For over 20 years, Irish farmers have been using Livestock Improvement Corporation’s (LIC’s) high-quality pasture-based genetics. Now, LIC are teaming up with those same farmers to produce bulls from leading Irish herds through LIC’s genomic selection breeding programme in Ireland, the Irish Bull Breeding Programme (IBB).

The IBB complements our flagship delivery of high-quality, daughter-proven New Zealand LIC genetics to Irish farmers with an LIC genomic bull offering from within Ireland itself.

The young bulls undergo genomic evaluation using LIC’s long-standing expertise in both purebred and crossbred animal evaluation, in addition to evaluation on EBI.

Uniquely, these bulls have both gBW and gEBI figures, with the very best picked for TheForwards team.

TheForwards

TheForwards bulls are sourced from Irish LIC Premier Club members’ herds. These herds have spring-calving, grass-based systems and contain many exceptional cows.

The young bulls are the offspring of matings between high EBI cows, most with strong LIC pedigrees, and the very best of LIC’s elite daughter-proven bulls, available through the Premier Club.

Our breeding experts examine the candidate bull’s pedigree, physical attributes and cow family information to increase the accuracy of delivering genetics to further improve the genetic merit of your herd.

See tables below for complete bull breakdown.

Evaluation using both EBI genomic evaluation and LIC’s own powerful genomic evaluation tool, the Single Step Animal Model (SSAM), provides a more reliable estimate of a bull’s genetic quality at a young age than that from ancestry alone.

With both gBW and gEBI to look at, TheForwards bring you a unique opportunity to fast track genetic gain in your herd.

Our programme manager, John Tobin, proudly presents the latest bulls from the IBB.

“It is a privilege to breed these bulls with Irish farmers,” he said.

John Tobin

“The programme is in its third year and the hard work is starting to pay-off. This year we bring an exciting new Irish-bred bull to the market – Coolhull Daly from Neil Daly’s farm in Wexford.

“Coolhull Daly has a rich LIC pedigree. An Arkans Beaut (JE4270) son out of a high milk solids and fertility daughter of Priests Sierra (ZSP), he has Hazael Sweetdream (HZS) as his maternal great-grandsire. The F13J3 dam, in her fifth lactation is predicted to achieve over 600kgs with 4.74% Fat and 4.17% Protein,” he added.

“A highly efficient, average-sized cow, she has a strong fertility sub-index at 5.8 (gBW) and 104 (EBI).

“The incoming pipeline of bulls looks very promising too, with the 2020 crop producing candidates worthy of the SPS program in New Zealand. While the motivation is to create herds that are more efficient converters of feed-to-profit, we’re always mindful that a balanced approach is paramount,” he continued.

“The balanced approach to breeding not only delivers profit on farm, but ensures that resulting cows have good shed-attributes, the physical capacity to compete (i.e. get their share of feed), and an ability to walk, conceive, and stay in-calf.”

For more information Call John on 086-4107786 or Click Here for more information.

A Taste of the 2020 bulls

Eclipse is a Glen Koru Epic son (JE4509) out of a Moodys Executive (YMD) cow coming from Cathal Lowry’s herd in Galway. The F9J7 dam’s five-year production average is 660kgs. Fertility is proven, at 364 days CI to date. Eclipse is 256 gEBI and 265 gBW.

Joining him is Moorehill Max with 351 gBW and 272 gEBI, sired by the well-known Carsons FM Cairo (FR4507), impressive on fertility at 4.7gBV (the dam’s six-year CI average is 371 days).

Andrew Dineen’s bull Aaron is a G-Force (JE4558) son with good fertility indexes. His dam is doing milk solids in excess of her liveweight in her first lactation. Aaron is 300 gBW and 266 gEBI.

Test straw price is €10. To order, or for advice on how to use TheForwards bulls as part of your breeding programme, contact your LIC Ireland Breeding Advisor.

Click on the tables below to enlarge the image.

Source: ICBF
Source: LIC