Beef farmer advocates of the Terminal and Replacement Indexes may notice slight changes to the Euro-Star values presented for their herd.

This has occurred as the ICBF has made some important improvements to the Euro-Star indexes in the latest evaluation published on Tuesday, September 23, which will provide more accurate and reliable genetic evaluations for herds across Ireland.

The main drivers behind these changes are threefold: an update of economic values, the inclusion of available suckler cow and calf weight data and the incorporation of foreign breeding information.

Firstly, Teagasc has revised its beef systems model to better reflect the current and future outlook of the beef sector, including updated beef prices and farm input costs. This revision directly influences the economic values assigned to key traits such as carcass weight, cull cow weight, calving difficulty and fertility. The economic values serve an important role in creating the overall Euro-Star index values. As a result, the updated economic values have led to adjustments in the index values.

Secondly, the number of suckler cow and calf weights recorded annually has increased substantially, largely due to the requirements of the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP). The ICBF has incorporated this dataset – after quality checks – into the genetic evaluations. Including these on-farm weights improves the accuracy of traits like milk production, cow liveweight and carcass weight.

Lastly, the ICBF has enhanced its evaluations by integrating foreign breeding values from imported semen and stock bulls. Achieved through international collaboration with genetic evaluation centres worldwide, new methods now allow better integration of this data, increasing the reliability of indexes for animals with limited Irish data.

Table 1: Comparison of the old and new economic values in the Euro-Star indexes

Impact on SCEP eligibility

According to the ICBF, females which are already eligible in SCEP herds for the 31 October 2025 female requirement, will remain eligible in their current herds, regardless of any change to their stars in September 2025. Some SCEP herds will see an increase in the number of eligible females, as some genotyped females, previously not greater than 3-stars, will rise to 4/5-stars and become eligible for 31 October 2025.

To find out more information on the improvements to the ICBF Euro-Star Indexes, visit the ICBF website.

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