The Future of Irish Dairy Breeding with Donagh Berry

Why It Matters

If unchecked, the current reliance on sexed semen could stall Ireland’s dairy genetic improvement, eroding farm profitability and the nation’s breeding leadership.

Key Takeaways

• Sexed semen boosts herd-level genetic gain but reduces AI bull pool.
• Overusing sexed semen may slow future EBI improvements of top AI bulls.
• Maintaining 100,000 male calves births needed for top 1% AI selection.
• Genotyping improves bull identification but cannot create males absent from sexed semen.
• Collaborative stakeholder strategy essential to balance cow selection and bull supply.

Summary

The video examines how the rapid adoption of sexed semen is reshaping Irish dairy breeding. Professor Don Berry explains that while sexed semen lets farmers intensify selection on the top cows, it simultaneously diverts those elite females away from producing the next generation of AI bulls, threatening long‑term genetic progress.

Berry outlines four pathways to genetic gain and shows that only about 6% of national improvement comes from the cow‑level pathway. By channeling the best cows into female production, the supply of high‑merit bull calves shrinks dramatically. He estimates that to sustain a top‑1% AI bull list you need roughly 100,000 male calves born each year—equivalent to 400,000 total pregnancies—something sexed semen usage makes increasingly unlikely.

Concrete examples illustrate the timeline: semen placed today yields a calf in 2027, a bull in 2028, and the next generation of cows only by 2031, meaning decisions made now won’t show results for seven years. Genotyping can pinpoint superior bulls among those born, but it cannot create males that never exist because sexed semen produces only heifers.

The implication is clear: without coordinated action among farmers, AI stations, and breeding societies, Ireland risks a slowdown in Estimated Breeding Value (EBI) gains. A mixed strategy—maintaining a baseline of conventional semen, leveraging genotyping, and possibly creating virtual nucleus herds—will be required to preserve the country’s unique, farmer‑owned breeding program and its competitive edge.

Original Description

Prof. Donagh Berry, Quantitative Geneticist at Teagasc Moorepark, joins Stuart Childs on this week’s Dairy Edge to discuss the future of Irish Dairy Breeding Programmes.

Donagh first explains that breeding is all about numbers. With the uptake in use of sexed semen, the pool of dairy bull calves being born has shrunk and while this was part of the objective of using it in the first place, there is a side effect which has the potential to slow genetic gain in Irish dairy.

He outlines the type of numbers of calves that need to be born each year in order to maintain the genetic growth that Irish farmers have enjoyed since the late 2000s when genomics arrived.

In order to continue this, it will be important to have a structured breeding programme that will see Irish farmers work with the AI companies putting some of their best cows in calf to nominated bulls with a view to delivering the bulls of the future.

Failure to do so will see the progress made in the industry in the last three decades since the introduction of the EBI slow significantly. 

However, Donagh is attempting to avoid this occurrence by bringing industry together during 2026 to discuss the situation, identify the solutions and get them implemented as quickly as possible.

For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:

https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/

The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com (https://www.lastcastmedia.com/)