Star bulls: the biggest movers

Last Wednesday stood as a critical day for all pedigree breeders. The ICBF’s new genetic evaluation run took place, meaning breeders can now somewhat predict the value of their bulls. Since the introduction of the Beef Data Genomics Programme (BDGP) in 2015, bulls are being sold in their hundreds by their €uro-Star values.

This means those that took a rise in the evaluation run are likely to make that bit more when sold during the spring bull sales and those that decreased, in many cases, will take a loss.

Autumn saw a slight turn of potential customers looking at the bull as well as the stars, but, for me, still too much reliance is being based on figures which carry reliability levels of less than 50%.

Looking over the figures, it doesn’t seem to be as severe as the September evaluation run. The biggest drops seem to have come from younger lower-reliability bulls.

The biggest change in replacement index was in the Limousin breed, with Caveland Jolly dropping by €41.

In this run of evaluations, the Irish Farmers Journal has also compiled the terminal indices. Similar to the replacement comparison, readers can see the top performers in each breed, the overall top 10 bulls and the bulls which saw the biggest increase and decrease.

The active bull list was the main source for these bulls. However, we also included Dunmasc Genetics in the listing, as this was the only stud missing and it is due to make the list in the next evaluation run.

However, all bulls on the list from Dunmasc must meet the same criteria as all the rest and that is at least one calf on the ground, genomic tested and, depending on the list, have 50% reliability on either the terminal or replacement index.

How did the AI companies perform?

The replacement index stayed fairly constant across breeds in the recent evaluation.

A quick comparison across the six main AI companies shows that they saw their average replacement index increase by as much as €4 or decrease by as much as €11.40.

Dunmasc Genetics boasted the highest average replacement index at €130.20.

However, it is worth noting that this was only for five bulls, with three of these Simmental, a breed known for maternal traits.

NCBC carries the highest number of bulls on the replacement index active bull list with 162.

Of those that were also on the September evaluation, 31% increased while 61% took a fall.

This is a trend seen across the companies, with most seeing the majority of the bulls taking a hit.

Looking at the terminal index, indices again generally took a drop, but by very little. The highest average terminal index was again Dunmasc Genetics with €112.63.

However, the company also had the biggest drop of €2.23.

Probably the strongest information to go on when comparing companies is the percentage of bulls which saw an increase and decrease.

This gives a fair reflection of how bulls performed across the board.