Waterford Has Ireland's Best Suckler Herd Fertility Figures, ICBF Data Shows
Data from the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation show that Co. Waterford leads Ireland's counties on suckler herd reproductive indicators. Larger herds, mostly in the south-east, tend to perform better overall.
The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF), which collects and publishes data on cattle breeding in Ireland, has compared suckler (beef cow) herd performance county by county. On the measures it reported, Co. Waterford in the south-east of the country came out on top.
How performance is judged
Suckler farmers judge herd performance in different ways. Some use the number of assisted calvings as their main indicator, while others look only at weanling weight and price. Whichever indicator is used, benchmarking against other farmers helps show which areas of a herd are well managed and which could be improved.
The ICBF has published a list of 15 suckler herd KPIs, along with national averages for each over the past 10 years. At county level it provided figures for average calving interval, the share of heifers calved at 22 months, and average age at first calving.
Waterford's results
Waterford has the shortest average calving interval, at 390 days, and the joint highest number of calves per cow per year, at 0.86. The average age at first calving is 29.6 months, which is 2.6 months younger than the national average of 32.2 months.
The proportion of heifers calving at 22–26 months in Waterford is 38.9%, compared with a national average of 21.6%, almost double.
Link with herd size
The data also indicate that counties with larger average suckler herds tend to have better reproductive efficiency, and these herds are often located in the south-east. The ICBF notes that moving diagonally towards the north-west, herd size generally gets smaller and efficiency declines.
