iCBF

FIAT 450

Well-Known Member
We are currently picking bulls to run on our Autumn calved cows at the moment. Picked 6 bulls 2 from eurogene, 2 from progressive and 2 from dovea. Then went and ran it through sure advice on the iCBF website. I was wondering what is the base cow the iCBF use.??
 
We are currently picking bulls to run on our Autumn calved cows at the moment. Picked 6 bulls 2 from eurogene, 2 from progressive and 2 from dovea. Then went and ran it through sure advice on the iCBF website. I was wondering what is the base cow the iCBF use.??
Untitled-1.png
 
But does the system when you cross your team of bulls on your cows through the sire select part on the iCBF it's trying to bring all your cows to as close as possible to its base cow? I am using more eurogene bulls on my winter cows which wouldnt be massively milky then a progressive bull with 46kg of solids. And it's making me question the hole thing
 
Yes. However I'd be fairly confident in saying that since that base cow has been identified, the calving interval would have shortened slightly.
So if base cow calves on 1 Feb this year and then 1 Apr next year she'll be culled the following year in any decent farm. Are bulls out of those cows being selected for AI?
Having seen what they did to the suckler herd with their beef index it's hard to have faith in these figures.
 
is there any way to find out the % of freisian heifers versus bulls born to AI on the icbf website ?
 
The base cow isn't a made up cow, she's the average national cow (on a particular date) being used as a reference, all EBI figures are then compared to her. Average no. of lactations per cow is 3.3, so that is what is happening on Irish farms. Its improving slowly, but I expect it should speed up now with herds starting to mature with better genetics.

Believe me when I say that ICBF is the envy of the world and is only criticised by Irish farmers. We could be doing so much more if we recorded a lot more information. We could be breeding for lameness, genetic resistance to parasites, mastitis, pneumonia, bull fertility, to name a few. When you talk to people involved in compiling these figures, you'd come away feeling that us farmers are really letting ourselves down and that with the simple act of pulling the phone out of our pocket and putting in a hoof paring event on a cow, we would be adding to a statistic on a genetic line that would give massive information on bull trait selection.
 
Back
Top