Last Friday, ICBF invited industry representatives and G€N€ IR€LAND committee members to Tully progeny test centre, Kildare town, Co Kildare to discuss and review the objectives of the G€N€ IR€LAND Beef program.
The margin is certainly in the last 100 days with the steers is very tight compared with the bulls, the bulls are much more consistent in terms of growth rate. The bulls are a much more efficient system, and much more profitable in the indoor system we run at Tully
Stephen Conroy manager at the Tully test centre outlines to Darren Carty that five-star are the best performing bulls. Stephen Conroy explained the traits that are being recorded on the 192 AI progeny currently on a 120 day performance test at the centre. These traits include average daily gain, scanned ultrasound measurements and other predictors of meat eating quality along with feed intake and meat yield. Since 2014, performance data has being collected on over 1500 progeny of AI sires at the centre. The importance of feed intake brought great discussion among those attending especially after it demonstrated that there was a difference of 420 kilos in feed consumed between two Limousin sired bulls over a 100 day finishing period. Also, the bull that was eating less feed (left in photo below) was growing at 2 kilos per day while the bull that consumed more feed was growing at 1.60 kilos per day in the last 100 days. The difference in feed alone was €85 between the two animals.
