ICBF Updates with Kevin Downing

An episode of the The Dairy Edge podcast, hosted by Teagasc, titled "ICBF Updates with Kevin Downing" was published on September 28, 2025 and runs 21 minutes.

September 28, 2025 ·21m · The Dairy Edge

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Summary

Kevin Downing of ICBF joins Stuart Childs on this week’s Dairy Edge to discuss the recent changes to the EBI incorporated into the September Evaluation run. Kevin outlines the reason for the base change in order to make sure we are comparing the current cows with as representative population as possible to best reflect the on farm performance of herds. Kevin then discusses the changes that have been introduced in economic values. This is the first update since 2017. This adjustment is done as required and takes a long term view of revenues and costs. It is not responding to annual market returns and costs. One other major change is the movement of the rearing cost of heifers into the maintenance sub index from the beef sub index. This means that estimating the weight of a mature cow from the maintenance sub index has changed as the heifer rearing element is now included in the € value on the report. There is a ready reckoner that can be accessed at: https://webapp.icbf.com/v2/app/msi-calculator Farmers can use this to estimate the liveweight of their cows based on the new value or use a predicted weight to get the value that they should use in the future. Evaluations are now live and farmers can look at them on their own ICBF profile on both the website and the app now. 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 of ICBF joins Stuart Childs on this week’s Dairy Edge to discuss the recent changes to the EBI incorporated into the September Evaluation run.

Kevin outlines the reason for the base change in order to make sure we are comparing the current cows with as representative population as possible to best reflect the on farm performance of herds.

Kevin then discusses the changes that have been introduced in economic values. This is the first update since 2017. This adjustment is done as required and takes a long term view of revenues and costs. It is not responding to annual market returns and costs.

One other major change is the movement of the rearing cost of heifers into the maintenance sub index from the beef sub index. This means that estimating the weight of a mature cow from the maintenance sub index has changed as the heifer rearing element is now included in the € value on the report.

There is a ready reckoner that can be accessed at:

https://webapp.icbf.com/v2/app/msi-calculator

Farmers can use this to estimate the liveweight of their cows based on the new value or use a predicted weight to get the value that they should use in the future.

Evaluations are now live and farmers can look at them on their own ICBF profile on both the website and the app now.

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