Breeding for €uro stars with ICBF

ICBF Beef Breeding Journal 2015-16

Breeding for the Stars An Irish Beef Pedigree Breeder’s story John O’Reilly is a pedigree Limousin breeder who is farming outside Freshford Co.Kilkenny. As well as running a busy painting & decorating business in Kilkenny city John runs the 30 cow pedigree ‘ Gleannari’ limousin herd in his spare time! ‘Sure I had to do something in the evening when I finished up playing rugby!’.

Where potential customers previously pulled up in the yard with a trailer on the hitch and a cheque book in the pocket, they now arrive into John’s yard, head down squinting into the screen of a mobile phone looking up bull figures!.

‘90% of farmers that come in here looking for a bull are looking them up on their phones. You never hear from some of them again, and that’s all down to figures. Fair enough the figures are important but making sure that the bull is physically sound is just as important.

I feel that having to include €uro-Stars in my bull selection decisions limits my choice, as there are’nt a huge amount of new bulls coming through in AI each year, however, stars are here to stay and farmers have bought into them, so as a pedigree breeder I have to make sure that the bulls I am breeding have good €uro-Stars.’

Today’s pedigree breeder has to bring out a bull that ticks all the boxes on the figures – easy calving, quiet, milk in his daughters and of course he must also have a massive rear end! Having a bull that ticks all the boxes of the stars, as well as him being physically impressive is a real challenge’.

ICBF Linear scorers send the data that they record back to the ICBF database through electronic handheld devices.

Breeding for the Stars Ensuring that the bull’s you are selling have ‘good figures’ is a challenge faced by all pedigree beef breeders across all the various breeds in Ireland. There are basically 3 simple rules to follow for both Pedigree breeders and Commercial farmers, that will increase the chances of their stock having the much sought after 4 or 5 stars.

1. Linear Score & Weight Record 2. Know the €uro-Stars of your cows.

3. Know the €uro-Stars of your Sire’s.

1. Linear Score & Weight Record The €uro-Stars that farmers receive on their stock are only as good as the information that goes into making up those indexes.

John has always linear scored all of his pedigree youngstock so as to add vital information into their indexes. ‘

I have always brought in some straws of AI Sires that I would have sourced myself in France. I would have the only progeny of these bulls to start off with so its critical that I get their progeny weighed and scored so as to build up the reliability in their figures. Scoring is also valuable for keeping on top of docility. Poor docility is something that I will cull immediately on – I just won’t work with cracked cattle – end of story’.

‘90% of farmers that come in here looking for a bull are looking them up on their phones.’

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ICBF Beef Breeding Journal 2015-16

2. Know the €uro-Stars of your cows Herdplus provides an online listing of the €uro-Stars of all cattle in the herd.

Graphic 1: Online €uro-Star profile. Some of John’s ‘5 Star’ pedigree animals are shown above.

John keeps a close eye on the €uro-Stars of his cows and young stock. He pays particular attention to the ‘Replacement Index’ as this gives him a steer on the milk & fertility in his herd. ‘There’s nothing I like better than to breed a big strong muscly bull but I have to remember that if my cows follow that path then I will run into problems as regards cows not having enough milk, calving intervals slipping etc. For those cows with poor €uro-Stars I always try to pick out a high indexed AI Sire to try and correct this.

I just have to keep one eye on the figures at all times so as to maximise the sale potential of the resulting young bulls.’

Graphic 2: A page from John’s Herdplus suckler cow report, for one of his cows.

Through his Herdplus ‘Suckler Cow Report’, John is also able to keep an eye on what the actual on the ground performance of his cow’s are.

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ICBF Beef Breeding Journal 2015-16

3. Know the €uro-Stars of your Sires AI Sires John does his own AI and over the years has built up an impressive collection of Limousin AI straws. That said, John has to be careful as regards which bull’s he now uses. A bull that was fashionable to use 5 years ago may not now have good €uro-Star ratings and so must be avoided. He must also strike a balance between €uro-Stars and reliability %. The lower the reliability % the higher the risk that a bull’s figures will change.

‘I look up the latest ICBF figures online before using a bull and try and use a couple of new bulls alongside some highly reliable bulls in a kind of ‘team’ of bulls. On the back of the BDGP scheme I took a fresh look at what straws I had in the tank and categorised them based on their stars. I also normally bring in some straws of some new bulls every year from France. ICBF being able to include their French data has been a great help to these bulls not starting off on the ground but I still have to watch the reliability figures when using them.’

Ronick Hawk (RKH): High reliability (94%) 5 Star AI Sire. John knows that if he uses him and gets a bull that there is a good chance that he will still have a high star rating when he goes to sell him.

Tastevin (TSZ): Low reliability (50%) 5 Star AI Sire.

John would use a bull like him sparingly just in case his figures dropped. Using a bull with that reliability across the whole herd would be just too risky.

‘Hadrian’ is John’s new Stockbull. He is 5 stars for the ‘Terminal Index’.

His semen is also available from Bova AI.

Stockbulls Like a lot of Breeders, John also uses Stockbulls in his herd. By also using AI, John is actually giving the €uro-Stars of his Stockbulls a great chance to move. This is because if your Stockbull is used on his own then his progeny will have no other progeny from different bulls to be compared against. Whereas having the progeny of your stockbull compared against those off well used AI Sires gives your Stockbull the chance to show how good he is and in turn cause his €uro-Stars to change.

‘When I bred ‘Dimaggio’ and bought ‘Hadrian’, it would have been their backpedigrees that I looked at first. Now I have to pay as much attention to their €uro – Star indexes.’

‘Gleannari Dimaggio’ is John’s older Stockbull. He is 4 stars for the ‘Replacement Index’. John has also taken semen from this bull for his own on-farm use.

‘When I bred ‘Dimaggio’ and bought ‘Hadrian’, it would have been their backpedigrees that I looked at first. Now I have to pay as much attention to their €uro – Star indexes.’

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ICBF Beef Breeding Journal 2015-16

Herdplus Bulltracker Report One Herdplus report that John gets a lot of use out of is the ‘Bulltracker Report’ which, as the name suggests ‘tracks’ the performance of bull’s that he has sold for breeding. The report has an index section which lists all of the bulls sold in recent years and gives the breakdown of the number of calves that each bull has sired across the years.

Graphic 3: The index section at the start of John’s ‘Bulltracker Report’. This shows the number of progeny sired by each bull that John bred.

Bull Sold for Breeding ‘Take this bull ‘Gleannari Glad’ for example. I sold him in Roscrea in 2012. He is by my own stockbull so I was very interested to see how he would get on. This report shows me that after nearly 50 calves he is very easy calving and is throwing good stock.

This is powerful information to know and as easy calving as I know that his sire ‘Dimaggio’ is – the real proof is seeing that his son’s are also showing up to be easy calving.’

Graphic 4: The individual page in the report for each bull shows the numbers of progeny that he has sired as well as any summary performance data.

‘I love the ‘Herdplus Bulltracker Report’ as I learn a lot from seeing how the bulls that I sell go on to breed’.

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