There has being much talk surrounding the ICBF over the past week, mostly surrounding the star rating system.

The largest concern remains the fluctuation in individual animal evaluations from one run to the next.

While this has significant financial implications for the pedigree breeder, it can also be very frsutrating.

Breeders and purchasers need to remember that €uro-Star evaluations are only as good as the data from which they are composed. The May run of evaluations, for the first time, includes Economic Breeding Values (EBVs) from UK Charolais cattle. This will help greatly in increasing the amount of data included in evaluations, in turn increasing reliability.

While it still doesn’t perfect the €uro-Star system, it is a step in the right direction which can be looked upon favourably by breeders.

It’s particularly relevant for pedigree breeders who use semen from UK bulls which isn’t commercially available.

Due to this, however, a number of Charolais bulls have seen big increases and decreases on their evaluations. If we look at the tables detailing changes in evaluations, we can see that both the biggest decrease and increase are both from Charolais bulls.

This point is worth noting when looking through the rest of the tables also.

This week we look at how the replacement index of the most recent active bull list fared in comparison with the January evaluations, showing the highest performers and biggest changes in each breed.

We also look at how the four main AI centres performed, detailing key information on each. If we look across breeds in Ireland, the average replacement index went up by nearly €3.

However, most AI centres are recording a drop.

Eurogene stands as the only significant move in a positive direction, up by nearly €5. This can be largely attributed to a big increase in numbers being offered by the company, many of which are Cogent bulls for which Eurogene has the distribution rights.

Next week we will detail how the terminal active bull list fared.

Read more

Suspension of WHPR blow for ICBF

Charolais Society and ICBF lock horns on BDGP