20 May 2025

Choosing beef bulls on dairy farms that are better for the environment and your pocket

George Ramsbottom, Signpost Advisory Programme, highlights how better dairy and beef breeding can cut greenhouse gas emissions while improving calf value.

From an environmental perspective better breeding of both dairy and beef cattle is important in the drive to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Traditionally, dairy farmers have focused on using easy-calving, short gestation beef bulls. However, this can result in calves with poor beef traits, which beef farmers struggle to finish to factory specs.

One of the steps included in Teagasc’s 12 Steps to Reduce Gaseous Emissions on Dairy Farms recommends the use of high EBI dairy AI sires to breed replacement heifers that will increase dairy herd EBI by €10 per year in the drive towards reducing emissions. Cows bred this week will calve before the end of February so there is still time to breed early born dairy replacements until the end of May.

In a recent article Teagasc Dairy Specialist, Stuart Childs and colleagues discussed better dairy breeding.

When breeding beef cattle from the dairy herd, Teagasc recommends selecting high DBI bulls to improve the genetic merit of dairy x beef cattle. An important step in 12 Steps to Reduce Emissions on Dairy Beef Farms involves dairy beef farmers buying high CBV calves. These calves will have heavier carcasses and have the capacity to finish earlier to reduce GHG footprint. According to Alan Dillon, programme manager of Teagasc’s Dairy Beef 500 programme, the target beef sub index of the team chosen depends a lot on the beef sub index of the dairy cows that they’re being bred to as shown in Table 1.

Table 1:  Minimum required DBI (beef sub index) of beef bulls (AA/HE breeds) to achieve a 4* or 5* CBV for dairy herds of differing beef sub index

The data in Table 1 show that dairy herds with a low beef sub index will need a higher bull team beef sub index to compensate for their lower beef merit. Using these targets to guide beef bull selection for beef sub index, pick a team of beef bulls that vary in calving difficulty for use on your herd. Then run the team through the Sire Advice application. Trust it to select the right bulls for the appropriate cows.

If you need any further information on selecting beef bulls to breed to your dairy cows, contact your local Teagasc dairy advisor. 

The Teagasc Signpost Advisory Programme

George Ramsbottom is the Manager of the Signpost Advisory Programme. The Teagasc Signpost Advisory Programme provides enhanced advisory and training support to farmers to help them to select and implement climate and sustainability actions that are appropriate and impactful on their farms.

Find out more and sign up to the Signpost Advisory Programme here.