In some cases it is difficult to be sure of an animal’s sire and indicating the sire on the passport is optional, but often it is simply that farmers do not see the value of recording this information. However, recording more sires on passports would enhance a valuable resource that can be used ultimately for breed improvement and research.

A good example of the value of sire information is the project "Using abattoir-generated data and BCMS records for carcase trait evaluation".

The project team at SRUC has already demonstrated that abattoir data, when combined with other national databases, are suitable for producing national beef genetic evaluations.

This project is focused on producing genetic parameters and genetic evaluations for carcase weight, conformation and fat class for those breeds with sufficient data available. However, some breeds do not have sufficient data to be included because the sire has not been recorded for enough animals on their passports.

For all breeds, any resulting Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs) produced from abattoir data will be more robust where more animals are included in the analysis and this needs a higher proportion of records with sire details available.

Use of BCMS records to link animals to their sires provides huge potential for the cattle industry to capture value from passport data, including the possibility of breeding directly for carcase traits such as conformation and lifetime growth rate.

The data will be used to estimate genetic parameters such as heritability for individual carcase traits and genetic and phenotypic correlations between carcase traits of interest.