The ICBF released its newest run of genetic evaluations on Thursday 23 January. These are the first set of evaluations to include the new calving figures, which are broken into four:

  • Beef heifers.
  • Beef cows.
  • Dairy heifers.
  • Dairy cows.
  • This was introduced to get a more exact figure for the sector you’re working with.

    Pictured below is a screengrab from a young Angus bull. We see automatically it goes to the two beef figures.

    1 - Beef evaluation sample for an Angus bull

    This bull in question is 4.5% of calving difficulty for beef heifers, meaning that, on average, less than five beef heifers out of every 100 calved will require considerable assistance.

    The rest of the evaluation on this screen has stayed the same.

    On the second screengrab below, we see a button called 'Replacement/terminal-Dairy beef' highlighted.

    2- Beef to Dairy evaluation switch

    When you click this button, you switch to the dairy screen. Here we see three main pieces of data which a dairy man using an Angus bull would require – dairy beef index, dairy heifer calving difficulty and dairy cow calving difficulty.

    This is the first set of evaluations where the dairy beef index is included for all bulls.

    Looking at the calving figure, we see that the bull whose evaluation is shown carries a dairy heifer calving difficulty of 10.43%. Similar to the beef heifer, this means that just over 10 out of every 100 dairy heifers will require considerable assistance.

    Generally, bulls' calving figures will be the highest for dairy heifers calving difficulty.

    3- dairy evaluation sample for an Angus bull