Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 December 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Recent Reclassification of Beef Indexes: Discussion

Mr. Sean Coughlan:

The bottom line is this. Take the particular bull the Deputy mentioned, and he has been coming up, he is a trait improver in the Angus breed for seven out of the ten traits in the terminal index and 13 of the 17 traits in the replacement index, including being on top of the breed for calving difficulty, gestation, age at slaughter, carcass confirmation, daughter milk and daughter fertility. The critical thing there is that if there was a cow, say an Angus, that was extremely good on carcass and might be lacking on some of the other traits, this bull might have a role to play because he will improve the fertility, age at slaughter, the calving difficulty and the milk. He is trait leader on a lot of traits and bad on the carcass traits. There will be other bulls on that list who will be really good on carcass traits and poor on the others. That is the whole idea of the model and I discussed that in the opening statement.