Top 10 dairy bulls will deliver over €1 billion over the next 10 years
Speaking at the recent NCBC annual general meeting in Portlaoise, Bernard Eivers said the top 10 dairy bulls supplied by the Enfield centre last spring had an average economic breeding index (EBI) of €215, which is €79 higher than the baseline index.
“Over 300,000 doses of semen from these bulls were used by dairy farmers. This will result in a minimum of 44,000 replacement heifer progeny from these superior bulls. The additional income potential from using these bulls is €1.1 billion over 10 years, or an average of €110m per year.”
“If all dairy replacements were bred by these high EBI bulls, the benefit to dairy farmer income would be of the order of €5bn over 10 years,” said Mr Eivers.
Outlining the progress made by the NCBC in lifting dairy herd genetics, Mr Eivers said 35 bulls from the NCBC stud are on the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation’s active dairy sire list. These NCBC bulls account for 50% of total bulls on the list, the largest proportion by far of all studs from around the world.
“Due to the diverse breeding objectives of beef farmers and the difficulty in accurately measuring some of the parameters used in beef evaluations, it is more difficult to carry out a similar assessment for beef. However, NCBC continues to invest heavily in the beef stud and has been very active in creating a pipeline of top beef genetics that will benefit farmers in the coming years,” he said.
NCBC chairman Tom Corcoran said NCBC was established in 2005 with the mission of “adding measurable value to the national herd through the identification and distribution of optimal dairy and beef genetics to Irish farmers”.
“These results clearly demonstrate that we have been successful in this mission. Working with Teagasc and ICBF, we have achieved a lot for Irish farmers, from GeneIreland to Genomic Selection. I am confident that with our new plan we have the resources across NCBC, Teagasc and ICBF to develop one of the world’s top cattle breeding programmes”.
The chairman welcomed Grassland Alliance, the recently signed joint venture with the Dutch based global cattle breeding company, CRV. This will make NCBC genetics available in all the major dairy markets in the world and will give NCBC and Ireland access to one of the world’s largest breeding programmes operating in Europe, New Zealand, North and South America.
“Grassland Alliance is more than a marketing agreement. Central to the programme is sharing genotypes from the young bull programmes around the world. This creates the opportunity of identifying outcross genetics for Irish farmers,” said Tom Corcoran.
Mr Eivers pointed out that the Enfield laboratory was the only semen laboratory in Ireland operating to ISO standards and had recently been approved by the Chinese veterinary authorities for exports of semen to China.
He highlighted the need for a marketing campaign in order to lift the profile of the NCBC breeding programmes and bulls. “NCBC semen is sold by its shareholders, Progress-ive Genetics and the Munster AI Group. The lack of a strong brand is impacting on sales in Ireland and internationally and this will be addressed in 2011,” he said.
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