May 21st, 2020: Late last week, ICBF announced the passing of another significant milestone with over 2 million cattle in Ireland having a valid genotype, an increase of 1 million in just 3 years. (more…)
ICBF and the programme partners, have recently launched the exciting new Gene Ireland panel of high Replacement Index beef bulls for Spring 2020. Building on the success of previous programmes, these bulls have been selected on their potential to deliver in two key areas. (more…)
Recent analysis carried out by ICBF has shown that carcass performance for suckler bred animals between 2015-2019 has seen a slight increase in carcass weight, with conformation remaining the same. (more…)
Breeding season has gone super so far, we’re on day 18 and have hit 90 percent submission so hopefully repeats will be quiet. We will continue AI for 5 or 6 weeks with the stockbull being left off with the herd on the last week of AI, as it can take bulls up to a week to get into their stride. (more…)
Basically, the rate at which the €uro-Stars of animals in your herd improves depends on how aggressively you select and cull your breeding stock based on their €uro-Star values. That is a very simplistic answer and there are of course many different factors to take into account (more…)
Why do proofs change and does the extent of change vary depending on the type of proof for the bull? To answer these questions ICBF examined bull proofs from 1901 AI sires born over the 20-year period 1995 to 2014. (more…)
Breeding Season is finally upon is. With 17 cows served in the last 2 days we didn’t see the point in delaying any further as it would have been a shame to wait 21 days for those cows to come around again. (more…)
This is clear from the results of analysis carried out by Teagasc on the data collected as part of the Beef Environmental Efficiency Pilot (BEEP) in 2019. (more…)
A common misconception is that breeding should not be pursued as a method for improving health or fertility traits due to their low heritability. Low heritability does not mean the trait cannot be improved. Low heritability simply signifies that much more records are required to achieve the same rate of genetic gain as high heritability trait (e.g., carcass weight or milk yield). (more…)