In recent weeks, letters have been sent from ICBF to all participants with a list of animals selected for genotyping this year. However, farmers have until Sunday to make changes to the list.

One of the requirements of the scheme is that a fixed number – 60% of the number of females that calved in 2014 – are genotyped every year during the programme. A herd with 35 cows calving in 2014 must genotype 21 animals each year. Animals can only be genotyped once.

Genotyping uses DNA to paint a more accurate picture of an animal’s genetic potential – improving index reliability. It provides the equivalent of roughly an extra 10 progeny records.

Which animals?

Avoid selecting animals that you do not plan to breed from. One farmer contacted the Irish Farmers Journal today asking why he was being requested to genotype two Belgian Blue beef heifers. The advice to him was to log on and change these for current or future breeding animals in his herd. These lists are not a means of advising farmers on their breeding strategies.

Any cows for culling should be swapped out of the list. If the list contains a lot of older cows that won’t be around in the latter half of 2018, it might be best to swap these for younger animals as these will be the ones that matter in terms of hitting the required targets next year (20% of reference females having four or five stars on replacement index on 31 October 2018) – particularly in herds just about, or not yet meeting the targets.

How

To make changes to your 2017 genotyping list, log on to ICBF Herdplus (cannot be done on the site’s mobile version). In the light blue box at the top of your home page there is an option to change animals selected for genotyping in 2017.

There is also an option to defer animal selection until April. However, many animals will have gone to grass at that point and rounding them up for genotyping may be an inconvenience.

Those who do not select the “defer” option will receive genotyping tags via post in the coming weeks.

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