BEEP: Weighing your animals – everything you need to know

Weighing animals and the submission of these weights will be a compulsory action under the BEEP scheme.

Participants must weigh each un-weaned calf and its dam and submit weights to ICBF within 7 days.

Requirements:

Farmers that wish to take part in the scheme must abide by the following requirements;

1. All calves being submitted for weighing must have been born between July 1st, 2019 and June 30th, 2020;
2. Unweaned live calf and dam must be weighed on the applicants holding on the same day;
3. Only scales registered and used in accordance with the requirements of Annex 1 may be employed for the purposes of this programme;
4. Weights must be submitted between January 1st, 2020 and November 1st, 2020.

Payment

The payment rate for action 1 is €50 per pair for the first ten cow/calf weighing per herd and €40 per cow/calf weighing thereafter to a maximum of 100 pairs in total.

Recording weight data

There are two options available to herd-owners for the recording of weight data as part of BEEP Scheme. These are:

1. Rental models, whereby participants rent scales from an approved field service agent to undertake the BEEP-S weight recording process;
2. Owned, borrowed or third party service models, whereby participants have access to a set of scales and they are availing of these scales to undertake the BEEPS weight recording process.

A rental model for weight recording can be sourced through the central booking facility. Details can be found on www.icbf.com. In terms of recording weights of cows and calves, herd-owners are encouraged to use electronic options to record this data as this will ensure more accurate and timely recording of the data.

If you own a set of scales (either existing or new) and plan to use them (or lend them to another person) for the purpose of BEEP-S, then you must pre-register the scales before the weight recording event. Scales already registered with ICBF for BEEP 2019 do not need to be re-registered.

Terms and Conditions

BEEP-S payments will only be made on weights recorded and validated on the ICBF database. All records should be submitted within 7 days of the completion of the weight recording process.

If weight records are deemed unusable as a result of the scales used being unfit for purpose, then payment may not issue under the programme.

Information 

For further information, terms and conditions can be found here.