Genetics question

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BIZIN

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Need some help with crossbreeding more so than genetics. I read somewhere that to get a crossbred breed to consistantly cross back with the same results you need an animal that is 1/4 Breed #1, 1/4 Breed #2, 1/4 Breed #3, 1/4 Breed #4. Is this true? What if you go to 1/4 Breed #1, 1/4 Breed #2, 1/4 Breed 3#, 1/8 Breed #4, 1/8 Breed #5? I want to know what is the best combination for a crossbred animal to breed back in itself with consistant results. Not have different characteristics from each breed carry through each time. Haha hopefully that made any sense.
 
I want to know what is the best combination for a crossbred animal to breed back in itself with consistant results

I'm confused. Why are you reinventing the wheel? It seems to me that you're trying to produce a purebred animal? They're already available in all shapes, sizes and several colors.
 
Leachman says it best:

Why breed Composites?
1) Hybrid vigour increases productivity by up to 25% through the increase of kilograms weaned per cow exposed.
2) Hybrid vigour can be retained indefinitely at a constant level with Composites, providing you avoid inbreeding, i.e. a four breed Composite with one quarter of each breed retains 75% of your F1 hybrid vigour.
3) Breed differences are 100% heritable when widely and properly sampled. No one breed excels in all traits important to beef production, so complimentarity must be utilised to produce cattle above average for all economically important traits.
4) Hybrid or Composite populations are no more variable than purebred populations.
 
Leachman says it best:

Why breed Composites?
1) Hybrid vigour increases productivity by up to 25% through the increase of kilograms weaned per cow exposed.
2) Hybrid vigour can be retained indefinitely at a constant level with Composites, providing you avoid inbreeding, i.e. a four breed Composite with one quarter of each breed retains 75% of your F1 hybrid vigour.
3) Breed differences are 100% heritable when widely and properly sampled. No one breed excels in all traits important to beef production, so complimentarity must be utilised to produce cattle above average for all economically important traits.
4) Hybrid or Composite populations are no more variable than purebred populations

Why not call and talk with Leachmans if they know best?
 
Don't know what you are asking or trying to prove.
A purebred animal of breed A bred to a purebred animal of breed B - gives you the BEST hybred vigor. The only thing better is to breed a PB Continental to a PB British. That is the ultimate "bang for the bucks".
You can go to any university research. It has been proven over & over.
 
Not trying to prove anything. Actually all the information I have read from Universities and from Leachmen states that a 4 way cross is the most bang for your buck, and it increases even more as you move towards and 8 way cross as long as there isnt inbreeding. I am just asking if anyone has tried their own composite and if a 5 way cross works fine.
 
Methinks you would hit a point of diminishing returns after a 3 way cross and once you hit 8 way you would have the mutt that the industry has been trying to get away from. Unless you want to start calling them "designer cows" (like the dogs) then you could get people to pay top dollar for them. JMHO.
 
BIZIN":175wk85h said:
EATBEEF...I'd love to talk to Lee Leachman, but I'm pretty sure he is a busy man

Maybe,but I don't think he is to busy to sell something or talk about his ideas.
 
I think a three way cross for terminial calves is about as confussing as possible for the average small cattle breeder, ie. 50 head or so...Although gerts, which are a 3 way comp., crossed with a Balancer would produce good calves..They would be a 5 way cross , at least in theroy...
 
Bizzin - I sure would like to see something from a university that indicated "that a 4 way cross is the most bang for your buck, and it increases even more as you move towards and 8 way cross as long as there isnt inbreeding".
 
Let me see if I can explain it:
Your greatest hybrid vigor comes from crossing two completely unrelated animals "a" an "b". The closest you can come to this is two unrelated purebreds - say a continental and a british breed. Essentially, what you are doing is undoing the inbreeding that occured to develope the breeds. You get 50/50 with neither half matching the other.

But what about the next generation? If you breed back to either of the two original breeds, you get an animal that is 75% one breed and 25% the other - much less hybred vigor than 50/50.

You can still get some hybred viggor by choosing a third breed "c", that is unrelated to the first two - say a bos indicus breed like brahman. This gives you 50/25/25. Each "portion" unrelated to the other, maintaining the highest level of hybrid vigor.

