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.