The Northern Irish Limousin Cattle Club held a successful meeting on Wednesday 5 July with a great turnout of members. Congratulations on the evening were given to Henry Savage, Trueman herd and James McKay, Ampertaine herd for achieving and being presented with an Honorary Lifetime Club Membership medal. For both members this is in acknowledgement of their many successes over the years and contributions to the Club and Limousin production in Northern Ireland.
Iain Kerr and Alison Glasgow from the Limousin Society presented an update on Society business and the new developments for all commercial Limousin producers that are taking shape with the ongoing roll out of the Society’s Breed Improvement Plan (BIP), details of which can be found on the website. In her presentation Alison demonstrated how the component parts of the plan are starting to come together and, if adopted by producers, have the potential to start adding up to meaningful value. The whole driver behind the BIP is to provide a breed with genetics that are ‘market-ready’.
As such, having tools to identify the characteristics that commercial producers will need to respond to the constant change in market specification, and a population of animals that are capable of delivering to whatever new spec comes in to play. She highlighted how the work completed thus far is part of a larger plan with new things on the horizon. Completion of the 10 year ambitious plan will ensure the breed is ready to serve industry now and be future-proofed, so far as possible, for what lies ahead.
The Female Fertility GEBVs, Feed Efficiency, Carcase Trait GEBVs and Myostatin all generated good discussion and ideas on wider plans for the future.
