The Most Used Sires on Dairy Farms 2024     

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What are the most popular dairy and beef sires used in dairy herds this Spring? Below is a list of the sires with the most serves recorded during the first 6 months of the year (01/01/2024- 30/06/2024). The results are based on the analysis of insemination data collected from AI technicians linked to the ICBF database, through their AI handheld system.

Table.1 The Top 20 most used dairy bulls used on dairy cows based on Total AI Handheld Serves

Table 1 Summary:

  • The number one most used dairy bull this year is FR7929 (IG) Tankardsrock Teak, with 19,445 handheld serves recorded.
  • The second most used bull dairy bull this year is FR9034 (IG) Oldcastletown Captain SRM, with 14,568 handheld serves recorded.
  • The third most used bull dairy bull this year is FR8709 (IG) Oldcastletown Mojo, with 14,390 handheld serves recorded.
  • Out of the top 20 most used dairy bulls, 18 of them were tested through the Dairy G€N€ IR€LAND breeding Programme.
  • There were a total of 439,345 dairy serves recorded on handhelds during the first 6 months of the year.
  • The top 20 bulls accounts for 38% of the total dairy serves recorded on handhelds.
Table 2.  The number of bulls used, and handheld serves recorded by breed of a dairy bull (01/01/2024- 30/06/2024). 

Table 2 Summary:

  • Holstein is the number one used breed, with 400,689 handheld serves recorded. The breed accounts for 91% of the total handheld serves recorded.
  • Friesian is the second most used breed, with 10,347 handheld serves recorded. The breed accounts for 3.5% of the total handheld serves recorded.
  • Jersey is the third most used breed, with 10,347 handheld serves recorded. The breed accounts for 2.3% of the total handheld serves recorded.
  • There were 1016 Holstein Friesian bulls, 130 Jersey bulls and 107 Friesian bulls used.
  • There was a total of 1,504 dairy bulls recorded on handhelds during the first 6 months of the year.

Handheld AI Serves of Genomic Vs Daughter Proven Bulls

Over 80% of the dairy inseminations during the first 6 months of the year have been to young genomically selected (GS) bulls. This presented in Table 3, which shows the details of the number of inseminations from GS bulls compared to daughter proven (DP) bulls. The large uptake of GS bulls can be attributed to the difference genetic merit between these bulls and the daughter proven bulls.  The average EBI of the GS bulls is €63 and €79 more than the Irish Daughter proven bulls (DP-IRL) and the International Daughter proven bulls (DP-INT) respectively. GS bulls are 3-4 years ahead of the daughter proven bulls. The analysis clearly highlights that’s farmers continue to have increased confidence in the young GS bulls to deliver more profitability on their farms in the future.

Table 3. Count &Percent of inseminations, average EBI and reliability for daughter proven and genomically selected bulls on total AI handheld Serves.
Graph 1.  The proportion of Handheld Serves that were to Genomic, Irish daughter proven and international daughter proven bulls from (01/01/2024- 30/06/2024). 
Graph 2.  The % of AI Handheld Serves by Countries of Origin for dairy sires used (01/01/2024- 30/06/2024). 

Graph 2 Summary:

  • 85% of the recorded dairy AI handheld serves were to Irish bred bulls.
  • 15% of the recorded dairy AI handheld serves were to foreign bulls.
Table 4. Top 20 Beef bulls used on Dairy Cows based on Total AI Handheld Serves (01/01/2024- 30/06/2024).

Table 4 Summary:

  • The number one most used beef bull in dairy herds this year is AA6682- Hw Lord Horatio V538, with 38,586 handheld serves recorded.
  • The second most used beef bull in dairy herds this year is AA7506- Tower Tommie, with 18,617 handheld serves recorded.
  • The third most used beef bull in dairy herds this year is AA4089- Intelagri Matteo E.T (ET), with 16,567,handheld serves recorded.
  • There were a total of 374,248 beef serves recorded on dairy cows from AI handhelds during the first 6 months of the year.
Table 5. The % of handheld serves by beef breeds used in dairy herds (01/01/2024- 30/06/2024). 

Table 5 Summary:

  • Angus is the number one most used beef breed in dairy herds, with 189,912 handheld serves recorded.
  • Hereford is the second most used beef breed in dairy herds, with 81,106 handheld serves recorded.
  • Belgian Blue is the third most used beef breed in dairy herds, with 49,863 handheld serves recorded.
  • There was a total of 731 beef bulls recorded on AI handhelds that were used in dairy herds during the first 6 months of the year.
Graph 3.  AI Handheld Insemination Trends for the 6 months of the year (2020-2024).                                                                                                                                            

Graph 3.  This graph shows the AI handheld insemination trends for the first 6 months of the year in dairy herds. These trends clearly show dairy farmers are choosing to use more beef AI across the dairy herd. The number of dairy sire inseminations has gone down from 595,383 to 439,345, while the beef sire inseminations has increased from 169,230 to 374,248 over the past 5 years.