Summary

Over the last six years a shared cattle breeding database has been established in Ireland. This database is now being used to meet the information needs of herd books, milk recording, artificial insemination and genetic evaluation for beef and dairy cattle. Development of this database required the establishment of a new information technology infrastructure and migration of historical data from some 40 legacy systems. Recording effort required of farmers has been both reduced and simplified. Complexity and turnaround times of genetic evaluation systems were substantially reduced. Establishing an integrated database required a large effort and the negotiation of data and information sharing protocols involving many organisations but the benefits to Irish cattle farmers through more useful breeding and management information more than justified the cost