David ThorbahnDavid C. Thorbahn, President and Chief Executive Officer of Select Sires, Inc., will be the guest speaker at the 145th Annual Meeting of the American Jersey Cattle Association.

The meeting will convene at 8:00 a.m. CDT on Saturday, June 29 at the Ambassador Hotel in Amarillo, Texas.

Select Sires marketed just over 1 million units of Jersey semen for the first time in its history during 2011, only to break that record by selling 1.1 million units last year. Annual sampling of Jersey bulls has increased by 42% and total sales have more than doubled since Thorbahn took over the top leadership position in January of 2000. The company has become the leading supplier of bovine semen in North America and is one of the largest in the world. In 2008, Select Sires received a Governor's Excellence in Exporting Award and named Exporter of the Year for the state of Ohio.

Thorbahn has served on the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding (CDCB) and is a past-president of the National Association of Animal Breeders (NAAB). He is a former board member of World Dairy Expo and National Dairy Shrine. He was a founding member of the committee that started the North American Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge in 2002 and served as its first chairman.

Born and raised on a registered Holstein farm in Vickery, Ohio, Thorbahn earned a B.S. in agriculture, majoring in dairy science, at The Ohio State University. He completed a Masters in Business Administration at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1999. He has been recognized by the OSU College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences with its Young Professional Achievement Award (1997) and Distinguished Alumni Award (2010). Thorbahn was also named the 2010 Union County Business Leader of the Year by the Union County Chamber of Commerce.

Thorbahn and his wife Nancy have two daughters, Jenna and Kelsey. The family is active in the Northwest Presbyterian Church where David serves as an advisory to its middle school youth organization.

Registration forms and the schedule of events for the 2013 AJCA-NAJ Annual Meetings are available on the USJersey.com web site, or by calling 614/861-3636. Deadline for hotel reservations at the convention rate is June 3.

The American Jersey Cattle Association reported back-to-back record years in 2011 and 2012 providing identification and performance records for dairy herd owners and services that support genetic improvement and greater profitability through increasing the value of and demand for Registered Jersey™ cattle and genetics. Visit USJersey.com for more information, or connect on Facebook.com/USJersey.

4.15.2013