National Cattle Breeding Centre (NCBC) is Ireland largest cattle breeding organisation and operates the country’s largest insemination service through shareholders Munster AI and Progressive Genetics.

Established in 2005, NCBC now produces 1.5m AI straws per year, accounts for 70% of DIY AI sales and inseminations and carries out 98% of all milk recording.

The company has 170 bulls in all, split between dairy and beef, and a further 50 in rearing units. Nine out of the 10 most popular AI sires countrywide in 2015 were NCBC sires.

Beef bulls are bought at 12 months to 15 months and beef programme manager Rose Goulding looks for certain criteria when buying bulls.

Buying bulls

“Obviously you want a high index, but strong pedigree is important too. Birth weight tells a lot about potential calving difficulty so it’s a big bonus if that’s recorded. We monitor the animal’s own performance relative to his contemporaries in the initial year and look at measurements like testicle size, which are good indicators of fertility. Functionality is very important too, as is temperament.

“But there are no guarantees. People will point out that so-called ‘dream bulls’ are lucrative for us, but in reality they have to pay for all the ones that don’t make the cut."

The NCBC has five barns, three at Enfield, Co Meath, and two at Mallow, Co Cork. Bulls are kept in individual pens which face into the countryside and ‘jumped’ twice per week. Teaser bulls are used to excite the sires, with at least one teaser kept in each barn.

Lockdown

Biosecurity is critical. When asked about the protocol for getting in to see the bulls, NCBC CEO Bernard Eivers laughed: “You don’t!”

He said that on the very odd occasion when an outside visitor must visit the barns, he or she must have had no contact with any ruminant for 48 hours prior to entering and must "shower in" and change into clothing provided to get into the facility. Any equipment that a visitor elects to bring in must be fully sterilised prior to their entry.

The star bulls within each breed are kept in separate barns to prevent a complete breed being wiped out in the event of a disease outbreak. Within the Charolais breed for example, FZS is at stud in Mallow and LZF is in the Enfield stud.

In 2011, an IBR outbreak at the Enfield site lead to the slaughter of 81 animals in what was described by staff as a complete nightmare.

The impetus on biosecurity is understandable: in 2016, NCBC’s most popular Aberdeen Angus bull KYA sold 32,000 straws across the country.

Semen is courier-driven to the NCBC lab in Naas straight away. There, staff carry out rigid QC tests before splitting the sample into straws.

Once a batch of straws passes a freeze-thaw test, they are quarantined for 30 days before going into the field. But QC does not stop at the lab, bull conception rates and technician conception rates are continually monitored throughout the year.

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