Most breeders in the bucking bull industry are against cloning. Some feel that it's cheating to take something someone else has bred and raised and make copies of it. Some object for religious reasons, feeling that it's wrong to take something God has made and make copies of it.
Breeders work hard to advance their breeding programs and improve the quality of the industry's bucking stock through selective breeding. To a certain extent, that process is a throw of the dice. You can take two full brothers and one might buck and the other might not. The idea of just reproducing previous champions somehow goes against the trial and error, science and art, of breeding bucking bulls.
The dilution of the gene pool is another issue of contention. There are going to be a lot more straws of "Bull X" semen on the market if there are a lot of Bull X clones, whose semen will be genetically indistinguishable from the original's. This floods the market and decreases the value of existing straws from the original Bull X. It also means that there's no dependable way to know which straws are from the original and which are from the clones.
Further complicating the debate is the fact that neither clones nor their offspring can be registered with the ABBI, which is the largest bucking cattle registry. Many believe that there are already clone offspring registered there anyway. Some say that clones should be registered so that there is at least some way to track them. Some say there should be a separate registry for them.
Add to all of that the unknowns about how the clones will fare in terms of health and wellness and what odd genetic blips they might (or might not) pass on to their calves.
Everyone has an opinion, usually a strong one, about what to do and how to do it. The clones are there. They might secretly be in the registry. The semen is already devalued. That's over and done. The question is how to handle it going forward, and frankly, I don't have a clue.
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If you'd like to read more about clones, check out How to Make a Clone and Questions and Answers about Clones.
