The much-anticipated Commercial Beef Value (CBV), which was supposed to make an appearance on mart boards from early 2022, has yet to do just that.
While it has not yet been made available on mart boards, farmers can view the CBV of an animal through the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) HerdPlus login under the ‘View Profiles’ section.
According to ICBF, the Commercial Beef Value (CBV) is a tool for non-breeding beef farmers which will give them a better insight into an animal’s genetic potential to produce a beef carcass.
The CBV is primarily aimed at farmers buying calves at marts that are destined for beef production, as it can be difficult to access the genetic potential of a young calf to produce beef – however as cattle get older, their confirmation and beef potential become more apparent.
The Commercial Beef Value
The CBV consists of five traits from the terminal index that are important to a non-breeding dry-stock enterprise:
- Carcass weight;
- Carcass conformation;
- Carcass fat;
- Docility;
- Feed intake.
The CBV is expressed as a euro value – like the replacement and terminal indexes – with both ‘within breed type’ and ‘across breed’ star ratings.
There are three ‘within breed type’ categories:
- Suckler (beef sire and beef dam);
- Dairy x Beef (one dairy parent and one beef parent);
- Dairy x Dairy (dairy sire and dairy dam).
The ‘within breed type’ star rating will rank animals within that particular animal’s breed type.
According to ICBF, this ‘within breed type’ star rating is included to assist farmers who have a set enterprise in terms of the type of animal they buy (i.e. continental suckler-bred weanlings, dairy-beef store heifers or Friesian bull calves).
The ‘within breed type’ star rating aims to help farmers to identify the highest genetic-merit animals within the breed type of interest to them.
CBVs will not be available on pedigree cattle, dairy females or cows and eligible animals must have a registered sire to be allocated a CBV.