But what about the next generation? If you breed back to any of the first 3 breeds, you don't maintain as much hybred vigor. If you go back to "a" or "b", you get 62.5/25/12.5. If you stick with "c" you're even worse off, with 75/12.5/12.5

Ideally, you'd like to get a 4th totally unrelated breed, to end up with 50/25/12.5/12.5. Unfortunately, there isn't any 45h totally unrelated breed. All the cattle fall into one of those three groups - british, continental and bos indicus. Sure, you can pick a different but somewhat related breed, and get some hybred vigor, but most people go back to one of the first two breeds "a" or "b". This is a three breed rotation, and from what I've read maintains the greates hybred vigor in each succeding generation, though still not as much as in that first cross.

Bottom line, the more times you cross breed, the further you get away from a purebred animal. The further away from a purebred animal, the less hybrid vigor you get from crossing to an unrelated animal.
 
I don't thinkold Jimmy Leachman has enough coin left topay his phone bill lol. He was the barnum and bailey of the bull business for alot of years. I saw him in action many times lol.
 
redcowsrule33":1i0gqp27 said:
Methinks you would hit a point of diminishing returns after a 3 way cross and once you hit 8 way you would have the mutt that the industry has been trying to get away from. Unless you want to start calling them "designer cows" (like the dogs) then you could get people to pay top dollar for them. JMHO.
If memory serves, I do believe you are correct. It's not necessarily that you can't get more hybrid vigor, but the amount of increase, if any, is too little to be worthwhile.

INMHO Unless there is some really good reason for doing it, all this crossing gets unrealistic real fast past two or three breeds at the most.
 
Cause the stabilizer's arent what i am looking for. Here is what I would like to do, and you can critisize all you want, but its worth trying if it works.

A cow that is 1/4 Horned Hereford (hardiness, mothering, easy fleshing ability, docility), 1/4 Welsh Black (adding in the grass fattening ability, easy gaining calves, thickness and depth, good bags and milking ability), 1/4 British White (tick resistance, docility, grass fattening ability, calves ability to gain well on grass) and 1/4 bison (1/8 Plains bison, 1/8 woods bison - ability to convert less feed into more gains, fast gaining calves, hardiness, thick hide, ability to handle extreme cold and extreme heat, foraging ability, to cut inputs).

You can judge all you want, its not your cow herd and it isnt your money.
 
I think you get a mixed up mess, it seems that buyers want uniformity, you are not going to get it...Look at beefmaster, 40 years in the making and every color, shape and size, not for me......
 
Bizin

I have a proposal for you. I need to come see your cattle first but... to me it looks and sounds like you guys have a good honest commercial hereford herd that would go back to registered ancestors. You also said that you have moved cattle into my country without CAN branding them. I would like to know if you could get the straight hereford females bangs vaccinated up there. For them to come into montana they have to have calfhood bangs. I would love to be able to come up into your country and buy straight hereford females with little to no L1 and absolutely no polled influence. Find out if it is any way possible to bangs vaccinate in your country and i'd be at your doorstep.... then maybe you wouldn't have to screw up a hereford "heritage" herd like so many other hereford herds have.
 
'76... I wont be screwin up the hereford herd. They will be here till the day I die, hopefully till my family line runs out. Hereford is in my blood for 4 generations, and I dont plan on doing anything to those hereford cows but improving them. Hereford cows are great for what we need, but I'm sick of paying these feed costs and pasture costs. I want to run bison but dont want the facilities or the hassle of such wild animals running around. I just feel that a touch of bison would do good.

alftn... beefmasters are a rainbow of colors I agree, but I would like to develop a solid black breed that is consistent and uniform. The british white could be taken out of there and replaced. I would love to have an animal that is Horned hereford, welsh black, Irish black, and a touch of bison. That consistently throws black calves that have no bison characteristics when you view them. I also want a breed that has no exotic in it. Black gelbvieh is an option too if I wanted to go that way.

Armydoc... we have been breeding alot of our commercial hereford cows to black angus and welsh black bulls, for years we bred those bbf and bwf cows to black simmental and black gelbvieh bulls and had one hell of a cross. But a few years ago I kept a bull that was half black gelbvieh/half black angus and bred him to a group of half welsh black/half horned hereford cows and got a set of calves that out performed any of the halfblood calves.

This is one of the things I read that intrigued me. See Table 1.
http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/FSA-3057.pdf
 

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