A common misconception is that breeding should not be pursued as a method for improving health or fertility traits due to their low heritability. Low heritability does not mean the trait cannot be improved. Low heritability simply signifies that much more records are required to achieve the same rate of genetic gain as high heritability trait (e.g., carcass weight or milk yield). (more…)
One of the popular myths presented at this time of the year, is that proofs for young genomic AI bulls don’t stack up and that as a result, farmers would be better to stick to using daughter proven or even stock bulls when breeding dairy female replacements. (more…)
The number of HerdPlus members that used the Sire Advice application has increased from 2,654 herds in 2019 to 3,095 herds in 2020, an increase of 17% (more…)
With the breeding season just about to start, ICBF HerdPlus have just undertaken an analysis of births from the dairy herd for the year to date, broken down by breed (more…)
Pat Donnellan, ICBF talks through the ICBF Dairy Active Bull List for Spring 2020. (more…)
What is the rate of gain in EBI? How does this differ for different categories of animals? Dr. Andrew Cromie, ICBF takes a look at the latest genetic trends in EBI. (more…)
ICBF has today published the March 2020 genetic evaluations. This has seen the EBI & Euro-Star indexes for all cows, heifers, stock bulls and AI bulls updated. The Animal Search, Active Bull Lists, Stock Bull Finder, sales catalogues and all online profiles have now been updated with the new evaluation figures.
Pat Donnellan, ICBF talks through some of the reasons why BEEP is worth its weight in gold.
‘Getting them all in to weigh will be some dose, are you home this weekend to help?’, ‘Well, have a guess, what weight do you think she is?’, ‘I can’t believe how heavy he is!’. All of these and many more like them could be heard on suckler farms (more…)
With the 2020 breeding season on the horizon, now is a good time to look back at the previous breeding season. Below, we display the top 10 AI bulls used in 2019 based on the data recorded on the ICBF database. (more…)