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Sustained progress in the fertility performance of the national dairy herd has been identified by the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) in its HerdPlus Dairy calving statistics report for 2020.
Three days have been knocked off the calving interval since 2019 with the national average now sitting at 387 days. The calf per cow per year figure has gone from 0.84 in 2009 to 0.91 in 2020.
The ICBF credited the improving trend to greater emphasis given to fertility in the EBI with these efforts resulting in improving performance across the country.
The six-week calving rate also saw a similar positive trend going from 53% of the national dairy herd in 2009 to 65% in 2020. For the top 10% of herds the six-week calving rate is 86%, closing in on the Teagasc target of 90%.
Sustained progress
Improvement has been made on the percentage of heifers calved within 22 to 26 months of age with the top 10% achieving 100% calved while the national average is sitting at 71%.
The ICBF has said that calving heifers at 22-26 months is the optimum in terms of maximising profitability with survival rate highest in these animals, supplying an additional 71kg of milk solids over their lifetime.
With fertility being a low-heritability trait, the federation has said there is plenty of scope for improvement calling on farmers to select high EBI bulls to sustain progress.
For a detailed breakdown of the calving statistics, click here.
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