A new steering group to oversee the Whole Herd Recording Programme (WHRP) met for the first time this week. The group was set up as an industry response to tackle the problems with manipulated data recording by a minority of pedigree cattle herds as revealed by the Irish Farmers Journal in June.

Group members consist of 10 people who represent breed societies, ICBF, AI companies, the Irish Farmers Journal and the Department of Agriculture.

The objective of the group is to ensure that there is better validating of breeding information on pedigree animals destined for future breeding. This includes closer checks on insemination dates, gestation periods, birth weights and liveweight gains.

As part of the programme, ICBF technicians will carry out on-farm visits to weigh and check all animals in the herd for anomalies such as calving surveys, birth weights and any sign of mis-recorded data.

The WHRP has a planned rollout across the country this autumn. The steering group has requested that this programme is kept as simple as possible to encourage breeder to participate.

Rewarded

Those who do participate must be rewarded financially and anyone mis-recording penalised.

WHRP participating herds will be assigned a special status in sales catalogues and on the ICBF bull finder web page. Having animals with independently authenticated breeding records will be of benefit to commercial cattle breeders.