I nearly fell off the bar stool when I heard Teagasc is now breeding purebred Angus bulls for the AI stations – well, sort of anyway.

Seemingly, as part of a heifer sexed semen trial breeding from the best pedigree Aberdeen Angus in the country, some bulls turned up.

That was all fine until Teagasc went to sell the ‘unwanted’ bull calves a couple of weeks ago.

The sucks were put up for tender I’m told and seemingly one of the AI stations picked up three of the top calves. Now I didn’t get a bid in so I’m not sure of the bobs, but they can’t have cost that much given they are only sucks.

If the index numbers don’t stay up, they’ll probably make fine stock bulls anyway.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, seemingly when the Angus breed societies (at least one of them) heard of this, all hell broke loose.

The story goes that phones were hopping with calls for the State organisation to stand back from breeding top sires that breeders have been striving to breed for the last 50 years.

Elite cows

To the best of my information, the Teagasc Aberdeen Angus was bred from a few elite cows in Co Clare that were selected for their high maternal traits.

I’ll be waiting to see the shiny catalogues and what they are going to call these lads. My bet is the AI code will be TMA2024, Teagasc Moorepark Angus 2024.