In March 2022 Agrinet HerdApp added a new feature where dairy farmers can make their beef calves for sale visible to beef buyers.
Any beef farmer, or calf buying company, can visit https://app.agrinet.ie/Herd/AnimalsForSale.aspx to see beef calves made available for sale by Agrinet HerdApp dairy farmers.
If a calf is marked with Verified by Serve it means a serve exists on ICBF nine months prior to the date of birth of the calf. This helps a lot in terms of verifying the correct sire of the calf and thereby the correct breed composition of the calf. Since Agrinet HerdApp gets all Dam and Sire data from ICBF the accuracy of all the genetics data is excellent. We have decided to develop this feature due to the genetic merit of beef calves bred from the dairy herd coming under increased scrutiny from both an environmental and a profitability point of view.
As more sexed semen is used for dairy replacements on dairy farmers, there will be an increase in the amount of male beef calves in the dairy herd. This service aims to promote the use of high genetic merit sires within the Dairy herd that excel for beef traits such as carcass weight in addition to short gestation and easy calving.
For beef farmers, this helps the process of sourcing high quality beef stock from the dairy herd. It is a convenient way to find quality calves and then directly contact the seller with the beef farmer able to filter on important aspects such as calf breed and location. This should then lead to more profitable dairy beef systems for beef farmers due to an increased emphasis on the genetic make up of beef calves.
For dairy farmers using Agrinet HerdApp this is a useful way to make their calves visible for sale in many public locations. The list is visible from a number of locations including www.progressivegenetics.ie and also in Agrinet HerdApp itself. It can be published by any company or group wishing to make high quality beef calves from dairy farms visible to beef rearing farms.
For Ireland, this promotes the importance of been efficient when it comes to the production of beef as we aim to slaughter animals in an earlier time period. These environmental gains will predominantly be made through improvements in the genetic merit of calves bred from the dairy herd.
There is no cost for this service to either the buyer or the seller.
