Be interesting to see what happens the stars today, they are saying that farmer data will be used this time around as well as a few other traits..
I'm sure my best 900kg 1 star cow thats thrown the 2k plus weanling won't change. That would go against everything their pushing last few years
anybody know the new economic values they are basing it on?
Ya, just looking through some of the latest proofs there.
CLADDAGH MCCABE (ET) now at 9.4%.calving on cows, up from 8.5%.
DRUMLINE S 1185 still good on calving and docility.
Improvements to the ICBF Euro-Star Indexes - September 2025 - ICBF
Happy reading. 😀
My gurls seem to have dropped, some quite a bit.
mine have changed too - some up and some down
one 5 star I have dropped to 3 star!
cheers!
Anything with Poor docility is getting hammered on the indices. €79 alone difference, between my best and poorest cows on docility.
The difference between a 3 star and 4 star cow now is only €19 (€108-€89 see below). So a farmer with 20 cows would benefit to the tune of €380 if he/she got rid of all his 3 Star cows and replaced them with 4 Star cows. So one Euro a day more profit. What am I missing?
Twin heifers off 5 star cow and bred to a 5-star AI bull could not tell them apart without tag numbers, one 3 stars, the other 5 stars
Go figure 😕
this seems to be a common misconception. I’ve never heard ICBF, Teagasc or anyone else tell farmers to get rid of any cows. They said not to breed replacements from them alright but never said to get rid of any of them
Has anyone a link to previous icbf bull ratings before the recent changes
go on to evaluation history on ICBF for each animal it will show you
I'm not saying get rid of them either. The point I was making was about the financial benefit. Let's say I have 20 3 Star cows and my neighbour has 20 4 Star. He's making one Euro a day more on his farm than I am. One fecking Euro !!!
Same here, only thing I can think of of one was smaller at birth. Both had same weight at 5 months.
Get 20 one star cows like an above poster with 2000 euro weanlings and never mind them oul details. I'm in the beef schemes but pay little to no attention and get on great.
Nobody said you must sell the low stared cows, but the did say you must have X 4/5 star cows to comply with the scheme, if you can only keep a certain number then certain 1-3 star cows have to go
Pity they don't post the terminal star values too, we need a mixture of cows producing both types of calf.
I know this was asked before, but I don't think we had an answer, if a cow goes from 4 stars to 3 is she now ineligible? I know a bull stays eligible for the life of the scheme if he had 4 stars at the start.
They should. If you have pedigree Limousins, you can see the terminal values for females on the online Herdbook.
Same as with the bull, once 4/5 star at any stage they are eligible in that herd. If you sell them they are rated at current rates
they removed the difference page so you can't see where you animal drops. I had a salar heifer off roy she was 5 star at the weekend shes down to a 3 star that's one I was surprised about thought she would have add the maternal side
I haven’t done too bad. All the limo bulls I’m using for next year have gone down in their indexes. Whoever is behind the scheme really doesn’t like Limos.
Nearly all my aubracs stayed the same in every stat, some gained a little. It really shows the scheme was designed around an Aubrac cow. The only thing I could find that had a large positive increase was Parthenaise. A few heifers fell from 4 to 3. I’ve double what I need for the scheme so might be an idea to bring some heifers to the mart next week.
9/10 bulls I check have calving difficulty up and milk down. It almost looks like they just ran a program that took of 1kg milk from every bull and add half a percentage calving difficulty. A bit suspicious.
I think running off icbf the commercial beef value report shows the terminal values. Both replacement and terminal are shown on the Mart screen.
I agree with you, anything by an Aubrac bull here is up a little bit, anything 25% blonde has lost a couple of stars. Angus have slipped a bit too. Re-cycling a cow for a year seems to be a big no no. Calving at 3 yo instead of 2 yo is another big no no. As Patsy said above docility is an issue too.
Only one cow over 200 ebi here and she's by a PBNR Aubrac bull that I bought for €1200, there's a lot of luck involved in a game with constantly moving goal posts. Throw in a few still births, an outbreak of scour or tb and it might be hard to meet scep targets. One lad in our discussion group said the easiest way to give the figures a boost is to buy in angus x heifer calves from the dairy herd.
There's no way I'd chance a gene Ireland straw on anything. Looking at the graph that compares your herd to the national herd it looks like the national herd is 15-20% less efficient since May.
Something very strange going on alright. Spotted this yesterday. This is the Daughter Milk values for the Limousin bull MERESIDE GODOLPHIN (S1630). Now, make sense of this. How can a bull go from 2 stars at 83% Rel to 4 stars at 92% Rel.
I was looking at Tweedale Lennox (LM440&) His daughter milk went from 2.4kg at 68% reliability to -5.0kg at 86% reliability. What I cant figure is that there are only 43 calving records listed under his daughter calving figures and when you look at his milk figures there was 37 scores included in the May evaluation. If there was only 6 daughters calved after the May evaluation how could this figure and reliability change so much??
I know it is easy to pull individual examples and find fault with them but surely there should be some consistency with less drastic changes in traits for farmers to have any confidence at all in these figures.
I get infuriated when they keep referring to these re-jigs as "improvements" - I don't think the farmers who are inflicted with working within these figures for schemes would call them improvements.
I also question how these indexes are called "genomic evaluations". My view is that the genomic part is simply for Parentage Verification and Myostatin, after that the figures are simply data derived estimates. If their genomic evaluations were accurate the figures wouldn't change drastically even when more data records are supplied - The data should merely re-enforce the initial evaluation within reason.
I just don't know……..
Ya, I'd agree with what you are saying. How much can they really tell from the Genomics? If they can tell a lot, why are the reliability figures so low for a new bull with no calves on the ground yet. And like you say, why do the values swing so much when the data is collected from the calves/progeny?
II would imagine it like the aa polled gene, which is very dominant in calves.
Some bulls seem to have a consistent impact on their calves, while others are hit and miss. The milk figures are very hard for suckler farmer's to measure on farm, considering a big bag dose not always mean more quality milk.
II thought originally milk figures came from weanlings and calves weight's
You are spot on with the milk figures coming from weights. To be fair thrive is probably the best indicator of milk value. In Lennox's case though he only has 43 daughter calving records and not that many between the last two evaluations so I am struggling to see how the figure can change so much.
Call me cynical but when I read the ICBF press release about the changes to the indices I thought it was interesting that the language used in relation to the inclusion of weight was as follows: 'All weights that pass the quality control checks are now included in the evaluations.' The key point here is how does a weighing pass the quality control checks? or is this just a different way of saying its only the ICBF recorded weights that count?
