In the last couple of months, some farmers have asked me to explain why imported New Zealand Friesian sires were falling further down the EBI listing and yet the majority of the top 2,000 herds ranked on EBI are bred from New Zealand high-EBI sires.

Farmers talked to me about an Irish conspiracy against the foreigners, that the ICBF and its shareholders (Progressive Genetics and Munster AI) were looking to keep competitors out of the market.

There were also rumours that Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC) were either going to pull out of Ireland altogether or leave its Irish partners, Eurogene. With all this in mind, I sat down with Niall O’Regan, acting general manager for LIC Ireland and Tom Baker from Eurogene to discuss some of the issues.

Niall O’Regan was quick to defend the Irish EBI system. He said: “We don’t rubbish the EBI system and the fact of the matter is we have a poor proof conversion when converting a New Zealand proof to an Irish EBI proof. In New Zealand, the fertility measure is 42-day calving rate and in Ireland it’s calving interval and survival. We have been working on improving the correlation between the two measures for the last 18 months for conversion to EBI, but it’s still a work in progress.”

When asked if some of the best New Zealand-bred bulls were available in Ireland, he said: “Yes, some of the best are available. Genomics is not as hot in New Zealand as it is in Ireland, so between seasons it allowed us stockpile semen even before a genomic evaluation was available.

“For example, it means we have semen of the No 2 Breeding Worth (BW) bull, Lamont, available in stock for sale in Ireland and at least six of the top 50 bulls on the RAS (NZ) list.”

Niall also believes that the track record of New Zealand-bred high-EBI stock stacks up in Ireland.

“There are now about 900 of the top 2,000 cows bred from kiwi sires and I estimate we would only have had about 10-15% of the market at the time when those sires were selected. I do believe the New Zealand sires improve with time and while the Irish breeding programme has improved significantly and is moving very fast, I believe New Zealand high EBI-bred sires can match Irish genomic bulls in time,” he said.

New Zealand bulls for international markets must enter a dedicated New Zealand semen export centre due to differences in rules around IBR. Niall believes some recent changes in the EU interpretation of TB regulations may improve the speed of delivery from New Zealand, but nothing is yet confirmed.

Changes

I asked Niall if LIC could select and buy young Irish-bred bull calves from New Zealand breeding as per the rest of the industry, put them through the GENE Ireland programme and deliver EBI-proven sires.

At that stage, Tom Baker was quick to interject and say the Eurogene and LIC have a joint young bull programme called I –squared or I2. He said: “The plan is to develop a successful bull testing programme that identifies the best grassland genetics from within Ireland. The I2 breeding programme combines the best Irish cow families and top Irish, New Zealand and international sires, thus doubling up on the use of a unique mix of proven grassland genetics.”

I asked Tom what results have been delivered so far. He said: “We have been extremely encouraged with a very good hit rate to date with Lucky Whistler (WLY), Graiguebeg SUPER (SPG), Parkduv MAGNET (PKX) and Ballbride Prince (PRW), some of the top bulls on the current active bull list.”