The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) will start circulating €uro-Star reports to farmers who signed up to the Beef Data Genomics Programme (BDGP) over the next fortnight. A small number of preliminary reports were circulated last week, with the aim of collecting farmer feedback.

The ICBF explains that this information is being used to make final changes and create the optimal farmer-friendly report.

The report will firstly list the number of reference animals on which a herd will be based. This is calculated from the number of eligible suckler cows that produced an eligible calf in 2014 and will form the basis for payment and calculation of herd replacement requirements.

The next sections of the report detail the number of females required to meet the 2018 female replacement requirement (the number of cows or heifers aged over 16 months and genotyped four- or five-star on the replacement index that are required to meet targets on 31 October 2018) and the 2020 replacement requirement (same as above, with 50% target on 31 October 2020).

It also calculates the status of your herd and lists the number of cows, heifers and calves rated four- or five-star on the replacement index. This information will be broken down with an overview of the number of animals in each category from one to five stars. It also shows the number of animals missing sires in the herd and as a result may not have an evaluation.

The first page of the report will detail the status of stock bulls on the farm, with future reports containing detailed breakdown on AI usage requirement.

The remaining sections list individual €uro-Star evaluations for commercial and purebred females, and breeding bulls in the herd.