Forge Genetics, a group of dairy farmers from the Munster region, have teamed up with Bova AI based in Limerick to offer dairy farmers high EBI genomic Holstein Friesian and Jersey crossbred straws at €9 per straw.

The Forge farmers decided to breed genetics that were suited to and reared in a grass-based system. They wanted to select sons of dams in their own herds that were performing excellently without any preferential management in grass-based systems.

This was done instead of buying straws from sires coming from high-input systems or from herds where high levels of feeding were selectively improving performance and artificially improving records.

Rather than selling their high EBI bull calves in 2011, they decided to keep the best of the bull calves from across the farms in the group themselves as potential high-EBI stock bulls or high-EBI sires that could go to an AI station. To rear the bull calves, they arranged a contract-rearing farm with strict biosecurity protocols. Only the cream of the 30-plus bull calves makes it to the Bova AI bull station. Young bulls that don’t make the AI station are sold as high-EBI, healthy stock bulls

Last year, the Forge group completed a deal with Bova AI so that the best bulls, when reared, would stand at the Bova AI stud and Bova would provide semen for the farmers in the group, as required. Obviously, the cost of the semen to forge group members is small compared with normal.

The agreement allows Bova to sell straws from the bulls, according to demand from other dairy farmers. A spokesperson for the Forge group told me that, this year, there are 10 bulls standing at Bova – four bulls from last year’s crop and six bulls from this year. Some of the bulls are in limited supply and, in terms of quality, the majority are similar to some of the pedigrees and EBI in the ICBF active bull list. For more information, call Bova at 061-351233.