In-breeding Risk same grandfather & great great grandfather

[Farminlund]

I haven't been on this board for sometime but when there's something I need to understand - this is the place you can usually get an answer! Thanks in advance for any inputs.

I have always bred using the rule of thumb of 3 generations back on both sides of the pedigree for the same sire/dam, however, I mistakenly bred a cow who's sire is Mytty in Focus to 44 Main St 7049 who has Mytty 3 generations back (ie great grandfather). So the resultant calf would have the same grandfather (on the dam side) & great great grandfather (on the sire side). I know there are means to determine the risk level involved with such breeding's but I'm not sure how to figure it out. Should I abort the calf if the ma is settled or let her have the calf or can anyone tell me how to determine the risk %?

I once had a calf (when using a bull) that had the same grandfather on both sides (father of dam & sire) & I had to but it down, as it was missing the A-hole - but that's pretty much a known high risk situation, I surely don't want that to happen again!

 

[Ebenezer]

Until recently (few decades) nobody got excited over such. I'd leave the cow alone and move on to worry about something else.

 

[kdpihf]

If you like the bull why would you not want to concentrate his genetics? Go to angus.org and look at these pedigrees, from one of the great Angus breeders, and whose breeding made for much of the foundation of Conneally:

Jotham Eric of Craigie
Jols Eric of Craigie
Planter of Craigie
Black Lode of Craigie
Black Chang of Craigie
Alezus of Craigie
Alexegi of Craigie

We have nice daughters of Jols Eric, Jotham Eric, Alezus and Alexegi. We have a daughter of Jotham Eric out of a Jols Eric (Ken Clark's favorite cow was the dam of both Jotham and Jols, and up close in Jotham's pedigree again). In the last week had a calf sired by an Alexegi son out of an Alezus daughter and another born two days ago sired by the same Alexegi son out of an Alexegi daughter, so a paternal half sib mating. So far all very good cows. Count and see how many times Prince Paul of Barnoldby shows up pretty close in those pedigrees. Embryos out of Black Lode x Jols Eric hopefully inserted in a few weeks. Good genetics can and should be concentrated.

 

[Davemk]

I haven't been on this board for sometime but when there's something I need to understand - this is the place you can usually get an answer! Thanks in advance for any inputs.

I have always bred using the rule of thumb of 3 generations back on both sides of the pedigree for the same sire/dam, however, I mistakenly bred a cow who's sire is Mytty in Focus to 44 Main St 7049 who has Mytty 3 generations back (ie great grandfather). So the resultant calf would have the same grandfather (on the dam side) & great great grandfather (on the sire side). I know there are means to determine the risk level involved with such breeding's but I'm not sure how to figure it out. Should I abort the calf if the ma is settled or let her have the calf or can anyone tell me how to determine the risk %?

I once had a calf (when using a bull) that had the same grandfather on both sides (father of dam & sire) & I had to but it down, as it was missing the A-hole - but that's pretty much a known high risk situation, I surely don't want that to happen again!

No way I would Abort that calf.

 

[WinterSpringsFarm]

double bred......let it roll. Sometimes it works and other times it doesn't. I have some double bred Dream On simmy cattle in my herd and they are just fine.

 

[Redgully]

Some people go out their way to this exact thing in their herds, i wouldn't be too worried.

 

[Farminlund]

kdpihf - I did look up some of the sires you suggested & there are certainly up-close breeding duplicates. I also was able to calculate the inbreeding coefficient - it is 3.13%, so not so much risk! Thank you all for your inputs - they were all in favor of doing nothing & that's what I'm going to do. It's the easy path, but now I take it with little concern or worry (thanks to your inputs). As I stated, my half sibling breeding did not work out well - this one surely looks much better!

 

[kdpihf]

Black Lode, Black Chang and Planter all have as their great grandsires sons of Prince Paul of Barnoldby. According to the AA website the inbreeding coefficient for Black Chang is 20.56%, Jotham Eric 17.38%, Planter 13.38% and Black Lode 13%. Don't forget those are average numbers and the real numbers can vary widely, and can certainly be affected by selection based on phenotype.

As noted before just had a heifer hit the ground last week out of paternal half sibs (both sired by Alexegi of Craigie). Another heifer on the ground a few weeks ago out of the same Alexegi sired bull and an Alezus sired cow, Alezus was the sire of Alexegi so also a close mating. And the cows are also linebred on the bottom side to the same or similar genetics.

Good genetics should be linebred if you are producing breeding stock. If you are selling by the pound then outcross away. If you want to maximize your individual animal's performance heterosis is your friend, if you want to deliver predictability with maximum performance to your customers then linebreed.

Candolier Forever 376 was a sire daughter mating 7501542, EXT had Emulation 31 up close 2x, plenty of other examples around.

edit to add maybe one of the best examples other than the Craigie line is Tim Ohlde and his use of F0203

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

I do not consider your case to be very "close" line-breeding. You only need to worry if there are genetic defects in the lineage.

 

[libertygarden]

I don't want to hi-jack this thread but since it has been inactive for almost a year and my question is related, I figured to post it here instead of opening a new thread.

So, is breeding a heifer back to its grandpa a big deal?

Conditions:
Grandpa Bull had Bull calf that bread with a cow from a different herd and had a heifer that bread back to Grandpa Bull. What degree of inbreeding is this and is it a big deal?

