When searching for beef bulls to use on your dairy cows to get those high value crossbred calves for meat production, you will come across the term NBDI. NBDI stands for Nordic Beef on Dairy Index and consists of information on the bull’s ability to pass on desirable traits, such as ease of calving, growth and carcass quality, to his offspring. The goal of NBDI is to secure the highest profitability.
NBDI is based on data from the offspring of the bulls when the bulls have been used on dairy cows. The index is across breeds, and focused on two main areas, birth and growth.
The Birth index consists of two evaluations:
- Ease of calving
- Calf survival
The birth index will be the first area to focus on when choosing bulls for beef on dairy.
Next is the Growth index, which consists of three subindices:
- Daily carcass gain
- Carcass conformation score
- Carcass fat score
Together these two indices make up NBDI, a powerful tool for farmers.
Each bull obtains different values for the sub-index Growth and for the total merit index NBDI, depending on whether the rearing period is short (less than 550 days) or long (more than 550 days).
Rely on NBDI to select beef bulls for producing crossbred calves that are easily born and have a good growth and carcass quality to ensure the best profitability.
