Maximising genetic progress
It is linked to the National Dairy Show through its chairman, John O’Sullivan, one of the founders of the event in Millstreet 25 years ago.
All organisations involved in artificial insemination, milk recording, and breed societies are members of ICBF.
Information is king, when you want to get the breeding of Ireland’s dairy herd right; matchmaking for more than one million cows is much more than a back-of-a-cigarette-box job.
Better breeding requires information for large numbers of animals in each generation, on their ancestry and performance.
With only 30% of herds traditionally milk recorded here, it has been hard to get the information and figures needed to see which bulls produce the best daughters for an efficient dairy industry.
For decades, Irish dairy farmers relied heavily on stock bulls. Whereas their competitors overseas chose 70% of the bulls for their cows from scientifically measured tests of bulls in AI, only 35% of Irish dairy cow replacements have traditionally been bred from AI bulls.
And those AI bulls were almost entirely sourced abroad up to a few years ago, having been proven successful under completely different farming conditions compared to Ireland.
Against that background, only a handful of Irish dairy farmers have excelled at breeding the most suitable cows for their circumstances.
But if all Irish farmers — in both dairy and beef production — could get their cattle breeding right, it has been calculated that the combined beef and dairy industries stand to gain €36 million per year.
An effective breeding program requires the best bulls to go into AI, and the best cows to be bred for replacements.
Enter ICBF in 1998, when 40% of milk recorded dairy cattle had no known sire, and 85% no known dam. By 2005, these ancestry figures have reduced to 23% and 7% respectively.
Over the same period, the number of calves born with a known sire has increased from some 120,000 to some 380,000, per year, due to improved sire recording in non-pedigree cattle.
The level of milk recording has been lifted from 27% of milking cows in 1978 to 35% in 2005. It is now at 43%; ICBF’s goal is to take it to 60% in a few years.
A comprehensive database of Irish animal performance is being built up by ICBF. More than 25,000 herds supply calf registration data — sex, date of birth, dam of the calf, and sire information.
In the two years to 2006, a dramatic 40% growth in calf registrations was achieved.
The national database has dramatically improved the accuracy and scope of the beef and dairy genetic evaluations used to identify the genetically superior animals in each generation.
These improved evaluations are used to locate Irish bred Holstein Friesian bulls for subsequent progeny testing through the Gene Ireland programme.
A further benefit of the database is its ability to provide information useful for farmers making a wide range of breeding, reproduction and disease management decisions.
Integral to the progress achieved was the development of an economic breeding index in 2001 in conjunction with Teagasc, to accurately identify Ireland’s superior, most profitable animals.
The economic breeding index (EBI) is a single profit figure designed to be the No 1 criterion in bull selection. In surveys, three out of four farmers believe it is increasing their dairy farm profit.
It has been adjusted to reflect changes in the dairy industry, such as preparing for the elimination of milk quotas in 2015, changes in costs of production and milk prices, and cow health.
