Traditionally, when a dairy farmer picked what beef bull to use, calving difficulty was the main index which satisfied farmers, along with a short gestation period.
While this is the correct decision to make from a dairy point of view, beef traits have paid the cost. The dairy beef index has provided indices for dairy farmers to have benefits to both dairy and beef farmers.
Speaking at the Animal Health Ireland (AHI) and Teagasc calf care event on the farm of Aidan and Mary Reardon in Cork, manager of Dairy Beef 500 at Teagasc Alan Dillon spoke about the role the commercial beef value (CBV) will play to identify higher beef merit calves.
Better grades
Cattle with a high CBV will be faster growing, grade better at slaughter, meet market specifications at a younger age and won’t eat as much per kg liveweight gained. Essentially, the CBV is the beef version of EBI.
All animals will be able to get a CBV value, expressed as a euro value once the sire of that animal has been recorded. Entering the genotype programme will eliminate parentage errors.
Cattle will be in one of three categories within the CBV - beef x beef, dairy x beef, or dairy x dairy - and will be ranked from one to five within the category.
Going forward, dairy farmers should expect calf buyers to focus on buying calves from farms which produce a calf with a higher CBV.
