Earlier this year a post on the ICBF website announced it was looking for information on calves with any congenital defect. Now it is looking specifically for calves born without tails. When ICBF started receiving information from farmers on calves with congenital defects, it started to see one defect crop up more often than others – calves born without tails.
This trend piqued the interest of ICBF’s health and disease researcher and now she is looking for other cattle that were born without tails.
While sure to say this is not an “epidemic”, ICBF says they’re interested in why there are more this year than in previous years.
In order to help their research they are asking farmers to send in both a photo and DNA sample of the animal if the calf was born without a tail or with a tail of 10 centimetres or less.
They also say if the animal is no longer with you or died, they are still interested in it being reported on the survey so they can identify if a particular line or breed is associated with this trait.
Moreover, if you are online and your neighbor isn’t but has had one of these calves, ICBF would ask you to reach out to them so they can get as much information on this as possible.
Anyone with any queries on the subject can email Health@ICBF.com
(Source – Irish Farmers Journal – Amy Nora Fitzgibbon – 20/03/2015)