Coming soon – April 2023
Sexed semen has been one of the key actions that has been put forward to help meet our climate goals for 2030. By using sexed semen on the dairy herd farmers will be able to reduce the amount of conventional dairy straws used, and therefore reduce the amount of dairy bull calves hitting the ground in Spring 2024. Combined with the use of high DBI (Dairy Beef Index) bulls, this will lead to increased numbers of dairy-beef animals coming into the Irish calf to beef system. This will provide an increased profit for dairy farmers as they will have a highly saleable calf in the spring, and it will also benefit the calf rearer as the use of high genetic merit beef bulls on the dairy cows will provide a dairy-beef calf that will finish quicker and cheaper without compromising on calving difficulty for the dairy farmer.
The team at ICBF have been working tirelessly the past number of months to produce a fantastic new update to Sire Advice which will allow farmers and advisors to allocate sexed semen to their cows and heifers. This will provide the best match for breeders that will reduce inbreeding and increase the genetic merit of the progeny. The updates to sire advice will come into effect in early April.
It is important that sire advice users select their females for sexed semen based on fertility data and health. This means only use sexed semen on females that are:
- Calved 60+ days
- That went in calf to the first serve last year
- Have never had a difficult calving.
- Have had no health events in the past year (mastitis, lameness etc)
- Are of adequate BCS
If you have any questions about the new updates to sire advice you can contact the HerdPlus team on 023 882 0452 or email [email protected].