The number of dairy calves on the ground so far in 2025 is lagging behind the corresponding period in 2024.

According to the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF), the birth registration data shows 440,735 dairy calves registered up to Friday 21 February this year.

For the corresponding period in 2024, over 26,000 more dairy calves had been registered (467,083).

On a weekly comparison, this week last year saw 8,200 more calves registered.

Beef calves are also lagging behind this year compared to last year with total beef calf births standing at 61,580 so far in 2025. This is down 1,830 from 63,410 head in 2024.

Genotyping delays

A small proportion of these decreases may be down to genotyping delays. Close to 78,000 samples arrived in the genotyping lab last week, up from 52,000 the week before. This marked ICBF's largest influx of calf samples to arrive to date this year.

The average time a sample spent in the lab last week increased from 4.1 days to 4.7 days.

To date in 2025, 194,889 DNA samples have been received by ICBF.