The Future looks bright for Co. Laois Limousin Breeder
Liam Ryan and his son Damien run Cappanarrow Limousin in Camross, Co.Laois, at the foot of the Slieve Bloom Mountains. (more…)
New HerdPlus Dairy Sire Advice – Now Live
ICBF have just launched a new and improved version of the HerdPlus Dairy Sire Advice Application today. Sire Advice is an application that is available to all dairy HerdPlus users. (more…)
Animal Breeding and Genetics Free Online Course
EdX in conjunction with Wageningen University and Research are offering a free 7 week online course on Animal Breeding and Genetics. This online course opens on the 13th of February. (more…)
Milk Recording Current Profile
We have improved the existing Current Milk Recording Profile to make the data more useful for management decisions. The profile is available to all milk recording herds. (more…)
Introduction of the Test Day Model in Dairy Evaluations
In line with international best practice, Ireland has now moved to applying a Test Day Model (TDM) approach for genetic evaluation of milk production traits, as opposed to the previous approach of predicted 305-day yield. (more…)
Animal Search 2017 – Over 3.7 Million Individual Hits
The ICBF animal search facility has had over 3.7 million individual hits for the year 2017. This is an impressive statistic and shows just how much dairy and beef farmers, including people from the breeding industry value the animal search. (more…)
Euro-Star Index Explained
The Euro-Star Index is a breeding index designed to aid beef farmers in the selection of more profitable breeding animals. Euro-Star Indexes quantify the genetic component of an animal’s performance across all traits of importance for Irish suckler farmers. (more…)
New Application – Stockbull Finder
What is the Stockbull Finder?
The ‘Stockbull Finder’ is the new online Bull Sales section on the ICBF website. Only bulls from WHPR herds that have been weighed and scored will be included. (more…)
What is EBI?
EBI is a single figure profit index aimed at helping farmers identify the most profitable bulls and cows for breeding dairy herd replacements. It comprises of information on eight sub-indexes related to profitable milk production. These are; (1) Milk Production, (2) Fertility, (3) Calving Performance, (4) Beef Carcass (5) Carbon, Cow Maintenance (6) Health, (7) Maintenance and (8) Management. A summary of the sub-indexes, including traits and relative weightings for traits in the EBI is displayed in Chart 1, e.g. Fertility has a 25% weighting in the EBI. Economic values in the index are based on data collected from Irish Dairy Farms and the Dairy Industry. These values were last updated in November 2022.
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