Battle Over Bull Semen Has High Stakes for Dairy

When it comes to breeding cows, Oakfield Corners Dairy in upstate New York would rather not let nature take its course.

To ensure his prime milk-makers produce daughters, Oakfield partner Jonathan Lamb is willing to pay as much as $200 a vial for bull semen that has been processed so that it only contains X chromosomes.

One reason for the high price, according to competitors, is that a single company, Sexing Technologies, controls more than 90 percent of the sexed-semen market, which has annual sales of $50 million in the U.S. and $220 million abroad. They’ve mounted a flurry of ...