Specialist beef facilities

Part of: Beef

Area of Expertise:

AFBI manages a productive beef herd with additional facilities supporting our research areas

  • Beef cattle at AFBI Hillsborough
    The beef research herd includes a suckler herd of 100 cows.
  • The beef research herd also includes an annual intake of approximately 150 dairy-bred calves from the AFBI dairy herd, which are predominately Holstein male calves. 
  • In addition to the AFBI herd, the beef research programme expands to a number of other herds throughout Northern Ireland which are engaged with on-farm research projects.
  • AFBI, through the collaboration of biometrics, software development and production systems team have developed the Bovine Information System (BovIS) which collates information from the Northern Ireland animal birth, death and movement recording system (APHIS) along with data from the agri-food industry
  • Individual respiration chambers are located at AFBI Hillsborough along with SF6 methane and greenhouse gas measuring apparatus