Why use the Dairy Beef Index?

The Dairy Beef Index (DBI) is a breeding goal for Irish dairy and beef farmers to promote high quality beef cattle bred from the dairy herd that are more saleable as calves and profitable at finishing yet, they have minimal consequences on the calving difficulty or gestation length of the dairy cow. Using a bull only for his ‘easy calving’ or ‘short gestation’ attributes can result in lighter carcasses. However, incorporating several traits simultaneously into selection decisions using an overall index (i.e., the Dairy Beef Index; DBI) can produce more balanced cattle with more favourable economic returns.

For example, sires that ranked best on calving traits alone (i.e., easy calving, short gestation, and low calf mortality) were compared with sires that ranked best on the DBI (Berry and Ring, 2020). These 2,192 beef sires had farm production records available from 3,065 dairy herds to make comparisons.

Relative to the best ranked sires on calving traits, the best ranked sires on DBI delivered heavier, more conformed carcasses that had a greater chance of meeting factory specifications for conformation.

The higher DBI sires achieved the additional performance without increasing the incidence of cow calving difficulty, without increasing gestation length, and without increasing calf mortality.