Some 17% of animals registered as part of the national genotyping programme last year had a parentage error, the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) has revealed.

Speaking at the Irish Grassland Association’s (IGA) dairy conference in Charleville on Tuesday 14 January, Margaret Kelleher of the ICBF said the statistic was “staggering”.

Kelleher added that many farmers think they have done everything “by the book”, but the reality is that mistakes happen.

“There are so many things that can happen: the wrong straw inserted, a wrong recording, a calf going under a gate to the wrong dam. Mix-ups do happen.

“I think that is quite a staggering statistic to see 17% of animals that went through the national genotyping programme had a parentage error.

“By correcting those errors, you have better powers, because you have the right heritage in front of you,” she said.

Breeds

In the programme’s first year (2024), some 3% of cattle showed up as being registered under the wrong breed.

“There are 20 Anguses out there that are actually milked and people didn’t realise it. They thought they were crossbreds, that’s a reality.

The conference had to be rescheduled due to heavy snow in north Cork last week. \ Donal O'Leary

“Just under 4,000 were registered as Angus, but weren’t Angus. And a similar number that were Angus, but were registered as a completely different breed.

“It’s just an interesting statistic, DNA can’t lie,” Kelleher added.

Sexed semen

In 2024, 20% of all AI serves on dairy farms used sexed semen. This is a 50% increase in two years, ICBF data shows.

Speaking on the uptake of sexed semen in recent years, Kelleher explained that ICBF projections show that if all dairy farmers adopted the technology, only 3% of calves coming from the dairy herd would be dairy bull calves.

Under this scenario, 75% of calves coming from the dairy herd could be dairy-beef.

“You could potentially have only 3% dairy males. That produces a bit of a challenge, are we going to have an issue with genetic gain because we don’t have bulls to select? How do we address that?” she questioned.

Kelleher added that reproductive physiologists are looking at how to circumvent this.