The ’Dairy Beef Index Series’ is a collaboration between Agriland Media and the Teagasc DairyBeef 500 team.
Niall, married to Ann, farms outside Limerick city near the parish of Crecora, farming a total of 112ha with his father, Gerry.
The farm carries 170 cows that calve in a compact manner in the spring. All surplus calves are sold off farm at around three weeks, with surplus breeding females sold at around 13-14-months-of-age.
Niall employs both full and part-time staff, which are particularly important during the busy February to June period, which covers calving and breeding time.
Central to reducing stress on himself during the spring, is the use of easy calving bulls.
Niall has a preference for using Angus sires, and following a meeting with Kerry joint programme manager, Denis Brassil and Teagasc DairyBeef500 programme manager, Alan Dillon, it was decided to stick with the use of early maturing breeds.
Niall’s beef sub index of his high EBI herd of Friesian cows is -€12 and his maintenance sub index is €16, meaning the herd is at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of beef merit.
Some of the bulls used by Niall in the past, while easy calving and short gestation, had quiet poor carcass characteristics.
The main focus of the meeting therefore, was to increase the carcass characteristics of the bulls chosen within breed, while not impacting on calving difficulty or gestation length in a negative way.
This was done quite simply by examining the DairyBeef index and selecting bulls that fitted Niall’s criteria, by using the filter on the app.
A minimum 10kg of carcass was accepted as the threshold for selecting bulls. No more than 3% calving difficulty, as Niall calves compactly on his own most of the time and short gestation were the other two main traits looked for.
The minimum threshold of 10kg of carcass for bulls does eliminate a number of early maturing Angus and Hereford bulls off the list, but there was still adequate numbers to put a team of bulls together.
Niall is not linked to any supplier of straws so this did help in achieving the required number with tight bull selection criteria.
He plans to breed 100 cows to beef sires, meaning 130-150 beef sire straws will be required.
Niall broke his choices down to three categories:
Mature calves
Sire Calving diff Gestation length Carcass weight Beef sub index AI company AA7485 2.6% -3.5 days 17kg €126 NCBC AA4638 3.3% 0.8 days 16kg €106 Dovea AA4640 3.1% -0.7 days 14kg €112 NCBC
2nd calvers
Sire Calving diff Gestation Carcass weight Beef sub index AI company AA4631 2.7% -2.8 days 10kg €96 NCBC AA4089 2.5% -3.6 days 10kg €102 NCBC
Early heats
Sire Calving diff Gestation Carcass weight Beef sub index AI company Sire Calving Diff Gestation Length Carcass Weight Beef Sub index AI Company HE6841 3% 0.5 days 8kg €105 NCBC
While Niall focuses mainly on heifers, he has selected one Hereford bull to use on early bullers.
Niall often finds Herefords can tend to carry days slightly and this can be of benefit when trying to begin AI but to maintain a tight calving spread.
Short gestation Angus bulls will be used at the end of the breeding season either by AI or stock bull to tighten up the calving spread at the other end.
Niall aims to improve the price he receives for his calves when the main flush arrives on the market. He sells the first 55 Angus calves to his neighbour next door with the vast majority of the remainder going through the mart.
Prices are variable with calves born from mid-February to mid-March meeting a lower price due to a higher volume of calves for sale.
Using high beef merit bulls should help increase this price over time. The CBV of Niall’s calves are quite variable at the moment ranging from €26 at the bottom end to over €140 at the top.
By selecting higher beef merit AI straws and replacing his low beef merit stock bulls with high beef merit bulls when the time comes to replace them, Niall will be in a better position to market his calves, so as to give confidence to his customers that they will deliver increased carcass value when slaughtered over the following two years.