Interbeef publication

Interbeef breeding values

Although NAV has official genetic evaluations for beef cattle NAV participates in Interbeef. For Interbeef, each participating member sends in raw performance data and pedigree. Data from each member is then treated as a separate trait in an international genetic evaluation and resulting breeding values will be published on each member countries own scale. The ranking on different country scales might be different, thus a bull that is genetically best in country A might not be best in country B.

At the moment the following countries participate in Interbeef: Australia, Czech Republic, DFS (Denmark, Finland and Sweden), Estonia, France, Germany, Latvian, Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland and United Kingdom. However, all countries don’t participate in evaluation of all breeds and traits. So far, official Interbeef breeding values are available for Adjusted Weaning Weight (AWW), Birth Weight (BWT) and Calving Ease (CAE) direct and maternal effects. These traits are published for the breeds Aberdeen Angus, Charolais, Hereford, Limousin and Simmental. Interbeef evaluations will be extended in the future to include more traits and breeds.

Interbeef is a working group of ICAR (International Committee for Animal Recording).

Interbeef publication on DFS scale

Official Interbeef breeding values for available traits and breeds are published twice a year (March and November) and the newest results can be viewed in NAV Beef Search. The search page contains all publishable breeding values and other relevant information for the bulls and cows included in the evaluation. Breed must be chosen but all other search parameters are optional. It is possible to set the search criteria to create top lists of your preference and to search for individual animals or their progeny.

Interbeef breeding values on DFS scale are standardized so that animals with AWW record born 3-8 years before the date of evaluation has an average breeding value of 100 and a standard deviation of 10.

Important to remember is that Interbeef evaluations are only available for some economically important traits some of which are analyzed in single-trait models whereas the official NAV evaluations are multi-trait models also including several other traits. Further, Interbeef evaluations also uses information from relatives in different countries. Therefore the ranking based on Interbeef breeding values can differ substantially from NAV rankings.