Bull prospect

[Mark Reynolds]

honey bee improvement programs overview

Here is an article about honey bee breeding if you are interested. There are extreme differences in them as a species compared to common livestock species. I would not consider them a solid parallel study concerning linebreeding because of those differences. However, linebreeding is a form of breeding used in bee improvement programs but with limits. What was interesting is the development of 4 way crossed queens.

The first two steps recommended was quite useful:
1- describe the desired stock
2- measure superior breeding stock

Talking about honey bees and genetics. A couple weeks ago I was doing some checking on reed canary grass and varieties of RCG and ended up checking on honey bee varieties. I forget what led me there. Anyway, RCG can bee extremely invasive and undesirable or o very high quality forage that does not readily expand beyond the bounds of where its been planted......all the same species. In the process of checking on the honey bee, I found that the European honey bee that we all know and get our honey bee is the same species as the Africanized bee or "killer bee" that we all hear about (and some of us have probably had encounters with). Genetics is interesting and one tiny change can alter the entire species into something unrecognizable.

 

[Ebenezer]

Talking about honey bees and genetics. A couple weeks ago I was doing some checking on reed canary grass and varieties of RCG and ended up checking on honey bee varieties. I forget what led me there. Anyway, RCG can bee extremely invasive and undesirable or o very high quality forage that does not readily expand beyond the bounds of where its been planted......all the same species. In the process of checking on the honey bee, I found that the European honey bee that we all know and get our honey bee is the same species as the Africanized bee or "killer bee" that we all hear about (and some of us have probably had encounters with). Genetics is interesting and one tiny change can alter the entire species into something unrecognizable.

What is also interesting about the history of the Africanized bees that seemed to be a terror in the southwestern US and then disappeared from the news - A. I Root imported bees from Africa into south Georgia in the 1930's (from memory). A lot of our wild bees here in SC used to be dark (we called them black), slightly smaller and tough to work. But they made honey hand over fist beyond the tamer types. You just knew that they were going to be a challenge but they were worth it in production levels.

 

[cowgirl8]

I had a hive i called Assholes. They were mean. I had them for about 5 years and snowmaggeden killed them. They made the best honey.... I'm down to one hive and i need to go check on them. Got them as a swarm a few months ago.

 

[Mark Reynolds]

Controlled knowledgeable line breeding has been successful in many cases. Many breeds do not have a genetic defect major problem. A new genetic defect can show up anytime. Linebreeding is the fastest way to FIND it!! LOL
We (Simmental) just discovered a GD called Hydrops. ASA has ID'd the defect and what bull it seems to have started with and reported to membership what bull it is. Notified all membership - looking for any other cases to study. Already held an open Zoom meeting for all membership to discuss it.
All animals can develop a NEW GD. It's up to breed associations and breeders to discover them, openly announce it to the public, and work to eradicate it. Not hide it.

LOL. You are right about how to 'find' the 'defect' by line breeding. Unfortunately, due to the nature of these genteic defects being recessive makes it extremely difficult to track down all the carriers in a very small population and very shortly after the defective gene has been created. What happens is that the defect isn't caught until years/generations after it has been created resulting in descendants from the original animal having been scattered to the 4 winds with no hope of finding them all.

I'm also going to play devil's advocate here. What happens when a gene that has been discovered that causes certain defects also happens to create desired effects? Do we still try to eradicate it when someone else wants to promote it?

2 cases in point that I can think of. One being double muscling that got pointed out as a defect to get rid of earlier. I've seen this characteristic promoted as well. This is a single characteristic that opinions differ on.
The 2nd instance isn't in cattle or even livestock, but it's in people (there could be an instance in livestock that parallels this just as easily). I'm talking about the gene that codes for cycle cell anemia. Ending up with a pair of these genes means a lifelong difficulty with a host of medical conditions. However, when a person is a carrier of only 1 copy of this gene, his/her resistance to malaria is increased many times over and the liklihood of catching malaria and it resulting in death is drastically reduced, which is why this gene/condition is relatively common. Elimination of the gene would eliminate medical conditions. It would also make individuals much more likely to suffer medical mishaps from catching malaria. (I know, malaria is now readily prevented and treatable, but when the cycle cell gene developed hundreds or thousands of years ago, malaria was a problem)

 

[Allenw]

Honeybees may have been improved but they haven't bred queens that mate with their own sons.

Well duh, queen bees only take one mating flight in their life there for it is impossible to mate with their sons who haven't been hatched.

 

[Travlr]

I know some of you guys buy your cows at sale barns. Do you asked how they are bred?

