Lucky_P
Well-known member
As previously stated, the red gene is still present in some purebred Angus cattle, and black commercial cattle may not be all 'Angus'... case in point, while many of the cows in my herd are black, and 3/4 or more Angus breeding, well over half of them are red-gene carriers, courtesy of red Simmental bulls we used back in the 1980s and again in the early 2000s.
One possible explanation for the combination of red and black on the calf is...chimerism.
The calf could actually be a chimera... a mixed-up combination of two distinct embryos which fused to form one fetus... one of which carried the red coat color gene, the other the black coat color gene, and the red patches are the result of small 'islands' of skin tissue originating from the 'red' embryo, while the majority of the calf's skin originated from the 'black' embryo.
I've seen 'intentional' chimeras formed by forcing the fusion of different breed embryos, producing a calf with an almost 'calico' type of red, white and black coat coloration.
There has been at least one Angus bull (I don't recall which one) who was determined to have been a chimera... his sperm didn't genotype to match his blood type... it turns out that his testicular germ line cells originated from a 'missing twin'... while his bone marrow - and, I presume, the majority of his body cells, as well - were genotypically different from his testicles.
One possible explanation for the combination of red and black on the calf is...chimerism.
The calf could actually be a chimera... a mixed-up combination of two distinct embryos which fused to form one fetus... one of which carried the red coat color gene, the other the black coat color gene, and the red patches are the result of small 'islands' of skin tissue originating from the 'red' embryo, while the majority of the calf's skin originated from the 'black' embryo.
I've seen 'intentional' chimeras formed by forcing the fusion of different breed embryos, producing a calf with an almost 'calico' type of red, white and black coat coloration.
There has been at least one Angus bull (I don't recall which one) who was determined to have been a chimera... his sperm didn't genotype to match his blood type... it turns out that his testicular germ line cells originated from a 'missing twin'... while his bone marrow - and, I presume, the majority of his body cells, as well - were genotypically different from his testicles.