The total number of Irish calves registered in 2026 is set to surpass the 1 million mark this week.

According to data from the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF), 999,688 calves have been registered as of Friday, March 13.

Registrations will blow full steam ahead past the 1 million mark this week, considering there is only 312 calves between here and there.

There were 148,639 calves registered in the last week alone, according to ICBF.

During the week, 124,329 of those were registered to dairy dams, while a further 24,310 were registered to beef dams.

For the year-to-date, calves registrations are up 36,469 head, with 963,219 head born in the same period in 2025.

Calf registrations

For the year-to-date, 870,236 calves have been registered to dairy dams.

While dairy registrations were down by 2,047 head this week compared to the same week last year, total dairy registrations are up 25,916 on the same time frame as 2025.

This indicates how improved breeding technology is leading to a more compact calving season, with vigorous numbers of calf registration within the month of February.

Moving to the calves registered to beef dams, some 24,310, were registered in the week ending March 13, which is up by a mere 879 head on the same week in 2025.

A total of 129,452 calves have been registered to beef dams for the year-to-date, which is up this also up by 10,553 on the 2025 registrations.

NGP

In the week ending Friday, March 6, almost 746,000 calves had been registered to dairy cows.

ICBF announced that the national genotyping lab had received its 500,00th sample the same week.

This shows the uptake in the National Genotyping Programme, with the majority of dairy calves born so far this year been sampled.

ICBF confirmed that the average turnaround time from birth to a passport being issued is standing at 14.3 days, but said the difference with sale age of genotyped calves versus non-genotyped calves is only 0.6 days.