Breeding back to mom??

[hrbelgians]

I did it, (mother,sisters and all) however i'm sure it was dumb luck!!?? I got the best calves we ever had, however am sorta scared to try again! Not sure I would encourage it?

could you give us a few more specifics? what animals, how many, how good were the parents?

Hey Aero
Sorry I took so long getting back.
We are talking about 5 sisters and mother plus 5 other cows.
I have no real numbers to back up my statement as for EPD's etc. However will try to explain my situation.
Dam was a murray grey and sire a gelbveih. Dam was a super cow on grass, always in good shape, very mild mannered, moderatly framed cow of 1100 #"s, calved every year, everything what I wanted in a cow. ;-) The sire being a very good musceled gentleman. This pair produced a bull calf that was extremely well musceled, moderatly framed etc.
So took this off spring and bred to all his sisters, mother and the whole herd of cows I owned and got what I was after. I was trying to get as much of this murray grey cow's blood as possible!!
I got a group of heifers (eight) from this mating that are all of the same make!!! The only thing that differs in them is color as some are red and some are dun and some are white. They are mild tempered will be 1000# cows and are well musceled!!
These calves are 10 months old and on grass and grazing through the snow as we speak. Have not had any hay or grain just grass and minerals and are in great condition and all the same scale and fat.
Now my plan is to put a fullblood, grass genetic murray grey on these and see if I can go to the next level??!!!
Make sense???

 

[novatech]

Don't do it. There's nothing to gain.

you might want to try to learn a little about something before you show the world how little you understand something.

Why would he stop posting trash just because he has no knowledge now, after years of getting away with it??

Unless you really know what you are doing with your herd, genetic diversity and moderation are good words to keep in mind.

That being said, I've had some incestuous crackerjacks as well!

Well then, you two geniuses tell me what's to be gained here. I am all ears in regards to crossing this cross back to his dam.

I can tell you that I am no genius, and there are many on here that will agree with that statement. What I do try and do is keep an open mind. A couple of years ago I would have agreed that line breeding was wrong, given the fact I raised F1's and selling the benefits of heterosis.
When I decided to switch over and go straight bred I started studying up on genetics in order to reach my goal relating to the quality of my cattle. What I found was that I had to find animals that fit my goal as close as possible. I studied the pedigrees of those animals and found that they shared common ancestors. I ran pedigree searches on many animals that were unattainable to me, but had the qualities I was looking for. Most of the cattle I found were line bred somewhere down the line. That got me thinking of line breeding and researching it. Along the way I found that most animals in nature are line bred/inbred. I even watched bucks in my own pasture mating with their own daughters.
What line breeding does is double up on genes. When you double up on the genes the probability of passing them on increases. The key is to get rid of the bad genes by culling.
In nature the animals with bad genetics are culled by natural selection.(They become part of the food chain).
At this point I feel that a heard of production cows should be line bred, but their off spring should be a cross to provide heterosis if being used for terminal production. What cross breeding actually does is dilute the gene pool and can alter the results you are looking for. The more diverse the cattle are geneticly the more combinations there can be, therefore the more you take a chance in nonuniform cattle. Of course you will lose the benefit of heterosis, but you do not need it unless you are going terminal.
I certainly hope this makes cents. Sometimes it is hard to get what I am thinking onto paper.
Please if I am wrong on any of this correct me. If I seem to argue it is only to learn.
As far as crossing as close as dam to son or the like, I feel like that is a little to close until I learn more anyway. I plan to start with half brother and sister.

 

[usernametaken]

Usernametaken, Do you perhaps think the advice given was in reference to crossing a sire back to a daughter and then crossing the same sire back to the resulting grandaughter?

Actually Backhoe, I think he was talking about the opposite. I am going to hope what I say next makes some sense, as it is hard for me to describe the concept. I think, because the granddaughter would have such a tight set of genes he means if I then breed her to an outcross ( when I say outcross I am thinking a different line of the same breed, but could be a different breed as well.) If some genes, such as hip dysplasia, take more than 1 gene from each parent, in other words, if it takes 3 genes to express hip dysplasia, and the pup got 2 genes from the linebred parent with a history of culling behind it and 1 gene from the outcross parent, that what that outcross parent with little or no history of culling could present might more easily be the 1 missing link to make the trait go bad. Or if the pup got 2 genes from the outcross parent and 1 from the linebred parent the likelihood of the genes that had been culled out now finding a way to express themselves could be much higher. Higher than a linebred dog that is not so inbred as would be in this case. I think that would be the case in all linebreeding that when you add an occasionally outcross you risk exposing some stuff you don't want to see again, but would be increased by the fact the animal was not only linebred but inbred.

You would of course see some positives also, such as an increase in fertility, # of offspring, vigor.

Hope that makes some sort of sense. I know it sounds crazy but I also know I had one buyer check with the Univ. at Columbus, Ohio and they agreed with my vet. Other vets have disagreed. Auburn agreed, which is where my vet was trained. I just don't know enough to know for sure.

Melissa

 

[usernametaken]

I bred a sire/daughter litter once in dogs by accident. I was quite worried about it and spoke to my vet at length.

