The first Irish 27,000 tags for the Beef Genomics Scheme have been sent out to farms in recent days and postage will continue early this week.

This is according to the ICBF, which also notes that in total over 70,000 tags have been sent for printing to date. It says once samples are sent to the lab and genotyped, research on beef genomics will commence.

The ICBF states that in the first year the information will be used for research purposes in order to be able to provide higher reliability breeding indexes in the future. Once the research is complete, genomic evaluation will be made available for the animals that were tested.

Farmers are being asked to sample at least 15% of their herd. A stock bull must be included in the 15%. Therefore, if a farmer has 10 cows and a stock bull you will be required to genotype one cow and one stock bull.

The ICBF stresses that if farmers have signed up to the scheme they will receive a text message when their tags are being sent. If you do not receive the tags within a few days please call the Helpline on 0761064423 or 1850 625 626. Replacement hair cards will be sent out.

Dairy Genomics
The ICBF also confirmed this week that work on updating the dairy genomic evaluations will commence in the next couple of weeks.

It says these updates will include expanding the training population with new foreign sires, and cows and upgrading the genomic evaluation software to cater for the expanding numbers of animals being genotyped.

The ICBF will also be doing a full analysis to date on how genomic predictions have performed for all traits in the EBI.

Source: Agriland