How the rankings are calculated
There is no overall ranking on this site. A stud appears in seven separate tables — top price, average price, dam average ICP, dam average number of calves, average 205-day weight, average cow/calf % wean and average birth weight — and its position in one says nothing about its position in another. Rankings are compiled per season, with one or several seasons selectable at a time, and can be narrowed by breed, province and veld type. The Counting control decides whether the figures are built from all lots, males only or females only.
Seven categories, no combined score
A stud is ranked separately on top price, average price, dam average ICP, dam average number of calves, average 205-day weight, average cow/calf % wean and average birth weight. Weighting these into one number would require deciding how many rand a day of ICP is worth, which depends entirely on the buyer’s own operation. That decision is not ours to make, so the tables stay separate. On the three production measures the top of the table is not automatically the optimum — each carries that warning above the ranking.
Average price
Total value of lots sold divided by the number of lots sold, for the selected season. Withdrawn and unsold lots are excluded from the average but counted in the offered figure, so clearance stays visible.
Top price
The highest single lot price achieved in the season. Ranked on its own because it measures the ceiling of a catalogue, not its depth — a stud can lead here and sit mid-table on average price.
What these averages are averages OF
Every non-price category on this site is an average across the animals the stud sold in the selected season — nothing else. It is not a herd average: dams with no progeny in the sale contribute nothing. It is not a lifetime or career average: each figure is the value standing on the society record at the date of that sale, so a dam whose ICP later improves or lengthens still reads here at her sale-day figure. And it is not carried across seasons: a stud selling different progeny next year produces a different average.
Dam average inter-calving period
Take each animal sold, look up its dam, read that dam’s inter-calving period as recorded at the date of the sale, and average those figures across the lots sold. In days. Shorter is better, so this table sorts ascending. Only dams with two or more recorded calvings contribute; a dam standing behind several lots is counted once per lot.
Dam average number of calves
The mean number of calvings recorded for the dams of the animals sold, counted as at the sale date — not the dams’ eventual lifetime totals, and not a herd-wide figure. It is age-confounded by nature: a stud selling out of older, proven dams reads higher than one selling out of second-calvers, which is precisely what it is meant to show. Read it beside ICP rather than on its own.
Animal production and efficiency measures
205-day weight, cow/calf % wean and birth weight are averages across the animals sold, taken from each animal’s own society-recorded performance figures at the date of the sale. Cow/calf % wean is the animal’s adjusted weaning weight as a percentage of its own dam’s weight at that weaning — not a herd efficiency index. None of the three is a herd average and none is a lifetime figure.
Veld type and region
Each stud is classified as sweetveld, sourveld or mixed veld on the location of its main breeding operation. It is shown in the stud profile header and available as a filter, but it is not scored and does not appear as a ranking column. The distinction matters because sourveld carries a winter nutrition penalty that lengthens ICP independently of genetics, so comparing a sourveld stud against a sweetveld one on reproduction is comparing environments as much as herds. Filter to a single veld type for a fair read.
Minimum threshold and season
A stud needs at least ten lots sold in the selected season to appear in any table — or five when the Counting control is set to males or females only, since that halves the pool. Every ranking is per season by default: change the season, or select several, and the tables recompute from those years alone. A stud whose sale has not yet been held shows no figures at all rather than last season’s, and is listed under Still to sell.
Counting: all lots, males or females
The Counting control decides which lots every figure is built from. On males or females only, prices, production figures and dam figures are recomputed from that subset — they are not filtered versions of the all-lots figure. A stud can therefore place differently, or drop out entirely, between the three settings.
Achievement bands
Positions are grouped into gold (top 3), silver (4–10) and bronze (11–20) bands, marked on the rank number. The bands are presentation only: they change nothing about how a position is calculated, and a band earned in a small field is stated with its field size wherever it is shared.
Placings as a proportion
Wherever a placing appears — in its own column in the ranking table, beside each figure on a stud page, and against every season in the multi-season charts — it is also given as a proportion of the field it was measured in. Every placing gets one. A stud last in a field of thirty-six reads “top 100%” as plainly as the leader reads “top 3%”, because withholding the weaker half would be its own announcement: a blank where a number should be tells a reader exactly as much, and everybody in a field already knows roughly where they stand. The field size is printed beside every proportion, and that is the guard that matters — “top 33%” says nothing on its own, while “1st of 3 · top 33%” tells you precisely what it is worth. Read the two together; a proportion of a small field is a small fact.
Hidden studs
A breeder may ask for their stud to be hidden. The name is replaced with “Name Hidden” and every supporting figure is suppressed with it — prices, lots sold, breed, province, photos and lot detail — because a sale price on its own can be traced back to the stud through a catalogue. The stud keeps its place in the rankings, so the field size and every other stud’s position stay honest. Hiding is a request, not a switch: we contact whoever lodged it and verify them against the society record before anything is withheld. Lifting a hide works the same way and for the same reason. Anyone can lodge either request, so a stranger must not be able to erase a stud from the tables — nor to strip the protection off a breeder who asked for it. Nothing on the site changes until the breeder has confirmed.
Sources and corrections
Price data is compiled from breed society result sheets and published auctioneer catalogues; dam ICP and calving figures come from society herd records. Breeders can query any published figure from the stud page or the ranking row; corrections submitted with supporting documents are reconciled against the society record, restated, and the change is logged on the stud’s page.
Price is a measure of what buyers paid, not of genetic merit or of the value a bull will return in a commercial herd. Dam ICP and calves per dam describe the female herd behind the catalogue, not the animals sold.