According to my Vet most likely the pups would be ok. Here's where it gets a little weird. According to the vet it is the NEXT generation I needed to worry about. Something about after concentrating all those genes, if I then bred to an outcross it was very likely to bring out the defective genes.
Sold the litter on a spay/neuter only basis. They have been very nice dogs.

ARMY DOC I would be interested in your opinion about the vet's advice. I know some do not agree with what he told me, but I have a lot of faith in him, so followed his advice.

Interesting part was the sire was already extremely linebred. That old breeder he came from crossed 1/2 brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents from the 1960's forward. What I think he did was literally clean the line out. This sire has never thrown a pup with a genetic defect. He is extremely predictable in the traits that he throws and he dominates in an outcross. There is certainly value in that, as long as he is a good one, which he is.

One of the big decisions I think when you linebreed is are you willing to cull what doesn't come out so well ?

Melissa

The vets advice doesn't make any sense to me either. An inbred / linebred animal is by definition one that statistically will have a higher percentage homozygous genes than that of the general population. If this inidvidual does not have any problems, the breeding it to another animal from the general population will result in it's offspring having a lower percentage of homozygous genes.

You can demonstrate this yourself using a program like pedigree viewer. If you create a line bred pedigree, the Inbreeding Coefficient (IC) continues to rise, but if you out cross to an unrelated individual, that ofsprings IC drops to zero again.

I think the problem is more likely to happen the longer you continue the inbreeding/linebreeding process. This has been done with laboratory rats. Breeding sire to daughter, to grand daughter to great grand daughter and so on. What happens is that over time vigor and fertility drops. Generally after 8 or 9 generations the number of offspring in each litter drops to the point where the line can't be continued, and dies out.

All of this merely the flip side of hybrid vigor. Just as you get hybrid vigor by outcrossing, you get a gradual decrease in "vigor" by inbreeding. The difference is that the decrease in vigor is gradual with inbreeding - because the IC changes slowly with inbreeding, but rapidly with outcrossing, I presume. But because the decrease in vigor is slow, you may be able to compensate for it by sellection and rigorus culling.

Thanks for the overview Army Doc. I think there is no doubt you cannot linebreed for ever, and must outcross at some point for vigor, longevity, fertility, etc. But even if an individual is the picture of health, I tend to think of it as those negative genes are still lying hidden but not necessarily all gone ?? And would therefore be more easily expressed when you must go back to an outcross ? My thinking is that random mating increases vigor, etc. by a random mixing of the genes, making it a crapshoot, but linebreeding minimizes the crapshoot of genetic material. If I wanted to produce seedstock I would be looking at linebreeding to set the best traits to dominate and if I was producing simply for meat and the market I would want that f1 outcross for the vigor. Is that all wet ?

Melissa

 

[Rangenerd]

Why did I expect the people to be for this type of breeding to be from West Virginia or Arkansas? ;-)

 

[usernametaken]

Why did I expect the people to be for this type of breeding to be from West Virginia or Arkansas? ;-)

cute :roll:

 

[M.Sarria]

OK :?: What is F1 what dose it meen :?:

 

[ArmyDoc]

Thanks for the overview Army Doc. I think there is no doubt you cannot linebreed for ever, and must outcross at some point for vigor, longevity, fertility, etc. But even if an individual is the picture of health, I tend to think of it as those negative genes are still lying hidden but not necessarily all gone ?? And would therefore be more easily expressed when you must go back to an outcross ? My thinking is that random mating increases vigor, etc. by a random mixing of the genes, making it a crapshoot, but linebreeding minimizes the crapshoot of genetic material. If I wanted to produce seedstock I would be looking at linebreeding to set the best traits to dominate and if I was producing simply for meat and the market I would want that f1 outcross for the vigor. Is that all wet ?

Melissa

I think you've got it right. Linebreeding is generally used for purbreds, sellecting for specific traits, to produce cattle to be used as seed stock. Then if you the cross to an unrelated purebred, you will increased size / meat production due to hybred vigor. As I understand it this was the original concept for seed stock vs cow-calf producers.

What I don't know is if the F1 crossess will be as reliable in producing the marbleing and tenderness that the purebreds have been bred for.

Also, I don't know if this is true, but I've read that more recently the concept of outcrossing and getting increased hybred vigor has become common with even the seed stock producers. Apparently now the seed stock producers are often out-crossing with in their breed to get a little of the at hybrid vigor to improve their numbers. The problem with this is that these "pure" lines with their reproducible traits have become "mongrelized" and aren't as reproducible as they once were. The other problem is that effectively they are steeling some of the bounce from the cow-calf producers. There is still an increase from crossing to an unrelated breed, but not as much as there might have been.

But all of this is just hear-say for me - I can understand the theory, but I don't have the years of experience needed to tell how well theory translates into reality.

Oh, and an F1 animal is the result of a cross between two different breeds. So an angus x hereford would result in a calf called an F1 cross.

