Our national dairy herd has grown by a staggering 50% over the last 5 years and in no small way demonstrates Irish farmers love of farming and their willingness and enthusiasm to exploit viable opportunities that arise when they are suited to their particular holding and or circumstance.

As always when the upward curve is dramatic – some obvious consequences come into play, many of which are positive but some are of concern. One of these concerns is the type and quality of calf produced which if exported for veal or taken into beef finishing is very important.

We understand the obvious conflict for the dairy farmer, between the necessity to have short gestation / easy calving bulls and at the same time see increasing numbers of dairy bred cattle failing to make premium market entry standard when presented for slaughter.  – Dawn Meats in conjunction with Teagasc are working to see if this dairy challenge can be resolved with the production of a more marketable beef calf.

With this objective in mind and together with Teagasc we have launched our Dairy Beef Project. We have selected 900/1000 2020 born calves from beef sires with superior beef trait genetics and, crucially easy calving and short gestation merits from the Dairy Beef Index deemed suitable for use on dairy cows.