A group of beef farmers supplying cattle to ABP Food Group processing sites visited the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) Tully Progeny Test Centre on Wednesday, November 16.
Farmers in attendance heard from ICBF’s Niall Kilrane and Ciaran McDonnell on topics such as the Commercial Beef Value (CBV), findings on methane emissions from cattle and methods of reducing these emissions.
Animal nutritionist from Brett Brothers Ltd, Heather Peppard delivered a presentation on factors to consider “within the farm gate” to improve the performance of livestock on the farm.
Liam Carroll from Blackwater Vets, Ballivor, Co. Meath, delivered a presentation on controlling parasites in cattle and showed farmers the damage that liver fluke can do to cattle liver. He had an infected cattle liver and a healthy cattle liver and compared them both.
He also showed farmers the impact of pneumonia on cattle lungs and discussed methods of helping to avoid pneumonia outbreaks in cattle.
About ICBF Tully
ICBF’s Ciaran McDonnell explained to the farmers in attendance the function of the ICBF Tully Progeny Test Centre.
He said that the test centres’ role is “to measure data on the progeny of Artificial Insemination (AI) sires”.
Data on traits such as feed intake, meat-eating quality and greenhouse gas emissions is gathered and analysed at Tully.
This data is then used for breeding programmes and is fed into the relevant indexes and the CBV for dairy-beef calves.
A total of 650 animals are fattened and slaughtered from Tully every year. These include a variety of steers, bulls and heifers.
Ciaran said that approximately 55% of the cattle in Tully are dairy-beef cattle with the remaining 45% being suckler-beef cattle, “which is representative of the national kill” percentages.
All the progeny tested at Tully are bred from AI bulls that are DNA verified and are from the Gene Ireland breeding programme.
Animals are vaccinated on arrival and are dung sampled to access the need for dosing. For the first 30 days, cattle are fed a Total Mixed Ration (TMR) of 8kg concentrate, 10kg water and 3kg hay.
After day 30, Ciaran explained that cattle are then moved on to their test diet which includes 10-12kg meal, 10kg water and 3kg hay.
Average Daily Gain (ADG) as well as feed conversion ratio (FCR) is measured and cattle are also scanned for muscle and fat depth. Water intake is measured also. Any cases of Pneumonia, lameness and genetic defects are also recorded.
Cattle are housed on peat bedding however, it was outlined on the day that there is plans to change the housing to slatted pens in the future.