The Dairy Beef Welfare Scheme (DBWS) promotes the use of better quality beef sires on the national dairy herd with the aim of producing better quality calves for purchases, which will grow faster and finish at a younger age, ultimately helping to reduce the overall Carbon output of the national dairy herd.
With a payment of €20 per eligible calf, up to a maximum of 50 calves, the DBWS is worth up to €1,000 to participating herds.
Here’s how NGP can make it easier to make the most of the DBWS:
- Get Your Stock-bulls Genotyped for Free.
To be eligible for the €20 payment, a calf’s sire must be genotyped. Genotyping can cost anywhere from €18 to €30. However, herds who sign-up to NGP will get any ungenotyped stock-bulls genotyped for free.
- Confident Sire Assignment – Even with Multiple Bulls.
One of the biggest challenges with DBWS is tracking which bull served which cow—especially if you’re running multiple stockbulls in groups.
The good news? Once your bulls are genotyped, calf genotypes submitted through NGP will identify and automatically add sires
- You don’t need to split cows into separate groups with individual bulls.
- You can use multiple bulls for natural service in a single group as normal. This can help to mask any issues with sub-fertile bulls. With NGP you will then see how many cows each bull successfully served
- NGP will confirm which calves are from eligible bulls, helping you meet scheme requirements with less paperwork and guesswork.
- More saleable calves – Parentage Verified and CBV displayed on martboard.
Genotyping your calves can provide a lot of extra assurance for potential buyers such as having parentage verification and the CBV of the calf displayed on the martboard at sale, all of which can help add value to your dairybeef calves.
And moreover, you get genomic evaluations to make better female replacement decisions, and it improves the outputs of your sire advice by identifying and avoiding some known lethal recessive genes that end up in empty cows at the end of the year.
Make the Most of the Dairy Beef Welfare Scheme with NGP
You don’t need to change how you farm. Just tag, genotype, and let ICBF do the rest.
Talk to your advisor or visit www.icbf.com to find out more.