By my math we're talking of 1/4 inline breeding?

Thank you.

 

[FungusProudKY31]

No. Not a big deal. I did not look it up but more like 12.5% IBC between the stated parents.

 

[wbvs58]

Almost far enough distant to get a bit of heterosis.

Ken

 

[76 Bar]

The old adages about inbreeding/line breeding come to mind including if you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen.

 

[libertygarden]

Thanks for the responses.

 

[BFE]

Bought a small herd last year that had a couple heifers who were bred back to their sire (Dream On son). both had nice bull calves. Same this year. If it ain't broke don't fix it!

 

[Banjo]

As far as spreading genetics or desired characteristics.....what about keeping 2 or 3 your best bull calves from your best cows and breeding the herd with them. Say with 3 bulls you would be spreading the qualities of your 3 best cows to the next calf crop and then selecting replacement heifers from that group. And if you kept any heifers along with the bulls they would be breeding their half sisters and a 1 in 3 chance of breeding their mother. If you kept the bulls a 2nd year along with more heifers then they would be breeding their daughters along with half sisters or just sell the bulls and keep new bull calves every year and you would only have the first scenerio.....what think?

 

[Nick Wagner]

As far as spreading genetics or desired characteristics.....what about keeping 2 or 3 your best bull calves from your best cows and breeding the herd with them. Say with 3 bulls you would be spreading the qualities of your 3 best cows to the next calf crop and then selecting replacement heifers from that group. And if you kept any heifers along with the bulls they would be breeding their half sisters and a 1 in 3 chance of breeding their mother. If you kept the bulls a 2nd year along with more heifers then they would be breeding their daughters along with half sisters or just sell the bulls and keep new bull calves every year and you would only have the first scenerio.....what think?

The nut that runs his cows on my place has been doing that for about eight years now, keeping a couple of his own bull calves to use every year. If you have any hidden genetic flaws or defects, they will emerge, but the calves here hit the ground running and grow like weeds. Biggest problem I've seen was a cow had a huge 140 lb calf that was dead by the time we got it pulled out, her son was one of the bulls who had been used the previous year so both went to town. I got tired of importing problems, and the calves seem to get better every year.

 

[Banjo]

I'm not real happy with buying these high priced bulls every 2 or 3 years....the heifers i am keeping out of them are not making great cows maybe 20 or 30 % raise nice calves but too many are just very mediocre.

 

[Nick Wagner]

The last bull I bought was a mature bull with his second calf crop on the ground, nice looking calves too. I brought him home and he developed corns between his front hooves, had the vet come out and remove them, next summer same thing happened so he went to town. I believe we kept six heifers out of him in two years, one died a couple months before she was due to calve, four of them died two years later. I'd check cows and see nothing wrong, a couple hours later there would be a dead cow in the field, once a month or so through the summer. Glad he didn't stick around longer.

By keeping my own bulls, I don't have to worry about things like curly calf syndrome, or fawn calf syndrome, or the next syndrome waiting to be announced, I know it's not in my herd. I've also been told my calves look like peas in a pod, that isn't true yet but we're getting there. For some reason I noticed this summer the heifers look great, while the bull calves are just average looking. In the last few weeks though, some of the bull calves are starting to shine.

One last thought. I sold a few steer calves a year ago to a 4-H club, I was told one of them was the rate of gain winner at their fair this summer. Seems being inbred didn't slow them down too much.

 

[Lucky_P]

"By keeping my own bulls, I don't have to worry about things like curly calf syndrome, or fawn calf syndrome, or the next syndrome waiting to be announced, I know it's not in my herd."

No, that's not necessarily true. Genetic mutations occur in all herds; just because you raised a bull known not to have the defects we currently know about, doesn't mean a new one can't arise in your own herd.

Some years back, we bought a yearling reg. Angus bull, free from all known (at the time) defects. Used him for two years, then started doing AI. He was a well-behaved bull, with decent calving ease, daughters were really nice, steers were OK, so we kept and used him as a cleanup bull behind AI. for the next 6 years.
Little did we know, but he was the 'founder' for the genetic recessive Sodium Channel Neuropathy defect... a mutation that occurred in him, which he passed on to half of his offspring.
So... when he eventually ended up breeding an occasional granddaughter or daughter that didn't stick to AI... an occasional defective calf would result. They were few and far between, early on, but after the first 3 or 4, we became suspicious that there was a recessive defect at play.
We shipped him when it became evident that that he was the source... but this was before AAA and Dr. Beever (then at UofIL) had been able to characterize the genetic defect and identify the defective gene. We bled every cow/heifer in the herd, and only those that went back to that Angus bull carried the defective SCN gene; I've forgotten what the 'carrier' rate was over the entire herd, but it was pretty high.
We'd kept a nice calving-ease SimAngus son, out of a top daughter of the Angus bull to use on heifers, and as a post-AI cleanup bull. Used him one season. Had defective calves out of daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters of the Angus bull - the young SimAngus bull had inherited the SCN defect from his dam, who'd also been a carrier - but we didn't know that at the time we'd selected him for use.

Since ours was a commercial herd producing mostly crossbred stock, SCN carriers sold off the farm (and their offspring) probably will never have the 'opportunity' to be crossed back to another SCN carrier, so for all intents and purposes, the SCN defect is relegated to the dustbin of history.