Rural Payments and Services

We made the decision to offer early selections in June for applicants who plan to sell their animals in September.

To be included in this selection, applicants were asked to ensure that their calving data for spring born calves was uploaded onto the Beef Efficiency Scheme (BES) database by 9 June 2017.

The recording of calving data by 9 June was voluntary, and over 300 applicants took up the offer of submitting their data early and they will receive their tags by the end of July.

Applicants who did not wish to take up the early selection remained subject to the scheme deadline of 15 July for recording their calving data for calves born 1 January to 1 June only.

Unfortunately, a high proportion of applicants failed to meet this deadline. As a result, we cannot guarantee that customers who did not meet the deadline will start to receive tags in late August/early September as we intended.

We will continue to aim to issue tags to all participants by 31 October, however, we strongly urge those who have not yet recorded the data to do so as soon as possible to aid us in issuing tags quickly.