The national dairy herd looks set to be genotyped under a new scheme that will be introduced later this year if funding is agreed, according to Irish Farmers’ Assoication (IFA) dairy chair Stephen Arthur.
Arthur was speaking on Thursday (February 2) at Carnew Mart calf information meeting.
Genotyped
Arthur told the crowd in attendance that discussions are currently being held with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) around the genotyping of the national dairy herd.
Arthur noted that the cost of this scheme is currently being discussed and that farmers cannot be excepted to foot the bill.
Speaking at the event Arthur said: “The plan is to DNA test every cow, but we need funding. The cost of sampling each cow is about €22 or €23.
“This is a serious lump of money; we need to sample all the cows and heifers first and then the calves.”
He noted that the suckler herd is ahead of the game, with many of the national suckler herd already genotyped.
According to Arthur, the plan is for all the cows to be genotyped by the autumn, he expects this to take place in September or October – which would mean calves born in 2024 would all be genotyped.
The rollout of a national programme would have a major benefit to the implementation of the commercial beef value (CBV) in marts.
Currently only calves that have been genotyped will have a CBV displayed on marts.
A national programme would mean that all calves would have a CBV displayed on the mart board.
Also speaking at the event Niall Kilrane from the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) noted that only around 5% of calves for sale in 2023 will have a CBV displayed.
Funding
The programme will be undertaken by tagging and not by hair samples, which is commonly used by many farmers who are currently genotyping animals.
Once the current herd has been genotyped, calves would be tagged each year and samples would be sent, in a similar manner to bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) samples.
Using genotyping, the dam, sire and even the sex of the calf can be determined without any input from farmers.
Agriland understands that the cost of the genotyping scheme for the national dairy herd would be in the region of €40 million in the first year.
This would mean that all current dairy stock would be sampled and genotyped.
This would then be reduced to €20 million thereafter annually, as less animals would need to be sampled – only the calves would need to be sampled each year.
Agriland further understands that the DAFM is seeking funding for the scheme from the Brexit Adjustment Reserve (BAR), however the department has so far failed to confirm to Agriland if this is the case.