It’s hard to believe that the start of the main breeding season is only six weeks’ away. While most dairy farmers are still in the thick of calving, thoughts need to be turning to what next year’s calves will be sired by.

This time last year, the industry was rocked by errors in how EBIs were calculated and by contracts for bull calves.

While the issue around contracts has yet to be fully ironed out, it is good to see all AI companies participating in the Gene Ireland programme this year.

The active bull list is published on page 52. The list is the bible for farmers when it comes to picking bulls. It’s interesting to see other breeds make their way back into the list. Don’t forget to factor in the value of hybrid vigour when looking at other breeds.

On pages 58 and 59, Ciarán Lenehan reports on new heat detection aids available for dairy and beef farmers. Breeding can be a stressful time, so using available technology, whether that’s tail paint or automatic, is a worthwhile endeavour.

Meanwhile, the technology available for picking bulls is constantly changing. We outline the reasons for the move towards using team of bulls on pages 56 and 57. On page 54, he look at the newly launched Sire Advice programme from ICBF. This is a welcome upgrade to the handy tool that many farmers use to select the bulls to use on cows.

Beef bulls

On page 62, Adam Woods explains what dairy farmers need to look for when picking beef bulls for use on the dairy herd. The key thing is calving ease. The last thing dairy farmers want to be doing is dealing with hard calvings.

Keep an eye out for updates to the list.