The ICBF ‘Animal Search’ facility allows ICBF users to search for male and female animals in HerdPlus/BDGP herds. This facility has a significant impact on the breeding industry in Ireland. This feature can be used by anyone and can be found on the right hand side of the ICBF home screen.
The ICBF animal search facility has had over 2 million individual hits so far in 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.The ICBF animal search gives users up to date genetic and progeny performance information on AI bulls, stock bulls and females located in a BDGP or HerdPlus herd.
As can be seen from table 1 the total number of searches carried out on the ICBF animal search so far this year is over 2 million. This is an increase of over 426,000 hits verses 2016 figures. This increase can be largely attributed to the ‘Bull Search’ becoming the ‘ICBF Animal Search’ in July 2016. This now means that users can search for males but can also now search for females (in BDGP or HerdPlus herd). There has been over 318,000 female searches carried out so far in 2017.