The head of the National Cattle Breeding Centre’s beef programmes has urged suckler farmers not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” when considering whether to use Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) stars when selecting bulls.

Sales and AI catalogues provide “really good information” on traits all farmers are interested in improving, from calving ease, to carcase weight and daughter fertility, Rosalish Goulding told farmers attending the Irish Farmers Journal suckler marts roadshow in Granard on Thursday.

Goulding suggested that it would be incorrect to say that show heifers fetching high prices at sales like Carrick-on-Shannon’s Winter Sale have “no stars”.

“The argument is about the weightings to make up the replacement index. When people say ‘the animals in Carrick have no stars’ – they have massive stars on terminal index, they have massive stars on carcase weight, carcase conformation. It is a different job,” she said.

“What we need to say is that they are low on replacement stars.

“I would be careful we don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.

“There is very good information there to be had. I think that’s nearly where it went wrong, putting huge emphasis on one number, when I believe it is a very good tool, but it is not everything. I think when people talk about ‘no stars’ what they are actually talking about is the replacement index.”

Goulding stated that the genetic information available to Irish buyers is ahead of that available to farmers making breeding decisions overseas, especially those relying just on bloodlines.

“If you look at the page of any AI catalogue, any bull sale catalogue, there is an awful lot of information there on an awful lot of traits,” she continued.

“It is very useful information that other countries don’t have as good.

“When we are doing bloodlines on calving difficulty, what we are usually told is the ones that are extremely easy and the ones that are cow killers. There is no way of telling what’s in the middle.

“But when you test bulls in Ireland, we can almost predict exactly if it going to be 5%, 6% or 7%.”