The October evaluations released by the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) on Tuesday (October 4) highlighted once again, a major issue with the breeding industry.
By now, the vast majority of dairy farmers are aware of the issue regarding sons of Kilfeacle Pivotal – that there is such a large number of them in artificial insemination (AI) stations.
A quick glance at the latest evaluations shows that out of the top 25 bulls on the list, 17 are Pivotal sons.
October evaluations
The is known by the majority of dairy farmers, but that hasn’t meant that some farmers haven’t been caught out.
However, is doesn’t stop with Pivotal, because a large number of bulls on the list can be traced back to Lauragh Evert (LHZ) and Longview Reliable (LWR) too.
In fact, Pivotal himself is a LWR son.
The number one and two bulls on the list, Dungorman Eddie SRM and Browney Barna SRM, dams are by LWR – which means they have similar genetics to Pivotal.
The third bull on the list, Stamullen Lunasa SRM, is from different genetics, but his dam was sired by LHZ.
Something to note is that Kilfeacle Pivotal’s dam was Kilfeacle Olive and she was sired by LHZ.
The sixth bull on the list is Muinemor Huber, and he has 20% Jersey genetics, meaning he’s not a bull a large number of farmer would like to use on their cows.
So looking at the top 15 bulls on the list, we see that only one of these doesn’t have a direct connection to LHZ or LWR/Pivotal.
If we go further and look at the top 25 bulls, we see that:
- 17 are Pivotal sons;
- Three are LWR grandsons;
- One is a LHZ grandson;
- One is pedigree Jersey;
- One has 56% Holstein genetics, 25% Friesian and 19% Jersey;
- The remaining two are outcrosses.
The two outcross of the top 25 are Rochemount Lad and Brackherd Panama SRM.
Spring records
If we look back at the most popular bulls in 2022 so far this year based on handheld data released by ICBF in August, something becomes very apparent,.
Although a good range of bulls has been used, with 20 places having 5,671 record serves, the gene pool in these top 20 bulls is quite small.
Five of the bulls are Pivotal sons and they accounted for 68,596 recorded serves. A further three bulls are related to LWR and account for a 27,882 serves.
Bulls related to LHZ accounted for 29,116 recorded serves, based off three bulls.
A further eight bulls can be traced back to Coolnasoon Art and account for 92,758 serves.
Advice for farmers
So, farmers that are picking bull this autumn need to be cautious and do research. Agriland is advising farmers to look at lineage of the sires they are picking.
Rather than just picking bulls based on figures, look at the bull’s sire and gran-sire, at the very least.