Is this a diluter heifer?

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hcrancher

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My brother owns this heifer from a registered red Angus cow and a registered homozygous black Balancer (Gelbvieh/Angus) bull. Is this heifer considered a diluter color, or just a "wild" color? We are wondering what kind of calf to expect from it if bred to another black Balancer bull. I've read Randi's excellent blog (http://easygenes.blogspot.com), but I'm still not sure what to expect. I've read on the forum boards before that red Angus don't carry the diluter gene, but other places I've read that it's possible?
 
Well, she sure looks like a diluter (grey). Red Angus aren't supposed to carry the dilution gene, but stranger things have happened.

If you bred her to a homo Black bull (regardless of breed) there is a 50/50 chance of either black or grey. If you bred her to a hetero black bull you'd most likely get either a black or grey calf, but could also get a red calf or a tan calf.
 
According to our definition in the Limousin breed if you breed a Homo black to a red or black (that is red or black all the way back in pedigree which should be in the case of the Red Angus) there is a 99.9% chance to get ALL black calves. It has been discussed on here before that if an animal is red that it is Homozygous red because it has both copies of the red gene. However when you breed the red to a Homozygous Black animal the resulting calf should always be black. I guess stranger things have happened. My first guess would be there could be another animal in there somewhere by just looking at the calf. Are all the other calves from this bull and red or black animals coming out black? Just my thoughts....



Circle H Ranch
 
The other calves coming out of this bull are black. There weren't any other bulls around at the time - the only other possibility might be a pasture of steers at a nearby ranch. Perhaps one of them wasn't banded properly?
 
Cattleman200":30zb6ycj said:
According to our definition in the Limousin breed if you breed a Homo black to a red or black (that is red or black all the way back in pedigree which should be in the case of the Red Angus) there is a 99.9% chance to get ALL black calves. It has been discussed on here before that if an animal is red that it is Homozygous red because it has both copies of the red gene. However when you breed the red to a Homozygous Black animal the resulting calf should always be black. I guess stranger things have happened. My first guess would be there could be another animal in there somewhere by just looking at the calf. Are all the other calves from this bull and red or black animals coming out black? Just my thoughts....



Circle H Ranch

I had a Red Gelbvieh heifer that calved to my Angus bull. She threw a calf exactly that color. Her first calf out of a blk GV was red and the second was the diluter color of grey.
All things being equal I would say you have a diluter in the woodpile! I will post a picture if I can find it.
 
This calf definately carries the diluter. Knowing that some Gelbvieh carry the diluter and that Red Angus do not, I would question your bull's homozygous status.

On a side note, its good to see you using a cross bred bull correctly-- on Purebred cows.
 
I would guess that the GV in your balancer has the diluter gene somewhere in their pedigree. I also have a few that color and it is a crap shoot as to what you get, sometimes grey, sometimes red and sometimes they have a blk calf. However grey's sell well in my area actually sometimes a little more than a red or blk calf so it doesn't bother me.

BTW nice looking heifer.
 
The problem is that a BLACK, black animal can't carry the diluter gene, without it showing (grey). A red animal CAN carry the diluter gene, and you might only think that the animal is LIGHT red. Some LIGHT red animals will carry the diluter and some won't. Sometimes they aren't even that terribly light colored. There are several different genes at work, one that makes them a black or red based animal. One that dilutes the base color to tan or grey, and one(or several) that influence exactly what shade of red, black, tan or grey they are. Red can be mahogany down to almost tan for example, or Grey can be from Charcoal down to the lightest ash grey, almost white.

MF, an animal can be homozygous black and also carry the diluter gene. They are 2 separate genes. A grey animal can be homo black, and can be either homo or hetero diluter too.
 
randiliana":330bn6cj said:
The problem is that a BLACK, black animal can't carry the diluter gene, without it showing (grey). A red animal CAN carry the diluter gene, and you might only think that the animal is LIGHT red. Some LIGHT red animals will carry the diluter and some won't. Sometimes they aren't even that terribly light colored. There are several different genes at work, one that makes them a black or red based animal. One that dilutes the base color to tan or grey, and one(or several) that influence exactly what shade of red, black, tan or grey they are. Red can be mahogany down to almost tan for example, or Grey can be from Charcoal down to the lightest ash grey, almost white.

MF, an animal can be homozygous black and also carry the diluter gene. They are 2 separate genes. A grey animal can be homo black, and can be either homo or hetero diluter too.

DAT BE DA WORD :tiphat:

Seriously tho Randi. If the sire is a BLACK ANGUS pure he shouldn't carry the diluter.right?
 
No, a purebred BLACK ANGUS shouldn't carry the diluter gene. If he did, you'd be able to see it anyways (or you should be) because diluter is dominant to non-diluter, and it would make him some shade of grey. I guess if he was a dark enough charcoal it might be hard to tell tho.
 
randiliana":10u65cqd said:
The problem is that a BLACK, black animal can't carry the diluter gene, without it showing (grey). A red animal CAN carry the diluter gene, and you might only think that the animal is LIGHT red. Some LIGHT red animals will carry the diluter and some won't. Sometimes they aren't even that terribly light colored. There are several different genes at work, one that makes them a black or red based animal. One that dilutes the base color to tan or grey, and one(or several) that influence exactly what shade of red, black, tan or grey they are. Red can be mahogany down to almost tan for example, or Grey can be from Charcoal down to the lightest ash grey, almost white.

MF, an animal can be homozygous black and also carry the diluter gene. They are 2 separate genes. A grey animal can be homo black, and can be either homo or hetero diluter too.

