ICAR Guidelines
Section-by-section conformance map
Ten sections of the Guidelines: what each requires, how the book handles it, and which gaps remain.
The International Committee for Animal Recording (ICAR) writes the guidelines by which performance is recorded, descent is verified and breeding value is evaluated around the world. About one hundred and thirty organisations from sixty countries work to them; the herd books of the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Ireland and the United Kingdom are built on these rules.
This herd book is built to the same guidelines. Below is the map: what each section requires and how it is done here. Not one section is covered in full yet, and that is the state of things today rather than caution in the wording.
The guidelines belong to ICAR. What follows is a short restatement in our own words with a link to the English original, not a translation: we are not entitled to publish a translation in full. Permission for a Russian translation of individual sections has been requested from ICAR. The ICAR mark is not used on this page — it is granted by the Board of the organisation on the basis of membership, not for conformance to the guidelines.
| Section | What it requires | How the book does it | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| General RulesSection 01 | General rules of recording: who keeps the records, how their trustworthiness is confirmed, what a recording organisation does and what it answers for before the breeder. | Roles, access rights and a change log on every record. Verification of records by the Association runs as a separate stream of applications. | Partialgaps: 2 |
| Cattle Milk RecordingSection 02 | Recording of milk yield: test-day schemes, the intervals between them, computing the lactation, the designation of the performance recording method (A4, B4 and the rest) and the handling of missing tests. | Test days with date, yield, fat, protein and somatic cells; the lactation is computed from them rather than entered as a number. The performance recording method is written down through the enumerations of the standard: who took the readings, which milkings were included, how and when the sample was taken — and the familiar A4 or B4 designation is assembled from those rather than stored as a string. Checks catch breaks in the run of test days and lactations without the mandatory figures. | Partialgaps: 1 |
| DNA TechnologySection 04 | Work with genotypes: parentage verification and discovery, the exchange of genotypes between organisations, and the requirements on laboratories. | A DNA test with the laboratory, date, method and the result of parentage verification; a disagreement with the recorded parents goes into the checks. | Partialgaps: 2 |
| Conformation RecordingSection 05 | Conformation recording: linear traits on a nine-point scale, composite scores on a hundred-point scale, and the requirements on the classifier and on the repeatability of scores. | Linear scoring on traits 1–9, composite scores 50–100 and the scoring of young stock. Every score carries the classifier and the date. Sixteen linear traits and four composites are mapped to the ICAR nomenclature when exchanging over ADE. | Partialgaps: 2 |
| AI and ET Data and Fertility AnalysisSection 06 | Recording of inseminations and embryo transfers, and the computation of fertility figures: days open, the calving interval, services per conception. | Inseminations with the sire, dose, technician and result; days open and the calving interval are computed from the events. Checks catch a calving interval that is too short and an insemination dated before the calving. | Partialgaps: 1 |
| Bovine Functional TraitsSection 07 | Functional traits: udder health, calving ease, calf survival, longevity — what exactly to record and how to code it. | Somatic cells from the test days, calving ease, live and dead calves, and disposal with the date and the reason. | Partialgaps: 2 |
| Dairy Cattle Genetic EvaluationSection 09 | Genetic evaluation of dairy cattle: what breeding value is made of, how reliability is computed, how results are published, and the comparison base. | A breeding value index with weight profiles, reliability for each trait and for the index as a whole, and the version of the comparison base beside the value. The ranking within the book is published by name. | Partialgaps: 3 |
| Data ExchangeSection 15 | Data exchange between systems: dictionaries, formats, schemas. The current line is the open ADE standard on JSON and REST, its specification held on GitHub under Apache 2.0. | Exchange with FGIAS PR over the twenty templates of the registry — export and reverse import. A REST interface of the book’s own. 14 ADE collections served at the paths of the specification (animals, test-day-results, parturitions, inseminations, type-classifications, weights, breeding-values, arrivals, departures, deaths, pregnancy-checks, milking-visits, daily-milking-averages, diagnoses). POST intake on 7 of them (test-day-results, parturitions, inseminations, weights, milking-visits, diagnoses, breeding-values) with repeat submissions recognised by the pair “source plus its record number”, a line-by-line icarBatchResult response and refusals as icarErrorResource. What is served is validated against the real schemas from the adewg/ICAR repository rather than against our own copy of the enumerations. Selection uses the names of the standard itself: meta-modified-from and meta-modified-to by record date, date-from and date-to by event date, the animal-id and animal-scheme pair by animal; parameters that were not understood are named in the response header rather than dropped silently. Animals, conformation scores, breeding values and movements are deliberately closed to writing: registering an animal and the transfer of rights are statements the Association answers for, and they go through an application with verification rather than as a line in an exchange stream; each is answered with 405 and an explanation. | Partialgaps: 1 |
| Breed AssociationsSection 18 | The work of breed associations and the keeping of herd books: the rules for entering an animal in the book, the sections of the book, and the requirements on descent and on membership. | Keeping the book, membership of holdings, issuing breeding certificates, handling applications, verification of records. | Partialgaps: 2 |
| Devices and LaboratoriesSection 10, 11, 12 | Certification of identification devices, testing of milk meters and samplers, and the evaluation of milk analysers. | This is about hardware and laboratories, not about a recording system. The book accepts the results of such devices but does not certify them and makes no claim to. | Out of scope |
“Out of scope” means the section is not about us: certifying devices and accrediting laboratories is not the task of a recording system. All 16 gaps explained across 9 sections — on a page of its own.
What else is open to everyone
The guidelines in full sit at wiki.icar.org and are read without registration. The ADE data exchange standard is published on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 licence — it can be implemented and extended freely; the book serves 14 collections over it and accepts 7 of them for writing. Twenty-nine issues of the ICAR Technical Series are open as well.