 

[greenwillowhereford II]

That's why it is important to understand that the Line-bred cattle may not have the most impressive numbers, but they are saving the genetic jump for the customer. It seems everyone gets so focused on weaning heavier and heavier calves to the exclusion of many other important traits. Let's face it, if we are going to keep the frame scores reasonable, there is at least something of a limit to weaning weights, and certainly to yearling weights. I am content with my heifers weaning in the five to low six hundred pound range, and bulls in the high fives to seven. I'm satisfied with a 750-900 pound yearling weight for heifers, and our bulls hit about 1,100 at a year with light to moderate pushing. I'm confident that we could achieve 1,200-1,300 by pouring the feed to them, but I don't think they'd be as good in the long run. It is more important to realize how much it cost you to get them there than how big you can get them.

 

[m&kCattle]

F1 = first generation cross between 2 breeds

 

[grand chaser09]

Hello every one I no most of you are very experience in breeding cattle and I bet seen it all and may have even made your mistake along the way so I am looking for your most honest thought on this. I was just couriers on your thoughts on breeding your bull back to his mom and half sister. I no the obvious like why would you what to do that when there are so many bull out there, I just was wondering if that would just be a big mistake and a waist of time??.

ive noticed line breeding leads to more behavior problems.

 

[KMacGinley]

Yes, I guess it would if you bred knothead to knothead.

Ohldes have linebred cattle and they are some of the easiest to work with that I have seen.

 

[Nesikep]

in our cattle, with the sire of a calf being the same as the grandsire, we've noticed they're a little wilder too, then again, they were also Salers which are well known for that... The calves were wilder when they were young, but it doesn't mean they were unable to become docile pets... once they found out I carried apples with me, they were pretty good... Also, I noticed (again, 3/4 Saler crosses) that the frame scores went up by 2-3 points, if i'm using this frame calulator right.. Mother was about a 5.5, daughter was a 9 (extreme case), as far as the growth of the calf, they all grew well, as for the meat quality, marbling, etc, i don't know..

 

[RD-Sam]

Search line breeding on the forum and you'll find lost of posts and opinions about the subject.

The opinions here range from it being good to it being incest...

Personally, I don't do it.

Then let me ask you too. How can you get a line in this method of breeding? Are you trying to get a cow from a line? Why not just go back to the bull and cow that produced the cow you are trying to replicate? Even with embryo extraction, I don't see how you can produce a line trying to replicate this way.

No way can anyone call this line breeding. There is no line and a line cannot be produced in this fashion.

What they want to do is about as linebred as it gets, and a line will be produced. The line that will be produced is based on the mother, so if she is not an exceptional cow in every way, don't do it! You will also find most of the problems in the line by doing so. I like linebreeding, but that is too close for my tastes.

 

[RD-Sam]

Don't do it. There's nothing to gain.

you might want to try to learn a little about something before you show the world how little you understand something.

Matt,

Do you know where more information is available on line breeding? I am interested in something more practical and in more detail than "The Basis of Linebreeding"

I can tell you from experience in line breeding dogs, you better know all you can know about the animals you are line breeding on, you can get in a heap of trouble if there are problems there that you are not aware of. Say for instance your cow from a line has a problem, and the line that the bull comes from has the same problem, you could easily double up on the problem in the breeding and set the trait. Information is your friend in line breeding, the more the better!

 

[RD-Sam]

I bred a sire/daughter litter once in dogs by accident. I was quite worried about it and spoke to my vet at length.

According to my Vet most likely the pups would be ok. Here's where it gets a little weird. According to the vet it is the NEXT generation I needed to worry about. Something about after concentrating all those genes, if I then bred to an outcross it was very likely to bring out the defective genes.
Sold the litter on a spay/neuter only basis. They have been very nice dogs.

ARMY DOC I would be interested in your opinion about the vet's advice. I know some do not agree with what he told me, but I have a lot of faith in him, so followed his advice.

Interesting part was the sire was already extremely linebred. That old breeder he came from crossed 1/2 brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents from the 1960's forward. What I think he did was literally clean the line out. This sire has never thrown a pup with a genetic defect. He is extremely predictable in the traits that he throws and he dominates in an outcross. There is certainly value in that, as long as he is a good one, which he is.

One of the big decisions I think when you linebreed is are you willing to cull what doesn't come out so well ?

Melissa

The vet may have not been too far off base, that breeding could have produced carriers of problems, then when outcrossed you may have outcrossed to another carrier, but that could have just as easily happened if you kept linebreeding. The only way to know those things for sure is DNA testing for a disorder, or a test breeding.

 

[BAGTIC]

Manny:

Given the fact you have shorthorns, they may be carriers of the gene that produces this birth defect in Shorthorn cattle:

Tibial hemimelia

By breeding back a shorthorn bull to his mommy, you might end up in real trouble, (I believe I had this problem a couple years ago because of inbreeding).

Do a search on this genetic disease, and you will understand. BTW, check your private messages...

If you have cattle that are 'carriers' back breeding may produce defective progeny. That is good news. Once you learn your broodstock is 'defective; and can cull them. If you never find out those same carriers will go on passing the defects to generation after generation of descendants. Now days that can sometimes be avoided by utilizing DNA tests but tests are not available for all traits. Back breeding is THE long established method by which almost all breeds of domesticated animals and plants were developed.