Breeding for Profitability and Labour
Trevor Boland based in Dromard in Sligo is a part time farmer, calving 50 suckler cows from July to September. He sells the bull calves at 11-12 months of age and the heifers at 1.5 – 2 years old. Trevor discussed breeding and genetics with Chris Daly of ICBF on a recent Future Beef webinar.
Trevor has a 50 cow, autumn calving herd on 47ha in 5 blocks. He sells the males at 11 months of age as bulls, targeting a live weight of 500Kg. The females are sold at 1.5 – 2 years. He is using almost 100% AI and calving all his heifers at 24 months. His key focus areas are profitability and labour
- Calf per cow per year
- Heavy weanling – this is his key output
- Need to improve carcass weight in the cow
- Want to hold milk
- 100% AI
- Easy calving bulls
- Simple system
- Help with heat detection
Trevor wishes to have heavy, top quality cattle as all are sold live off the farm. For this he needs a milky cow, with good carcass traits and good fertility.
Easy calving
Trevor has a full time job off farm and therefore his time is limited, he can’t leave work at the drop of a hat to calve a cow, so he has tended towards easy calving’. He wants a short calving spread and a short breeding season- “if they could all calve down on the one day that would be great”. As he calves outdoors from July onwards facilities are not an issue. He keeps the cows close to calving around the yard, so if there is any issue its easy to run them into the calving pens.
In the past Trevor used very easy calving, low carcass weight bulls. As a result, the carcass weight on the cows has slipped. His carcass for the overall herd is +16Kg, the milk figure is +6.6Kg and the calving interval is -2.13 days. The target is to push up the carcass weight, while maintaining or slightly improving the milk and keeping the fertility in the herd to produce a calf per cow per year.
Eurostar
Trevor Boland’s Beef EuroStar report March 2024
Average Beef Euro-Star Values for cows on Trevor's farm - Replacement Index
| Group | Number of Cows | Index Value - € | Across Breed | Carcass Weight - Kg Across Breed | Daught Milk - Kg Across Breed | Daught Calving Interval - Days Across Breed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Cows | 49 cows - 49 with Euro-Stars | 135 | 5 Stars | +16 3 stars |
+6.6 5 stars |
-2.13 5 stars |
| 1st calving | 6 cows - 6 with Euro-Stars | 171 | 5 Stars | +16 3 stars |
+9.4 5 stars |
-2.29 5 stars |
| 2nd calving | 7 cows - 7 with Euro-Stars | 123 | 5 Stars | +17 3 stars |
+5 4 stars |
-2.09 5 stars |
| 3rd calving | 36 cows - 36 with Euro-Stars | 131 | 5 Stars | +16 3 stars |
+6.5 5 stars |
-2.12 5 stars |
| National Average Cows | 98 | +10 | +5.64 | -1.29 |
Drumline S LM9577 is a great choice. He is +39.1Kg on carcass. When you add this to Trevor’s existing cow herd at +16.6Kg he will add power. He is not a choice to breed replacements for everyone, if you already have a large cow, he will produce even larger replacements.
He is +4.5kg on milk, so again exactly what Trevor is looking for, he will add milk but not too much as his own milk figure is currently +6.6Kg, and lastly he is very high at +2.73 on conformation, which will add conformation to Trevor’s plainer cows, like 233.
Cow no 233 to be bred with Drumline S – to give higher carcass traits, keep the milk and fertility
The big thing here is Trevor has looked at his cows, decided the cow type he wants and has picked a bull to give him that.
The final huge advantage to Drumline S for Trevor is he has sexed semen, so Trevor can synchronise his cow and or heifers and use female sexed semen to get his replacements, he can then use pure terminal bulls on the rest of the cows for better quality weanlings.
On the calving ease, he is only 3% calving difficulty in mature cows, with a reliability of 72%, so this is good for the mature cow, however, on heifers he is 7.0% calving difficulty with only 61% reliability. Therefore Trevor will use him only on the mature cows and see how he goes next year.
Once the replacements are sorted, Trevor is looking to push the quality on the rest of the weanlings and has picked two Charolais bulls – Lapon CH4321 and Pottereagh Mark CH4160, see their figures in Figure 1. They will produce heifers like 859 below, excellent terminal but you would not keep her for a replacement heifer, she has no milk.
Heifer 859 sired by Lapon
The calving difficulty is high on these bulls, but Trevor is okay with this as he has a Saler type cow and he has invested in a Sense Hub system. This can alert him to any difficult calving’s, but he is confident that the cows he has picked will be able to calve them.
For the heifers calving at 24 months Trevor uses Ewdendale Ivor LM2014 and Highfield Odran SA2153. Two easy calving bulls on heifers at 6.0% and 5.7% calving difficulty, respectively.
Trevor Boland’s selection of bulls for the 2024 breeding season
