The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine’s (DAFM’s) Animal Identification and Movement (AIM) Bovine Statistics Report, published recently, has detailed a breed composition by sire and dam breed of all calves born in Ireland in 2023.
The table details the main sire and dam breeds and shows the number of calves born to each cross.
The most popular beef-breed sire of calves born in 2023 was Aberdeen Angus while the most popular dairy breed and overall sire was Friesian.
The table below details the breed composition of all caves born in Ireland in 2023:
According to the data from the AIM report, a total of just under 2.4 million calves were registered in 2023.
Just under 525,000 of these calves were registered to Aberdeen Angus (AA) sires in 2023 while Friesian was the most popular sire overall with just under 735,000 calves registered to a Friesian sire.
Friesian dams delivered the largest volumes of calves in 2023 accounting for over 1.5 million or just over 63% of the calf births last year.
Limousin was the second most popular cow breed in 2023 with just over 264,500 calves registered to a Limousin dam in 2023.
One of the breeds that cause a particular amount of discussion amongst both dairy and beef farmers is Jersey.
While the breed has a role to play in many dairy systems, often the progeny from the cows have a low value in the beef sector.
There were just under 76,000 calves bred from Jersey cows in 2023 and 32,000 of these had a Friesian sire. 15,000 of these calves from Jersey dams had an Angus sire and just over 9,200 had a Hereford sire.
Just under 35,000 calves had a Jersey sire in 2023 with these calves naturally enough predominantly breed from either Friesian or Jersey cows.