How the rankings are calculated
There is no overall ranking on this site. A stud appears in nine separate tables — top price, dam average ICP, dam average number of calves, dam average age at first calving, average 205-day weight, average cow/calf % wean, average birth weight, kg weaned per cow-year and weaning efficiency per cow-year — 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. Every figure except price is taken over every animal catalogued, including the catalogue of an auction still to come; price figures count the animals sold. Top Price ranks male and female animals together and can be narrowed to either market; the calf-weight measures are read one market at a time, and the dam measures count every animal catalogued.
Nine categories, no combined score
A stud is ranked separately on top price, dam average ICP, dam average number of calves, dam average age at first calving, average 205-day weight, average cow/calf % wean, kg weaned per cow-year, weaning efficiency per cow-year 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.
Lots offered and sold
Lots offered is every lot catalogued for the sale; lots sold is those knocked down under the hammer. Withdrawn and unsold lots are counted in the offered figure but not in the sold figure, so clearance stays visible. Every animal in the catalogue, sold, unsold or withdrawn, is included in every non-price figure.
Top price
The one table that ranks animals rather than studs: every animal sold in the selected season, ordered by hammer price, so a stud that sold several of the season’s best appears once for each of them. Placings and percentiles are stated against every animal sold in the field. There is no minimum draft — a single animal qualifies — and selecting an award class narrows the field to animals sold by studs of that class. Ranked on its own because it measures the ceiling of a catalogue, not its depth.
What these averages are averages OF
Every non-price category on this site is an average across all the animals in the stud’s catalogue for the selected season — sold, unsold or withdrawn, and an auction still to come once its catalogue is loaded. Price figures are the one exception: they count only the animals sold. 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 in the catalogue, sold or not, look up its dam, read that dam’s lifetime average inter-calving period as recorded by the society at the date of the sale, and average those figures across every catalogued lot. 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 all animals in the published catalogue, 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 all animals in the catalogue, sold, unsold or withdrawn, 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. Average 205-day weight, average birth weight and kg weaned per cow-year are measured in kilograms, and weights depend on the country and grazing, so these three are best compared between breeders in the same province or on the same veld type. Use the province and veld filters.
Kg weaned and weaning efficiency per cow-year
Kg weaned per cow-year and Weaning efficiency per cow-year measure a cow’s output over her whole life, not just her latest calf. A dam’s life is counted from her birth (her age at first calving) through each calving (her inter-calving period) to the weaning of her latest calf. Her calvings times her calf’s 205-day weight, or cow/calf %, is spread over those years. A dam with one calving counts from birth to that calf’s weaning. Figures are as recorded by the society at the sale date, and a dam with missing figures is left out rather than guessed. New measure for 2026. We welcome breeders’ views on how it’s calculated: use Contact us.
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.
Award classes, the Default view and season
The tables open on the Default view, which carries one qualification: every average — dam ICP, dam calvings, dam AFC, 205-day weight, cow/calf % wean, birth weight, kg weaned per cow-year and weaning efficiency per cow-year — ranks only once at least 10 animals in the stud’s catalogues in the counted span carry that figure, sold, unsold or withdrawn. A stud with 11 animals of which 9 carry a birth weight has 9 figures, and does not rank on birth weight in the Default view. An average over a handful of lots can be carried by a single exceptional animal, and standing it beside an average held up across twenty flatters one of them. Top Price alone is exempt: a single hammer price is a fact, not an average. The threshold is pooled, not per season — five figures a season for two seasons carries an average as well as ten in one, and the count beside a pooled figure states how many seasons it was earned over. Wherever the rule governs a figure it is marked “10+ figures to qualify”, and a stud short of it is told how many it has: “9 figures · 10 needed to qualify”. Nothing is hidden by the Default view: the number of studs kept out is printed under the table, All classes ranks every stud together whatever the size of its draft, and the four award classes — 10 lots or fewer, 11 to 20, 21 to 40, and more than 40 — rank each draft against its own kind, with every position, field size and proportion recomputed within the class. Classes count the animals catalogued, sold or not, on every non-price table, and the lots sold on Top Price. Class bounds are per season, so across a span of three seasons the 11-to-20 class holds the studs with 33 to 60 — the same breeders, not different ones. Every ranking is per season by default: change the season, or select several, and the tables recompute from those years alone. Once the catalogue of an auction still to come is loaded, its animals count in that season’s non-price tables straight away, marked as a catalogue; price, sold and clearance wait for the results, which update the same animals rather than adding them again. The same holds for an auction held whose results are not yet in. The Auctions setting beside the season can show Held only, which leaves every catalogue without results out. A stud whose sale has not yet been held shows no price figures rather than last season’s, and its auction is on the sale calendar.
Male and female markets
Top Price opens on both markets together: every animal sold, male and female, ranked by what it fetched. A hammer price is a fact about one animal, so the two markets can be read on one table without either flattering the other. The Male and Female settings narrow that table to male lots, or to female lots (heifers and cows together), each computed from that subset alone. 205-day weight, cow/calf % wean, birth weight, kg weaned per cow-year and weaning efficiency per cow-year open on males instead and are read one market at a time, since each depends on the calf’s sex and a pooled average would reward whoever sold more bulls. No market’s figures are a filtered version of a combined figure, and a stud that sold nothing in a market is absent from that market’s table, not ranked last. The dam measures count every lot catalogued. On a stud’s own page, the Male, Female and All menus rebuild that page per market, and award class follows the subset it is counted under.
Medals
First, second and third place are marked gold, silver and bronze on the rank number, on the rankings. The medal follows the shared position, as in sport: two studs tied for first are both gold and the next is bronze, and three tied for second are all silver. 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 in a field of two or more gets one; the only stud in its field has nothing to be a proportion of, and shows none. The proportion is always rounded up, so it never flatters: 7th of 25 is top 28%, and 1st of 3 is top 34%. 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 34%” says nothing on its own, while “1st of 3 · top 34%” 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’s results to be hidden. Hiding is a request, not a switch: we contact whoever lodged it and verify them against the society record before anything changes. Once confirmed, the stud is no longer named anywhere on the public site. It has no page, no name in any table, no photographs, lot detail or sale dates. It does keep its place. A hidden stud is counted in every field it belongs to, and the place it holds is shown as a row carrying that place and the word Hidden — on the animal table too, where each of its animals holds its own place. A stud that stood 5th of 100 still stands 5th of 100, every stud below it keeps the place it earned, and a herd in the top 10% stays in the top 10%. Its figures also count in every average the site prints — breed averages, industry averages and the average at the head of each table — because those describe the whole market; the one exception is a field of five studs or fewer holding a hidden stud, where the average and the field size together would give the hidden figure away, and no average is printed. Hiding is per breed: a breeder who sells two breeds and hides one keeps the other breed’s page and results, and asks separately to hide each. To have hidden results shown again, the breeder uses Contact us at the foot of any page, and we confirm with them before anything is published.
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 and restated, and the corrected figure replaces the old one everywhere it appears. A missing price may also be reported by a reader; it is published only once StudRank has confirmed it, and then shows like any other price.
One breeder, two breeds
A breeder selling two breeds keeps one record per breed, with its own figures and its own position in its own field, because a Beefmaster average and a Bonsmara average are different measurements and are never pooled. The records link to each other, so each breed’s page offers the other, and the link is recorded by the operator, never inferred — not from a shared name, brand or code. No figure on the site adds the two breeds together: each record appears in its own breed’s tables on its own figures. A hidden record is never linked: its page does not exist, and the other breed’s page does not point to it.
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 dams behind every animal in the published catalogue, not the herd as a whole.