I bought lots of late term cows from sale barns. I'd buy old culls, trying to know where they came from, and I used them to raise commercial replacement heifers. A lot of the people I'd buy cows from, sale barn or private, would buy the replacement heifers.

It's a crap shoot buying at a sale barn... but that's part of the fun. People with a good eye do well and the rest complain... but no one gets out without getting skinned occasionally.

 

[alacowman1]

I bought lots of late term cows from sale barns. I'd buy old culls, trying to know where they came from, and I used them to raise commercial replacement heifers. A lot of the people I'd buy cows from, sale barn or private, would buy the replacement heifers.

It's a crap shoot buying at a sale barn... but that's part of the fun. People with a good eye do well and the rest complain... but no one gets out without getting skinned occasionally.

A lot of those guys don't go in there half cocked either..they know they stockyard owner, and where the cows came from..they did their homework before hand..

 

[cowgirl8]

A lot of those guys don't go in there half cocked either..they know they stockyard owner, and where the cows came from..they did their homework before hand..

So who is losing money on a bred cow so that you can pick it up and make money that first year? I know when we sell a cow, there's something wrong. And if she's heavy bred, even more. Aint no one going to stay in business if their business is selling a heavy bred cow regularly.

 

[Travlr]

I don't think anyone has mentioned spontaneous mutation. All animals carry mutations and potential mutations. Sometimes it only takes a single allele, not two, to have a problem.

From google: In cattle, there is an allele called dwarf which, in the heterozygote, produces calves with legs which are shorter than normal. This, again, is a homozygous lethal (the homozygous dwarf calves spontaneously abort early or a stillborn).

If I remember correctly, cattle have something like 60 chromosomes, 22k genes, and each chromosome has dozens of thousands of alleles. Humans only have 23 chromosome pairs and the total possible combination of alleles for those genes in humans is approximately 70,368,744,177,664.

Different proteins trigger or mask different combinations of base pairs.

Somehow Mother Nature has been successful by weeding out the methods of selection that don't work well. She's only been doing it for a billion years or so, so she still makes mistakes. Humans have learned more quickly, but I doubt we understand everything that's developed in genetic selection and why it works or doesn't since DNA was first discovered or Mendel grew his first peas.

But it's surprising how much we have learned...

 

[wbvs58]

LOL. You are right about how to 'find' the 'defect' by line breeding. Unfortunately, due to the nature of these genteic defects being recessive makes it extremely difficult to track down all the carriers in a very small population and very shortly after the defective gene has been created. What happens is that the defect isn't caught until years/generations after it has been created resulting in descendants from the original animal having been scattered to the 4 winds with no hope of finding them all.

I'm also going to play devil's advocate here. What happens when a gene that has been discovered that causes certain defects also happens to create desired effects? Do we still try to eradicate it when someone else wants to promote it?

2 cases in point that I can think of. One being double muscling that got pointed out as a defect to get rid of earlier. I've seen this characteristic promoted as well. This is a single characteristic that opinions differ on.
The 2nd instance isn't in cattle or even livestock, but it's in people (there could be an instance in livestock that parallels this just as easily). I'm talking about the gene that codes for cycle cell anemia. Ending up with a pair of these genes means a lifelong difficulty with a host of medical conditions. However, when a person is a carrier of only 1 copy of this gene, his/her resistance to malaria is increased many times over and the liklihood of catching malaria and it resulting in death is drastically reduced, which is why this gene/condition is relatively common. Elimination of the gene would eliminate medical conditions. It would also make individuals much more likely to suffer medical mishaps from catching malaria. (I know, malaria is now readily prevented and treatable, but when the cycle cell gene developed hundreds or thousands of years ago, malaria was a problem)

survival of the fittest. If it helped with malaria then it was selected for inadvertantly. I think a lot of traits we select for are probably a recessive gene.

Ken

Ken

 

[cowgirl8]

I don't think anyone has mentioned spontaneous mutation. All animals carry mutations and potential mutations. Sometimes it only takes a single allele, not two, to have a problem.

From google: In cattle, there is an allele called dwarf which, in the heterozygote, produces calves with legs which are shorter than normal. This, again, is a homozygous lethal (the homozygous dwarf calves spontaneously abort early or a stillborn).

If I remember correctly, cattle have something like 60 chromosomes, 22k genes, and each chromosome has dozens of thousands of alleles. Humans only have 23 chromosome pairs and the total possible combination of alleles for those genes in humans is approximately 70,368,744,177,664.

Different proteins trigger or mask different combinations of base pairs.

Somehow Mother Nature has been successful by weeding out the methods of selection that don't work well. She's only been doing it for a billion years or so, so she still makes mistakes. Humans have learned more quickly, but I doubt we understand everything that's developed in genetic selection and why it works or doesn't since DNA was first discovered or Mendel grew his first peas.

