Farmer Writes: I’m not losing any sleep over ICBF indices

Cows were milked in both the yards I farm in until the early 1980s and mid-1990s, respectively. Dad is from a dairy farm in north Mayo and after completing his farm apprenticeship he stayed on in west Cork initially as a dairy farm manager.

While the word dairy might upset some people in beef circles, I’ve never known farming without paddocks or calving heifers at two years of age as a result of it.

There were always a few bucket-reared calves around to complement the few sucklers we had too before suckler numbers grew and it became impractical. That’s not to say I wouldn’t ever dip my toe into calf rearing again and given where beef prices are, that might even be a necessity.

Living where I do, there’s no escaping it as a topic of conversation as many friends and neighbours were involved. I even remember the vote on the west Cork co-ops amalgamating was discussed in national school when we weren’t even 12.

The dairy co-ops were an integral part of the farming discussion where I grew up near the crossroads village of Ballinascarthy.

Classmates and GAA teammates supplied any one of Bandon, Barryroe and Lisavaird co-ops so whether you grew up on a farm that milked cows or not, you were familiar with the vocabulary. If a farm came up for sale, the size of the quota available would nearly be talked about more than the size of the farm back then.

It’s coming up on the 10th anniversary of the lifting of milk quotas and the Irish farming landscape is a very different place from 2015. The west Cork one too, but maybe to a lesser extent as dairy cows were always plentiful.

The impact of dairy expansion had an impact on the suckler herd too, predominantly the size of it, but much of that tended to happen outside of this neck of the woods. Suckler cows were cashed in and replaced with dairy in many cases on the larger farms that were locked out of dairy by quotas.

From its peak of 1.22m cows in 2005, the Irish suckler herd has shrunk by 475,000 head today. The average herd size always seemed to be 17 cows, so dividing that into the number gone means there are close to 28,000 fewer suckler herds in the country than 20 years ago.

If a third to three quarters of them were using stock bulls, that leaves about 20,000 fewer customers for beef breed bulls compared to the heady days when the Irish suckler herd stood over one million head.

I sometimes wonder if that eroding of a customer base is driving some of the grievances from pedigree breeders towards ICBF at the moment. It was interesting to see the survey of breeders ahead of the Limousin sale where 61 out of 64 bulls had their figures displayed.

They’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but farmers want to have some idea of what they are spending their money on.

I’m not sure if it’s possible but it would be interesting to see how many times the bulls were searched for on the ICBF website in the lead up to the sales.

When I checked my own herd, I saw their indices drop by double digits when the configuration of the indices was changed in November 2023 but I didn’t lose any sleep over it. I’ve always viewed the indices in the same way I view the weather forecast. It’s a useful guide but there’s no guarantees. I rather keep an eye out for calving difficulty and carcase weight when selecting a bull.

Take a look at the active bull list and you can choose to use a continental bull that is 0.3% calving difficulty or one that is 24.5%. I’m glad we’re in a position to know that ahead of serving a cow rather than finding out nine months later.