So if I buy a bred red and she has a heavy muscled rat tail, :(
then I breed her BA and she has a funnel butt black, ;-)
then she does not carry the dominate diluter gene? :banana:
or do I need to worry about a homo vs. hetro diluter? :dunce:
 
Since the true Gv's were gold or red and then we added blk angus to them to get blk GV's ,wouldn't the diluter gene be buried in their pedigree still ,even if it is many generations removed ?

I wonder if the bull is a true homo blk bull or what people some call a double blk etc .bull .

Steve I have never seen a rat tail grey calf that is a result of GV breeding .
 
hillsdown":14trwpea said:
Since the true Gv's were gold or red and then we added blk angus to them to get blk GV's ,wouldn't the diluter gene be buried in their pedigree still ,even if it is many generations removed ?

I wonder if the bull is a true homo blk bull or what people some call a double blk etc .bull .

Steve I have never seen a rat tail grey calf that is a result of GV breeding .

No, the diluter is dominant. Which means that if the animal has it, it will show up. You are thinking that it would work the same way that the red gene does, but that is not the case.

Regardless of whether the bull is actually homo, or double black or hetero black, he couldn't have passed the diluter gene on. The cow was red, so the fact that she had a grey calf means that she had to have been bred to a BLACK based bull, and the BLACK gene was passed on. If she doesn't carry the diluter gene herself, the only way a RED cow could have a grey calf is if the bull she was bred to was GREY. Unless, it was a mutation.
 
randiliana":13b8wr15 said:
hillsdown":13b8wr15 said:
Since the true Gv's were gold or red and then we added blk angus to them to get blk GV's ,wouldn't the diluter gene be buried in their pedigree still ,even if it is many generations removed ?

I wonder if the bull is a true homo blk bull or what people some call a double blk etc .bull .

Steve I have never seen a rat tail grey calf that is a result of GV breeding .

No, the diluter is dominant. Which means that if the animal has it, it will show up. You are thinking that it would work the same way that the red gene does, but that is not the case.

Regardless of whether the bull is actually homo, or double black or hetero black, he couldn't have passed the diluter gene on. The cow was red, so the fact that she had a grey calf means that she had to have been bred to a BLACK based bull, and the BLACK gene was passed on. If she doesn't carry the diluter gene herself, the only way a RED cow could have a grey calf is if the bull she was bred to was GREY. Unless, it was a mutation.

That's what I said happened with my red cow. But since she was a GV I assumed that she carried the diluter.
 
I think I am more confused than when this thread first started . :lol:

It might be worth doing a DNA test to see exactly where that gene comes from. :?
 
randiliana":359sd7et said:
No, the diluter is dominant. Which means that if the animal has it, it will show up. You are thinking that it would work the same way that the red gene does, but that is not the case.

So, if you get a "black calf" the diluter will show, but if you bred red you will not know...
 
Not really, Steve. The diluter should show whether it is black or red. But it can be harder to tell with a red animal. The difference between light red and tan is pretty hard to differentiate a lot of the time.
 
MF, an animal can be homozygous black and also carry the diluter gene. They are 2 separate genes.

Randi, Are you saying that any tested Homozygous Black animal can carry the diluter gene? I just find that hard to believe and if true why would breeders have paid to test thousands of animals for Homo Black if it doesnt really mean anything? I have always been told if you breed a Homo black to a Homo black the resulting calf will always be Homo Black. I have also sold hundreds of bulls based on that theory and never once has anyone called and complained otherwise. Do you have a link or somewhere I could look at a study on this? Thanks....



Circle H Ranch
 
Cattleman200":a2d4zvci said:
MF, an animal can be homozygous black and also carry the diluter gene. They are 2 separate genes.

Randi, Are you saying that any tested Homozygous Black animal can carry the diluter gene? I just find that hard to believe and if true why would breeders have paid to test thousands of animals for Homo Black if it doesnt really mean anything? I have always been told if you breed a Homo black to a Homo black the resulting calf will always be Homo Black. I have also sold hundreds of bulls based on that theory and never once has anyone called and complained otherwise. Do you have a link or somewhere I could look at a study on this? Thanks....



Circle H Ranch

No, they are saying that a bull can be homozygous black and carry the diluter gene, but that animal itself would be gray. Any black animal does NOT carry the diluter or they would be gray.

Homozygous black bred to homozygous black will always result in homozygous black offspring that are actually black assuming both parents were black and not gray.

My assumption would be that although the female was a registered Red Angus, she carried the dilluter gene somehow. Either she had some non-Angus parentage somewhere along the way but is still a purebred RA now or she somehow was not what she was supposed to be (ie she was out of a Red Angus dam but sired but a bull of another breed that had the dilluter gene and was thought to be sired by a RA instead). A person can DNA test for the dilluter gene now. If a person really wants to know, I would test the dam and if she is dilluter from, I would assume that this calf was not sired by the Balancer sire.
 
Thanks, CKS.

Cattleman, the problem is, that you have several different genes working to make any animal the color that it is. First and foremost, you have the BASE color, that is BLACK, RED, or WILD. Then you have the diluter genes, or the spotting genes, or brindle genes and so on. The test for HOMO BLACK just tests for the BASE color. So a homo black animal can still carry any number of additional genes.

For example, most (if not all) Murray Gray cattle are Homozygous black, but they also carry a diluter gene, which makes them gray. There are several different diluter genes out there, I think they are all dominant to non-diluter.

In the case of Holstien cattle, most of them are Homozygous for Black as well, and they are also homozygous for the recessive SPOTTING gene.

You can have a GRAY, SPOTTED animal that is HOMO for the black gene, cause the diluter, and spots all work in addition to the BASE color.

Check out my blog, http://easygenes.blogspot.com/
or some of these websites
http://www.sss-mag.com/fernhill/cowcolor.html#base
http://www.braunviehcenter.com/cattle_g ... part2.html
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/afs/ANSC3402/H ... lleles.pdf
 

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