28 April 2025

Sire Advice with ICBF’s Dan O’Riordan

Some 18 years since it was first made available to farmers, Dan O’Riordan of the ICBF joins Stuart Childs on this week’s episode of the Dairy Edge podcast to discuss the Sire Advice Programme.

Dan first explains what Sire Advice is and how it works to try and balance the milk and fertility sub-indices to deliver a balanced cow.

Some of the benefits outlined include:

• Streamlining the breeding season for both the farmer and the AI technician, assigning sires to each individual cow, along with providing options if necessary too,
• Prevents lethal gene mutation matches in the background,
• Checks inbreeding,
• Maximises the beef merit of the calf whilst minimising calving risk to the cow with the objective being to deliver a live calf each time.

Finally, Dan highlights the numbers of Sire Advice being completed, how they have increased in the last few years but that there is scope for more. If people are interested in completing a sire advice for 2025, they can contact their advisor, breeding advisor or ICBF directly.

For more insights, listen to the full episode of the Dairy Edge podcast below:

A Teagasc co-production with LastCastMedia.com, more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast are available on the show page.