Making the most of weight recording in SCEP

Aidan Murray, Beef Specialist at Teagasc, looks at the weighing actions farmers enrolled in the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP) must take and, once completed, how to make the most of the valuable information generated.

In SCEP, participants must weigh at least 80% of eligible animals born on the holding of the yearly reference number in each scheme year, and their dams, and submit weights to ICBF. This measure alone is worth 20% of your SCEP payment.

If your yearly reference is 20 and you had 20 calves born between July 1 2023 and June 30 2024, then you are required to weigh 16 calf/dam pairs. Equally if you only had 10 calves born in that period, then you would only be required to weigh 8 calf/dam pairs.

Each live calf must be unweaned and weighed with its dam on the same day. Where a calf dies before five months of age or its dam, this must be recorded on AIM and the 80% does not include such pairs.

• All calves being submitted for weighing must have been born in the herd within each scheme year.
• All calves being submitted for weighing must be eligible calves. So they must be out of a suckler dam and sired by a beef sire.
• All calves being submitted for weighing must be in the ownership and possession of the applicant since birth and maintained on the holding.
• The calf must be a minimum of 50 days old before it is eligible to be weighed.
• Weights should be submitted within seven days of weighing and no later than 1 November annually. These weights can be submitted online to ICBF or posted to ICBF if recorded in paper format.

Valuable insights

So that takes care of the SCEP requirements, but it would be a real shame if the weights are taken solely just to satisfy the scheme. They provide some valuable insight into how your herd is performing if you are prepared to use them.

On the calf side, the first thing that will jump out is what calf is the heaviest and equally what the lightest calf in the group is, and the range that exists between them. The weight difference could be down to the age of the calf, poor milk in the dam, a sign of illness or poor thrive.

In order to take the age component out of it, you need to examine the average daily gain (ADG) in kg/day of each of the calves from birth. Again you will see a range in the ADGs. Top-performing calves could be gaining in excess of 1.2kg/day and poorer-performing calves less than 1kg/day.

For a weanling producer, a weight difference of 0.2kg/day equates to 40kg at 200 days of age. At €3.50/kg, the difference is €140/head. So you will be able to pinpoint dams or even sires whose calves are not performing so well. This will help with culling decisions.

Once you submit your weights, ICBF will automatically generate a Weanling Performance Report containing all the points already mentioned.

Table 1: Example of the information presented in the Weanling Performance Report on calf performance

Cow performance

The report will also compare the 200 day calf weight as a percentage of the cow weight, with a figure of 42% or above being more desirable. But as table 2 below shows, lighter first calvers may come up with a high weaning efficiency percentage even though their calves at 200 days will often be lighter than those of calves from mature cows. Although this indicator will put the focus on overall cow weight, it should ideally be combined with fertility. There is no point in having a cow with an above average weaning efficiency if she doesn’t go back in calf as a consequence.

Table 2: Example of the information presented in the Weanling Performance Report on cow and sire performance

Sire performance

The Weanling Performance Report will also compare the performance of calves from difference sires, whether that is a stock bull or an AI sire. Ideally, you want your main stock sire to produce calves with a good 200 day weight as, along with quality, you are selling kilograms of liveweight if you’re a weanling producer or kilograms of carcass as a finisher.

In table 3 below, the performance of the Limousin sire is still very acceptable as compared to the Charolais sire because the Limousin is used on heifers where calving ease is likely to be a more important trait.

Table 3: A comparison of sires as presented in the Weanling Performance Report

This year, when you are weighing your stock for SCEP, don’t let it end with submitting the weights. Look out for your Weaning Performance Report; it will pick out your top-performing animals and help you with your future breeding decisions.