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Former boss at the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF), Brian Wickham, is back in as manager of a New Zealand national breeding organisation in charge of evaluations.
Wickham has been installed as the boss of the New Zealand Animal Evaluation Limited (NZAEL), which is the breeding arm of DairyNZ in New Zealand. DairyNZ is the equivalent of Teagasc in New Zealand.
DairyNZ and Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC) had been working jointly on breeding evaluations but have recently parted company.
NZAEL is now a wholly-owned subsidairy of DairyNZ.
LIC is now going to do its own evaluations, rather than partake in national evaluations. This means that Kiwi dairy farmers will now have two evaluations on sires and cows.
Ireland
Ireland is now one of the only countries where farmers remain in control of the national breeding database rather than a commercial company.
In New Zealand, Breeding Worth (BW) is the index used to rank cows and bulls, similar to EBI in Ireland.
The move means that we won't see Brian walking the streets of Clonakilty much this year, where he had set up base while working with the ICBF in Bandon.
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