The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) has launched a mart tracker that it said could be a “real game changer for the mart trade”.

The tracker is an online tool that provides key information on the cattle on offer at marts on any given day.

The information provided includes the animal’s lot number, the number of animals in each lot on sale, dates of birth, sex and breed.

Additional genetic information such as Euro-Stars and commercial beef values (CBV) will also be made available where sellers' herds are signed up to HerdPlus and/or have genotyped the animal.

The mart tracker can be found on the ICBF website and those wishing to view information do not need an ICBF HerdPlus account to do so.

Searching

The tracker can be used to search for different animal types being offered for sale (eg dairy, beef or dairy-beef), which animals are being offered in which marts and what age these animals are.

For example, if a suckler farmer is looking to purchase animals, they can search ‘suckler’ to see which marts are offering suckler animals on that day and which suckler animals are being offered in each individual mart.

“Farmers can access the mart tracker from their phone or computer at home and see how many animals are for sale in their local mart and how many of these meet their criteria,” the ICBF said on announcing that the tracker had gone live.

“They can see the lot numbers of the animals of interest, which means they can go straight to those pens to look at the animals when they arrive at the mart.

“Probably more importantly, if there are no animals suitable in the mart on that day, the farmer doesn’t have to spend the day around a mart ring or even watching online when they know there are no animals suitable in the mart.”