Breeding season 2020 has begun for many farmers around the country. Now is the ideal time to begin running your weekly fertility reports to monitor the performance of your breeding females. Quickly check online to see how your dairy herd is performing on a weekly basis compared to the national average. (more…)
Why do proofs change and does the extent of change vary depending on the type of proof for the bull? To answer these questions ICBF examined bull proofs from 1901 AI sires born over the 20-year period 1995 to 2014. (more…)
Breeding Season is finally upon is. With 17 cows served in the last 2 days we didn’t see the point in delaying any further as it would have been a shame to wait 21 days for those cows to come around again. (more…)
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…)
Given current circumstances the Teagasc farm walks that would usually take place at this time of year, have been replaced by a series of free webinars. Make sure you tune in to the online breeding seminars for your opportunity to ask those all-important questions regarding the impending breeding season! (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…)
At ICBF we are excited to announce our latest pilot project: ‘Mart€xpress’. The new mart trading feature, available on the HerdPlus App, aims to streamline the buying and selling of animals through the ICOS mart network. (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…)