The ICBF animal search facility has had over 4.26 million individual hits year to date for 2019 and is on track to reach over 4.44 milion hits by the close of 2019 . This is an impressive statistic and shows just how much dairy and beef farmers, including people from the breeding industry value the animal search. (more…)
The national Beef herd stands at 934,273 cows, the population has declined from 2018 to 2019, by a staggering 42,065 cows. In the last 4 years, the number of beef cows in Ireland has declined year on year. From 2016 to 2019 the national beef herd has decreased by 83,936 cows.
In all dairy breeds, at least 22% of their pedigree calf crop in 2018 was sired by 10 bulls. (more…)
Of the beef breeds that have been brought into Ireland – the Hereford, Shorthorn & Angus breeds are here by far the longest. (more…)
Following last weeks’ release of the HerdPlus Dairy Calving reports, ICBF can report a slight decrease in the fertility performance of the national dairy herd. (more…)
The following is a list of the most popular beef AI sires in suckler herds in 2018 (more…)
ICBF has recently undertaken analysis for AI service trends for the past 2 years in the beef suckler herd. Overall AI usage has decreased nationally by 6% from 2017-2018 . This correlates with the reduction of suckler cow numbers that has also taken place during the same period. (more…)
55% of all pedigree calves are sired by AI Sires. The proportion of calves sired by AI Sires ranges from 25% (Aubrac) to 92% (Belgian Blue). (more…)
Wondering which sires are used the most this year? Below is a list of the sires with the most serves recorded in the first half of 2019. (more…)