Over 200 beef farmers will have the opportunity to partake in Teagasc's recently launched Beef Quest research project.

The new project will identify the barriers to achieving an earlier age of finish for beef cattle nationally and participating farmers can avail of a range of benefits.

Project lead on Beef Quest and research officer at the Teagasc Climate Centre Dr Paul Smith explained: “Through the capture of on-farm data, we hope to identify the pitfalls and develop strategies to achieve a younger age of finish for beef cattle nationally.”

Reducing the mean finishing age of the ‘prime’ beef cattle population to 22 or 23 months of age by 2030 is one of the main greenhouse gas mitigation strategies for the Irish beef sector.

Earlier finishing of beef cattle not only has the potential to decrease the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions an animal emits over their lifetime, but can be economically advantageous, by lowering total costs associated with rearing an animal and thus is a key contributor to on-farm profitability.

Progress

Although Irish beef farmers have made some progress in reducing the age of finish over the past 15 years, Dr Smith explained there is still a considerable journey to go to achieve the target.

"The national mean age at finishing is some three to six months older than achieved on high-performing, grass-based, commercial and beef research farms.

"To achieve a reduction in finishing age, there is an urgent need to identify and quantify the key factors currently impeding Irish beef farms from achieving potential liveweight targets.

"Understanding the variation in the lifetime of animal performance on Irish beef cattle farms is a key focus of the Teagasc-led Beef Quest project."

The project is funded by the Department of Agriculture and is in collaboration with the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation and University College Dublin.

This project will use data currently available within the industry to map the lifetime liveweight gain performance of the national beef herd.

Benefits

Teagasc said that the benefits of signing up to the project include free liveweight recording of growing cattle, which will be conducted at key stages over the animal’s lifetime and forage analysis, as well as reporting of your farm’s performance with that of other farms within the programme.

Regular liveweight recording of growing cattle is the only way to accurately monitor the liveweight gain performance of growing cattle, it said.