The ICBF ‘Animal Search’ facility allows ICBF users to search for females in HerdPlus/BDGP herds.
This facility is having a significant impact on the breeding industry in Ireland. This feature can be used by anyone and can be found on the right hand side of the ICBF home screen.
The ICBF Animal Search has been the number one tool used for accessing genetic indexes online. In 2017 there were over 3.7 million searches carried out on the Animal Search facility. This was up from 3 million searches carried out in 2016.
In the first 7 months of 2018 there have been over 2.5 million searches carried out (see table below). This makes the animal search on track to hit over 4 million individual searches for 2018. This is an impressive statistic and shows just how much dairy and beef farmers, including people from the breeding industry value the animal search.The ICBF animal search gives users up to date genetic and progeny performance information on AI bulls, stock bulls and females located in a BDGP or HerdPlus herd.
As can be seen from table 1 the total number of searches carried out on the ICBF animal search in the first 7 months of this year is over 2.5 million. This is an increase of over 177,000 hits verses the same period in 2017. There has been consistent growth in the number of animal searches carried out on the ICBF animal search in recent years. This is really showing the value of the animal search to farmers and indeed all people in the industry.