The good, the bad and the ugly with regard to TB resistance are all included in the top 20 economic breeding index (EBI) bulls, according to a senior Department of Agriculture official.

“If you had a popular bull with very bad resistance [to TB], he could have done an awful lot of damage,” Damien Barrett told farmers in attendance at an Irish Farmers Association (IFA) TB meeting in Mitchelstown last Wednesday evening.

Barrett outlined, for a variety of reasons, that Ireland is unlikely to have a cattle vaccine for TB for quite some time. However, he added that the use of genetic resistance was as close as we would get to one in the short term.

Encouraging farmers to use genetic resistance to TB will be important, he said.

“When you’re making your breeding decisions, this is a tool you could use to increase the overall resistance of your herd to TB. In the event of your cattle being exposed to TB, [they have] a better chance to fight it.”

TB reactors

The meeting heard that TB reactors could surpass 40,000 head this year, with numbers for the year to date already above last year’s figure of 31,500 head.