The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) has recently made available information on the volume of weight-related data that is currently included in the ICBF evaluations.
The data used in the national cattle evaluations is sourced from marts, factories and on-farm weighing.
The ICBF CEO Sean Coughlan explained to Agriland that weights recorded by farmers for the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP) are not currently used in the evaluations but weights recorded by technicians are used.
Following a query from Agriland, the ICBF CEO confirmed that work is ongoing to have all SCEP weights available for use in the Eurostar Evaluations and the aim is to have this completed in 2025.
The table below details the volume of weight-related data currently included in the ICBF evaluations:
Record type Trait Records in current evaluation Liveweight 150 to 250 day liveweight 1,945,260 Liveweight 250 to 350 day liveweight 1,977,188 Liveweight 350 to 450 day liveweight 1,071,597 Liveweight 450 to 550 day liveweight 1,057,501 Liveweight 550 to 700 day liveweight 1,403,904 Liveweight Cow liveweight 2,445,122 Carcass Carcass weight 13,127,283 Carcass Cull cow weight 3,634,049 Carcass Carcass conformation 13,126,728 Carcass Cull cow conformation 3,633,489 Carcass Carcass fat 13,124,643 Carcass Age at slaughter 3,063,634
The inclusion of the SCEP weights is part of “a suite of improvements that are currently in the research phase”.
Coughlan explained that “it is very important that the ICBF can stand over the evaluations that we produce”.
“Any time a large amount of new data is included, the evaluations will change. If the star ratings on a farmer’s animals go down, they will want to understand why.Â
“That is fair and reasonable. We must be able to stand over the reason why they have changed.
“That is why we are doing a lot of validation work on the weights and the subsequent evaluation changes,” Coughlan added.