Beef sire searches on the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) website for year to December 21, are in excess of 1.5m.

And, the number one search on the site for beef sires was for a Charolais bull (FSZ).

Following on from the Charolais, the five next most searched bulls were Limousins and then a Simmental, according to the website.

Completing the top 10 beef sire searches were two Charolais and a Limousin.

Farmers and people in the breeding industry are showing more interest in the genetic indexes of beef sires, according to the ICBF.

The ICBF bull search facility has had over 2.25m individual hits for the year to December 21.

Beef sire searches at an all time high for both AI and stock bulls, users are showing more interest in the increased profitability that comes from higher index animals (4 and 5 star), which the ICBF states is really encouraging for the industry.

The ICBF bull search gives users up to date genetic and progeny performance information on AI and stock bulls.

The number of beef sire searches per month has remained over 100,000 per month since April.

Beef,

Source: ICBF

Data from table one shows that there has also been an increase in the number of dairy bulls searched in 2015 compared to 2014.

The search results for dairy sires were dominated by Holstein sires.

The ICBF has said that the high level of interest in the bull search facility confirms the confidence that users have in dairy Economic Breeding Index (EBI) and Beef Eurostar as a means to accurately rank AI and stock bulls.

The bull search facility displays animal data including identification, ancestry, genetic and performance data.

High Level of Interest in Stock Bulls

As can be seen from the table above, the number of stock bulls searched is very high.

Stock bull searches made up 43% of total searches in the bull search facility.

This is an extremely high number considering the bull search was initially designed to support the querying of data on AI bulls, according to the ICBF.

As a result, it said that bull search users can make a more informed choice when it comes to selecting a stock bull for breeding.

The bull search gives a full breakdown of each bull’s breeding potential including index, reliability, progeny and ancestry performance information as well as a host of other useful information for selecting a stock bull.