ICBF Breeding Guidelines

An episode of the The Dairy Edge podcast, hosted by Teagasc, titled "ICBF Breeding Guidelines" was published on March 23, 2026 and runs 32 minutes.

March 23, 2026 ·32m · The Dairy Edge

0:00 / 0:00

Summary

Kevin Downing and Dan O’Riordan of ICBF join Stuart Childs on this week’s Dairy Edge to discuss the Spring Breeding Guidelines that will be arriving to farmers across the country this week. Kevin explains how the scorecard included in the guidelines can be used to identify the herd strengths and weaknesses to allow people to see where they may need to target improvement. He then discusses the importance of using enough dairy AI straws to ensure there are adequate numbers of replacements coming through to support the needs of individual farms. 25% is required in order to ensure that 18-20% replacement rates can be maintained as not all heifers will go the distance so some surplus will be needed. He also spoke about the importance of using high DBI with high beef subindex beef sires to generate high quality dairy beef stock and emphasises the need to continue using AI until such time as there is sufficient bull power to meet demand. Finally Dan spoke about how sire advice is now available on the HerdPlus app which will facilitate more people to use it. He highlights the benefits of sire advice, balancing milk and fertility, avoiding inbreeding and lethal mutations and maximising beef merit while minimising calving difficulty risk, all making life easier for everyone involved. For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/ The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com

Episode Description

Kevin Downing and Dan O’Riordan of ICBF join Stuart Childs on this week’s Dairy Edge to discuss the Spring Breeding Guidelines that will be arriving to farmers across the country this week.

Kevin explains how the scorecard included in the guidelines can be used to identify the herd strengths and weaknesses to allow people to see where they may need to target improvement.

He then discusses the importance of using enough dairy AI straws to ensure there are adequate numbers of replacements coming through to support the needs of individual farms. 25% is required in order to ensure that 18-20% replacement rates can be maintained as not all heifers will go the distance so some surplus will be needed.

He also spoke about the importance of using high DBI with high beef subindex beef sires to generate high quality dairy beef stock and emphasises the need to continue using AI until such time as there is sufficient bull power to meet demand.

Finally Dan spoke about how sire advice is now available on the HerdPlus app which will facilitate more people to use it.

He highlights the benefits of sire advice, balancing milk and fertility, avoiding inbreeding and lethal mutations and maximising beef merit while minimising calving difficulty risk, all making life easier for everyone involved.

For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:

https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/

The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com