EBI? what do ye think?

bealaha

just wondering what most of ye thought of EBI, like do ye find it give a correct analysis of a cow overall or is it a tool that any of ye use to evaluate cows, as i have recently joined the ICBF "herdplus" and we milk record. some of the ebi of cows would suprise me where as others disaapoint.
and just to let ye no the ebi of the herd is €81.

whelan1

thats quite a good ebi .... alot of the ebi is on fertility hence ruu/rdu 's high figures

bogman_bass

a heard EBI of 81 is not tp be sniffed at.
there may be some minor tweaking of the formula needed but overall i think its the way to go

John_F

in my opinion EBI is not the be all and end all, the formula works out that a cow that yields more litres than the base cow will get a negative figure while a cow that yields more protein and fat % will get a higher ebi, however a cow producing more milk litres will have just as much or more kgs milk solids as a cow on low yield with high %'s. Also temperament, locomotion etc is not taken into account and what is the point having an animal with an EBI of 150 and cannot walk enough to get grass into her. EBI is the profit that the cow will give in her lactation over the base cow (on the icbf web page) but its all theory, alot of what if's. Similarly one can breed for fertility but you must feed the cow what she needs!

Our best milker and best cow to go in calf has an ebi of 50 while our more average cow is up to 119 granted she is a heifer. We are joined with herd plus and do find it a good facility for picking out cows not performing as well, but still find the programe a bit confusing