At the 2017 championships Dovea Genetics will launch their revamped website www.dovea.ie. This new website is planned to be more interactive, modern and user-friendly for anybody who visits their website. The user will be able to search and sort dairy and/or beef bulls that will suit their farming system on the EBI and/or €uro-Star index while also allowing Dovea to market and grow their export semen sales and expose the company to a wider global audience.

This export semen business has continued to grow and develop in recent years, with the AI Company exporting to 26 countries in 2016 and with a higher volume of semen than ever before.

Dovea now has a number of established distributors who upon seeing progeny in Ireland select bulls for their country and are beginning to provide feedback (birth weights, calving ease and performance information) on how different Dovea bulls are performing.

The company is in discussions with new distributors in Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, South Africa and Ethiopia for the 2018 breeding season in each country.

Irish genetics offer a unique product, combining the low-cost grass-based systems for producing milk and beef coupled with excellent fertility and survivability in the dairy and beef herd. This unique selling point is attracting many enquiries from all over the world for Dovea.

It is a success story that shows Irish genetics now performing admirably in many countries.

The Dovea Genetics stand will see the largest display of live cattle from any AI company at the Ploughing Championships. The live cattle display allows dairy and beef farmers to see progeny of a bull they are interested in and allows discussion of the merits of different bulls.

The dairy display in 2017 will show the diversity and wide range of sires Dovea has on offer. There will be five in-calf heifers on their stand, including two daughters of high-EBI bulls Gaddy Cuddy Reeks (GZY) and their top-selling bull in 2017 Searoad AWS Pamela (SEW). These two bulls will obtain daughter proofs in September 2017 after being used as genomic bulls for the past few seasons. Daughters will also be present from sires such as Floyd (S2159), pure Friesian bull Sliabhambon Champion 6 (ZSC) and a crossbred Norwegian Red heifer by the bull Eik (EKE).

Growing market

The dairy beef section is becoming a fast-growing market for Dovea as the national dairy herd expands. The company has invested heavily in this market in recent years and now has a wide selection of easy-calving short-gestation bulls across a number of breeds available.

There will be progeny from the company’s three highest selling beef bulls for dairy cows in 2017 on display. These are Angus bull ZLT (Birches Littleman), Hereford bull KZP (Cill Cormac Kasper) and Belgian Blue bull DFD (Celestin Du Fond De Bois).

The suckler beef section will feature young beef animals which are a cross section of the bulls and breeds that Dovea has to offer.

There will be super crossbred weanling heifers from the Belgian blue bull Boherard Hurricane (OHB), a very nice Doon Just the Job (CH2305) heifer, an Angus bullock by Angus bull Beryl Jamey (JYM), a weanling heifer by easy-calving Limousin Ewdenvale Ivor (LM2014) and finally a weanling heifer by the high replacement index daughter-proven Simmental bull Islavale Cracker (ISL).

Dovea will also be launching their new autumn catalogue at the Ploughing, which will include all new beef and dairy bulls with their updated indexes.

The Dovea Genetics stand will be located at BLOCK 2 ROW 14 STAND NO. 309.