But it's surprising how much we have learned...

When we ran reg angus bulls, we got a dwarf.. Gave it to a friend who just wanted a cow, but not a real cow. She got in with a bull and actually had a normal calf.. We also got a 2 headed calf, a curly leg calf, several of those.... Quit buying angus bulls and all that stopped. The last defect was the hairless calf. And it was out of a full angus we had, cant remember why we had a full angus cow, one of the kids must have shown it, (that was 2011, at the end of our reg angus buys, and started keeping our own bulls) That was my first post in this forum asking for first hand knowledge.. all i got though was googled knowledge that had already learned.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Ebenezer




Here is an article about honey bee breeding if you are interested. There are extreme differences in them as a species compared to common livestock species. I would not consider them a solid parallel study concerning linebreeding because of those differences. However, linebreeding is a form of breeding used in bee improvement programs but with limits. What was interesting is the development of 4 way crossed queens.

Whatever expensive fancy bloodline honeybee queen, in nature she is quickly outcrossed for heterozygosity in the real world. A honeybee worker generation is every is 6 weeks. A hive swarms once or twice a year and old mated queen leaves and is replaced by a daughter that flies out and breeds with the local mutts. A queen lives for a year or two. I am talking about real world nature here.

A lot of commercial cattle breeders here raise terminal cross calves to sell, so what does it matter the expensive 'ahshemala' genetics? You use waht works. My husband bought $3000 or $4000 young beefmaster bulls at breed sales by their phenotype, not their genotype, and did pretty well selling the calves. He also looked at bulls for sale on other ranches and could see the quality of the general cattle. Of course, being a purebred breeder himaself he knew ranchers sell the top 10%, so he would look at the general herd.​

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

One of our neighbors bought a $25,000 Beefmaster bull. Right away he got kicked or something and lost a nut. He could breed a few cows but not anywhere near 40 a year. He kept him in a pen next to his house. Everybody that drove by knew about it.

 

[alacowman1]

One of our neighbors bought a $25,000 Beefmaster bull. Right away he got kicked or something and lost a nut. He could breed a few cows but not anywhere near 40 a year. He kept him in a pen next to his house. Everybody that drove by knew about it.

His luck is similar too mine, only mine would have lost both..

 

[Mark Reynolds]

survival of the fittest. If it helped with malaria then it was selected for inadvertantly. I think a lot of traits we select for are probably a recessive gene.

Ken

Ken

Completely agree, and the cycle cell gene was selected for (and against) by natural selection, so it might not have been the best example. But, what if there were an 'equivalent' trait that existed in livestock that we, as producers, could select for or against? (Devil's advocate again)

 

[Nesikep]

I'm no expert in breeding cattle, and my sample size is small, but I don't regret doing some linebreeding. I found I just never had good animals from a mating that resulted in more than 50% influence from any parent/grandparent.. breeding siblings/cousins, etc has made me a lot of great, productive cows though

Just like any breeding program, cull what isn't working for you and your environment.

 

[Davemk]

I'm no expert in breeding cattle, and my sample size is small, but I don't regret doing some linebreeding. I found I just never had good animals from a mating that resulted in more than 50% influence from any parent/grandparent.. breeding siblings/cousins, etc has made me a lot of great, productive cows though

Just like any breeding program, cull what isn't working for you and your environment.

View attachment 31238

Nice. How old in that picture?

 

[Nesikep]

Nice. How old in that picture?

just shy of 6 months, Born Dec 2nd, pic May 25th

 

[kenny thomas]

A lot of those guys don't go in there half cocked either..they know they stockyard owner, and where the cows came from..they did their homework before hand..

Darn cow traders. Hahaha

 

[Ebenezer]

"Whatever expensive fancy bloodline honeybee queen, in nature she is quickly outcrossed for heterozygosity in the real world."
In the real world, commercial bee keepers work their hives to prevent swarming. Like the fallacy of comparing wild populations to managed populations AGAIN, the selected, purchased queen is replaced with another selected, purchased queen in about 2 years. They come already inseminated. I do not see a point to keep showing you that wild bees are not a comparative to managed herds and flocks. I just do not buy that poor and detached strawman argument.

"...bought $3000 or $4000 young beefmaster bulls at breed sales by their phenotype, not their genotype, and did pretty well selling the calves." Any smart buyer looks at phenotype whether the genotype is available or not. But ignoring known genotype can be like the posts of buying Angus bulls which probably looked good but sired dwarfs, curly calves and such. Most folks who buy a car or truck look inside the car and know what is under the hood.