The British Charolais Cattle Society has launched a new system that identifies and rates the quality and quantity of performance information recorded with Breedplan by individual herds on a one to five star basis. Called the Completeness of Performance, the system in turn helps to underpin EBV accuracy.
A herd’s star rating is calculated on the proportion of calves within the herd born in a rolling five year period that have performance recorded for each of Charolais’ 15 EBV traits. Each Breedplan recording herd is subsequently awarded a star rating on a 0 to 5 scale, including half stars, that summarises the relative ‘completeness’ of its performance information.
“Charolais is pleased to be the first Continental breed society in Britain to adopt the new Breedplan star rating system,” comments BCCS chairman, Alasdair Houston. “Completeness of Performance will provide both seedstock and commercial producers with an assessment of how much performance data has been submitted to Breedplan by a herd. The star rating will subsequently improve Breedplan’s EBV accuracy values which provide an indication of the reliability of an individual animal’s EBVs.”
He adds: “We hope that the system will encourage more BCCS members to record their animals, both bulls and heifers which will contribute to improving Breedplan’s EBV accuracy and in turn, will give breeders more information about the genetics within their herds.”
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