BovIS Tools can help farmers secure The Beef Carbon Reduction Scheme payments

BovIS holds carcass information from NI processors and farmers historic and current herd information. Farmers can log into BovIS via the Government Gateway and view information relating to animals they have killed.

DAERA recently introduced a new Beef Carbon Reduction Scheme (BCRS) aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving efficiency in the beef sector through rewarding farmers with a £75 per head payment from April 2024 for animals slaughtered at or below the target age of 30 months in year 1 of the scheme reducing to 26 months in year 4.

BovIS has a pivotal role to play in helping farmers benefit from the BCRS through understanding their historic and current herd performance through using Bovis tools including; Herd of Origin Report, Carcase Benchmarking and the Growth Rate Calculator.

The Herd of Origin Report allows producers to see the performance of animals that originated on their farm. The report shows the animals slaughtered from the herd and has information on metrics including Date of birth, dam, kill date, carcase weight and grade.

Carcass benchmarking allows user to compare age at slaughter, conformation, fatness, weight, carcase gain, furthermore the benchmarking tool allows producers to see all animal data which can be exported to excel if needed. Farmers can benchmark their animals performance against the industry standard and top 10% of producers.

A Growth rate Calculator is available which allows users to see how their current animals are performing with regard to growth rate and estimated age at slaughter which can help inform management decisions to optimise performance.

The Bovis User Guide is available on the Agrisearch website. Demo videos are also available on the AgriSearch YouTube channel.