The breeding season has now kicked off on many spring-calving dairy and suckler farms across the country, and the sire choices made on-farm now, will determine the genetic make up of the 2025 calf crop.
Advances in sexed semen usage in dairy herds has seen increases in the amount of beef-breed Artificial Insemination (AI) straws used on dairy cows in recent years.
Most dairy farmers using beef AI are keen to use a sire that will produce a good dairy-beef calf but are also conscious of the calving difficulty and gestation length of the bulls they use.
To facilitate this, the ABP Food Group Advantage Beef Programme farm liaison team has created a list of recommended bulls that are easy calving, short gestation but also have good carcass weight and conformation traits.
The table below outlines details of the 2024 Advantage Beef Programme recommended bull list for beef sires on dairy cows:
Commenting on the list, ABP’s Advantage Beef Programme farm liaison team leader Amie Coonan explained: “There may be other suitable bulls out there in all AI companies and the Advantage team are happy to help farmers in anyway to select the best beef genetics to maximise the quality of the calves across all AI providers.
“Choosing sires with high beef traits will create a more marketable calf with a high CBV, without compromising calving ability.”
Coonan continued: “The 2024 calving season saw over 2,000 calves move direct from dairy farms using good-quality beef sires to ABP Advantage calf to beef farmers.
“This was a win-win situation for both parties as the dairy farmer has a farmer collecting calves in batches on an agreed day and the beef farmer is receiving a healthy calf from a known source with top-quality beef traits.”
If a farmer would like to look-up the genetic information of an A.I. bull or stock bull they can use the guideline provided here.
Amie emphasised that when aiming to produce good-quality beef calves, a dairy farmer should look at the beef sub-index, and more importantly the carcass weight and conformation figures.
“An average Angus sire has a carcass weight figure of 7kg, and a Hereford has an average carcass weight figure of 5.4kg.
“Aim to be above these figures to produce above average calves. A conformation figure of above 0.7 is desirable,” she added.