{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Dairy Edge","title":"ICBF Breeding Guidelines","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1966,"description":"Kevin Downing and Dan O’Riordan of ICBF join Stuart Childs on this week’s Dairy Edge to discuss the Spring Breeding Guidelines that will be arriving to farmers across the country this week.\n \nKevin explains how the scorecard included in the guidelines can be used to identify the herd strengths and weaknesses to allow people to see where they may need to target improvement.\n \nHe then discusses the importance of using enough dairy AI straws to ensure there are adequate numbers of replacements coming through to support the needs of individual farms. 25% is required in order to ensure that 18-20% replacement rates can be maintained as not all heifers will go the distance so some surplus will be needed.\n \nHe also spoke about the importance of using high DBI with high beef subindex beef sires to generate high quality dairy beef stock and emphasises the need to continue using AI until such time as there is sufficient bull power to meet demand.\n \nFinally Dan spoke about how sire advice is now available on the HerdPlus app which will facilitate more people to use it. \n \nHe highlights the benefits of sire advice, balancing milk and fertility, avoiding inbreeding and lethal mutations and maximising beef merit while minimising calving difficulty risk, all making life easier for everyone involved.\n \nFor more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:\nhttps://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/\n \nThe Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/FizPp2YqaNPbmx7kOdSSeqe3lGqQ33mTmLaxiS1YEus/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzEwMTc5LzE1ODgz/Mjc3MzMtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}