The next dairy sire evaluation run will be released in late March, the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) has announced.The March run will include calving difficulty proofs for young bulls that were used for the first time last year. This will give farmers more information about the calving difficulty of bulls before they decide what to buy for this season.
The next dairy sire evaluation run will be released in late March, the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) has announced.
The March run will include calving difficulty proofs for young bulls that were used for the first time last year. This will give farmers more information about the calving difficulty of bulls before they decide what to buy for this season.
A number of weeks ago, ICBF said that the next run would not occur until late April, after which most farmers would have picked their bulls for the coming season.
ICBF chair Michael Doran told the recent Positive Farmers conference: “EBI values on sires will not be available until the end of April in order to get as much information as possible on sires that have calves born in February and March.”
This meant farmers could have potentially lost out a full year’s genetic gain in their herd.
Gene Ireland
ICBF has also announced details of the Gene Ireland programme for 2018. There are over 70 young bulls in the programme including nine Jersey bulls. All the main AI companies are participating, including Dovea, NCBC and Eurogene.
The Irish Farmers Journal understands that the new sexed semen study will be conducted through the Gene Ireland programme, with participating farmers getting 60 AI straws, half of which are sexed and the other half conventional. All semen used will be frozen.
Fresh semen will be transported to the Cogent laboratory in Cheshire.
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