famed innovator, but an ornery, 2,700-pound bull named Toystory—a titan of artificial insemination who sired an estimated 500,000 offspring in more than 50 countries.

 “He was a dream bull,” said Jan Hessel Bierma, editor in chief of dairy-breeding magazine Holstein International.

In the increasingly high-tech world of cow reproduction, a top bull’s career tends to last just a few years as farmers chase better genetics to boost milk output and animal durability, playing a numbers game not unlike a Major League Baseball manager.

Rare is the bull with the genes and testicular fortitude to sell a million units of semen, known among breeders as the millionaires club.

Over nearly a decade, Toystory shattered the record for sales of the slender straws that hold about 1/20th of a teaspoon and are shipped using liquid nitrogen to farmers around the world. A unit fetches anywhere from a few dollars to several hundred.

After joining the millionaires club, Toystory surpassed Sunny Boy, a Dutch bull who sold more than 1.7 million units in the 1990s and is memorialized with a life-size statue at the headquarters of his owner in Arnhem, Netherlands.

At his home barn, Toystory’s handlers tracked his march to 2 million units with markings on a homemade “spermometer.” They celebrated the milestone, in 2012, with cake, while the hulking Holstein got extra hay.

When he died on Thanksgiving Day, Toystory had surpassed 2.4 million units according to his owner, Genex Cooperative Inc., and had fans from Brazil to Japan. His prowess was celebrated on hats, T-shirts and even his own commemorative semen straws. Recent posts to the Facebook page of Genex included “He was legend” and “Torazo!”—Spanish for super bull.

With a neck nearly 57 inches around, Toystory was no cuddly show animal. He was blessed with a ravenous libido, typically producing sperm nine times a week, about twice the average of other bulls at Genex. One veterinarian dubbed him “meaner than a snake,” say his handlers, who were grateful some days for the safety fences keeping him penned in.

 “The old adage was as long as he was interested in sex, he wasn’t interested in you. But if he lost that other interest, you had to be careful,” said Glen Gilbert, vice president of production for Genex.

Toystory was born on May 7, 2001, at Mystic Valley Dairy farm in central Wisconsin. Owner Mitch Breunig named the promising calf after one of his daughter’s favorite movies.

The bull’s father, Bellwood Marshall, was a popular sire, while his mother, Toyane, was a top milk producer at Mystic Valley. Mr. Breunig remembered Toystory standing out because he gained weight faster than other calves on the farm.

At 6 months old, Mr. Breunig sold Toystory to Genex for around $4,000. The young stud moved about 150 miles to the cooperative’s facilities here, which are scattered amid dairy barns and corn fields.

At around a year old, Genex collected Toystory’s semen—turning to a method that involves a teaser animal, a specially designed tube and a well-timed maneuver by an adroit handler—and used it to breed dozens of cows.

Next, the bull and his owner waited more than three years.

Back then, dairy producers had to see how the daughters of a bull turned out before deciding to buy his semen. The farmers wanted to see how much milk a cow produced, the fat and protein levels of her output, and how well she handled the rigors of milking.

By the mid-2000s, producers liked what they were seeing in Toystory’s offspring, and sales of his semen started to surge. He scored highly on influential performance rankings watched by the global dairy industry. Straws cost upward of $60 apiece and were in demand at home and abroad. In 2009, Genex says, he entered the millionaires club.

Toystory grew into a global brand through a rare mix of fertility, genetics and looks. His semen was good at getting cows pregnant and his daughters were easy to birth and dependably strong.

Mr. Bierma of Holstein International compared Toystory with a Volkswagen Golf. “Not a fancy car, doing the job every day and for a long time—and not too expensive,” he said.

Toystory’s daughters were also easy on farmers’ eyes, with a good mix of feminine bone structure and the right amount of strength, said Ethan Heinzmann, dairy and genetics manager at Golden Oaks Farm in northern Illinois, which used Toystory semen.

“Exceptional feet and legs and exceptional udders,” said Eddie Bue, manager of Ludwig Farms in central Illinois, which paid more than $300,000 in 2009 for a Toystory daughter.

Over the summer, Toystory was hobbled by back problems, and his handlers decided to retire him. Mr. Gilbert feared Toystory wouldn’t make it through the winter and had a grave dug at one of Genex’s farms before the ground froze solid.

His handlers chose a spot atop what is known as Stony Hill to reflect Toystory’s stature. A larger memorial service will be held in the spring when Genex plans to name the breeding campus where Toystory lived after its most-famous bull.

Today, bulls are being bred younger and often retire before they reach their semen-producing prime, replaced by young guns that benefit from another generation of genetic advances.

“It is very possible that no other bull will ever surpass his record,” said Keith Heikes, chief operating officer at Genex.

For his part, Mr. Breunig doesn’t regret selling Toystory more than a decade ago—even though the bull went on to bring in tens of millions of dollars for his new owners. In recent years, dairy farmers from Europe and Asia have flocked to his farm by the hundreds to buy semen and embryos from members of Toystory’s family.

The bull also helped Mr. Breunig achieve one of his lifetime goals: being in the pages of Holstein International. The glossy monthly has featured his farm three times.

“Toystory made that happen,” Mr. Breunig said. “I can die now, you know what I mean?”