Dairy farmers are making decisions on sire selections ahead of the 2017 breeding season.

The Irish Farmers Journal spoke to farmers in counties Cork, Kerry and Offaly to gauge the mood ahead of the second busiest season of the year for dairy farmers.

Criss-cross breeding

Denis O’Donovan is farming in west Cork and he is facing into a cross-breeding decision. The breeding season for O’Donovan starts on 1 May.

“I have the decision of criss-crossing and what way to go with the herd,” O’Donovan said.

“For me, the decision is not to put all my eggs in one basket. My herd has a high EBI (economic breeding index) and I have been using LIC over the years.

“They have been ticking the boxes for me, but the new active bull list has them down a bit. So I have a bit of head scratching to do on what I will go for this year.”

Breeding carnage

Co Kerry farmer Padraig McCarthy said he is facing into “a bit of breeding carnage” because of the delays publishing the active bull list.

“I suppose I would have 75% or so of my bulls picked out at this stage, and I have a good few of them on order. I would have made the decisions before all of this broke with new active bull list.

“My fertility figure is down about €28 on average because of the changes, and it has been a bit of breeding carnage, the failure to get the list out and then for the changes to have occurred in the list itself.

“I’m disappointed, to say the least, with the ICBF for allowing this to happen. It’s a bit of the path of no return for me, really,” he said.

McCarthy, like O’Donovan, will commence his breeding season on 1 May.

Padraig McCarthy

Replacement planning

Padraig Keane from Co Offaly is currently planning to get his breeding season under way on or around 7 May, with a calving date of approximately 10 February next.

“We’re looking at high-EBI black and white sires for most of the cows with a handful of Jersey sire on the lower protein cows.

“We’re only really looking at the active bull list for the replacements. We want to make sure that we have bulls with a low calving difficulty.”

Padraig Keane

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