ICBF and Sheep Ireland are delighted to announce that Senator Ian Marshall is the keynote speaker for this year’s ICBF & Sheep Ireland Genetics Conference. Senator Marshall is to draw on his extensive experience in the food industry to discuss the topic of Social License-Working with the consumer to tackle today’s challenges. (more…)
January 8th, 2020: Earlier this week, the board of ICBF approved the implementation of changes to both the Dairy EBI and the calving difficulty evaluation, with both coming into effect on the next official proof run (21st January). (more…)
The ICBF animal search facility has had over 4.26 million individual hits year to date for 2019 and is on track to reach over 4.44 milion hits by the close of 2019 . 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…)
The national Beef herd stands at 934,273 cows, the population has declined from 2018 to 2019, by a staggering 42,065 cows. In the last 4 years, the number of beef cows in Ireland has declined year on year. From 2016 to 2019 the national beef herd has decreased by 83,936 cows.
You may already be familiar with the term Genomics as part of the Beef, Data and Genomics Programme (BDGP) or just from using genomics as a helpful management tool, but what exactly is genomics? (more…)
It is well documented that Irish dairy farmers are among the most environmentally sustainable food producers in the world. However, the very significant targets that the EU have set us makes it necessary for all farmers to achieve GHG reductions.
The National dairy cow population is continually increasing, despite challenging conditions in recent years, namely the fodder crisis and drought of 2018.
There are 4 factors that will both contribute to what ‘Gestation Length’ index figure your bull starts out with and also how it changes over time.1.Backpedigree, 2.Genotype, 3. Foreign Data, 4.Irish Data (more…)
At the recent farm walk for the winners of the “FBD Eurostar €200 Replacement Index Competition” at Joe and Richard Fortunes, Wexford, Doreen Corridan from Munster Bovine and Aidan Murray from Teagasc spoke about the importance of Stockbull management to have a successful breeding season. (more…)