Line Breeding for ???

[cotton1]

Hello all. I have a lot of interest in the topic of line breeding. As the result of a few other threads I wanted to have a thread for serious conversation on the subject. I am hoping to hear of your experiences good or bad, see pictures and hopefully learn about what I think may be one of the most useful, but little used tools in the beef industry. I am hoping to hear from all sectors of the beef production machine: Seedstock,Cow-Calf,Feedlot, and Slaughter/Packing/Grading folks.
Please give your opinions and experiences with an open mind. The objective for this thread is for learning how to produce better beef, and to learn from one another.Some recent events have reminded me of just how small the agriculture sector has become in America, and how the general populace seems ignorant about its food supply, all the while demanding more from the Ag community as population increases.
I hope that some of you will give examples and guides in respect to proper traits for selection, phenotype guides etc. Balancing traits, choosing the right type and disposition are very important considerations in the process.
Again, looking for useful discussion in this thread.I will start it off, here goes

 

[Ebenezer]

Good idea.

One way to try it without huge risks is to use a half sib to your heifers to breed your heifers. This works good if your animals do not have a recent relative with high BW and the lessening of hybrid vigor of the calves will help keep down BW. Just a seed for thought.

 

[cotton1]

I will start off by giving a little info about myself. I will be a little long winded in this first one, and then hopefully you all will take over.
I am on a small farm that has always been my home. I have witnessed myself, my dad, my granddad, and great grand dad run cows here in my lifetime. For that I am grateful. Prior to 2008 everything here was cow-calf with basically no line breeding. 2008 marked the year my wife and I decided to change over to seed stock for various reasons, but mainly because my herd is limited in size due to grass land available. I have yet to be successful in leasing other properties for grazing. It has been in recent years the art of line breeding has gotten my attention, and I have studied it a good bit.For me limited head count means I need to maximize profit potential with every mating, especially with input cost where they are today. After studying the pedigrees of the Charolais that I produce the first couple years, I found myself concerned with EPDs. Calving ease is a must around here, but I began to see how folks would selectively mate their cattle for the sake of EPD correction mostly via AI. I fell in. The first couple crops were a little exiting but I began to see such a variation in the resulting calfs I started to question what I was doing. My commercial calves were a lot more consistent,but why? Because we used natural service and the commercial calves were all sired by the same bull. In essence by using what I thought was a better process in AI, and EPD correction I was taking large steps backward in my new seed stock herd. I realized that before EPDs folks like us would pick a bull out based on individual growth maybe but mostly phenotypical build and those traits as related to experiences with them. When using an AI bull, we maybe see a picture or two of the bull and that's about it. A lot different than walking around a bull, and noticing things like stature, movement, and disposition.The more I wanted to make better foundation cattle to sell, the more I have studied, and found limiting the genetic pool is very important for me and my customers.In doing so I can set a type that is appealing to me in form, easy doing in my environment, consistently patterned and offer hybrid vigor to the next phase.
The herd I have today is hopefully going to evolve over the next few years via line breeding. My plan is to sell the large part of my herd in 2016 and rebuild based on just 3 cows, my donor cows. This is in part fueled by the flooding that we recieved here last fall. I lost all of my row crops and fell into considerable debt. The sale of these cows will be what gets the debts paid.
The donors I have are quite a bit related and each have attributes that are important to me.For example they all exibit calving ease in their own performance as well as in their ET offspring. One may be a little larger and one a little smaller but I think their strengths and weaknesses will complement each other in the future. IF you have noticed my thread on my little bull test, you will see I am basically trying to get information on these dams via their offspring. By using only 3 cow family's and limited matings I hope to build a closely related and consistent herd.
The flushes of course have been done with AI bulls, but the future plan is to use a son of one of the daughters as a natural service sire moving forward.I only have one little hold up in that department in my bull I bought last year. I will know more about him when his first calves arrive in the coming weeks.
So, what Am I line breeding for? 1. Consistency-I didn't like variations in my calf crops. 2.Predictability-the guys I know and have talked with about line breeding seem to love this the most. Taking the guessing out of mating results makes it more enjoyable for the producer. 3.Repeatability-IF i can create a type of Seedstock that works for me and my customers, I need to make more of the same consistent, predictable cattle. 4.HyBrid Vigor-this is important for anybody that uses these cattle in the future. Even a different seedstock producer that has outcross genetics, but mostly for the cow calf producer using one of my bulls as an outcross. 5.Identity- The type and kind I set thru line breeding will become recognizable and form a identity or a "brand" I believe. My observations are that most are on the path of individual matings for either popularity, or EPD"correction" and in the Charolais breed I can not look at many cattle and identify the producer. I dont like that. I think every producer should create a product that is easily correlated,or put differently identifiable with that producer. Each a little different,but high quality respectively, that can be used effectively.6.Beef Quality-things mentioned as 1,2,and 3 here should be very much hand in hand with better beef quality performance.Thats the point after all, and if we are going to make beef, we should at least try to make it as good as we can.Different segments play different parts in that I know. From a seedstock stand point, the measured EPD areas for carcass quality get left out of consideration too much, in lew of high weaning weights etc.For me, the three cows I plan to move forward with are very high quality EPDs in their carcass data with exception to fat. I will want to use ultrasound data in the future to prove or disprove the EPD data.
Well, I think that's more than enough from me. I'm looking forward to hearing from the CT community-Cotton1

 

[dun]

We've bred son to mother and father to daughter and not had any ill affects. The most extensive experiment I know of was our using EXT. EXT had a reputation for ill tempered offspring. Hred EXT to his daughter, then bred EXT to that daughters daughter, then bred EXT to the resulting daughter from that mating. All we noticed was that the offspring from the last breeding was tiny and didn;t grow well or grow into even a decent feeder steer. Never had any temperment issues with any of those daughters. He still has the 2 latest generations and breeds them to other bulls and the calves grow out just fine. He even kept a bull from the last one but I don;t know who he was sired by, but it wasn;t EXT

 

[Nesikep]

I think you're right about linebreeding and creating a 'brand' within a breed.. Love it or hate it, look at Pharo... Backbone ranch also seems to have a fairly unique (and good) look to their cattle, and they are all quite similar.

It's hard to have a cow that does it all (you can't afford those).. they're all going to be missing something important for someone.. either the heat tolerance won't be there for the Texans, or they'll freeze to death in Colorado, and the same is true of many other traits, so you just have to pick what works, and market to people with the same goals you have.

I'm not a seedstock producer, I have a bunch of mutts, but through time, and by looking at countless cow pictures here, etc, I am slowly getting a picture of what a perfect cow is to me. Putting your goals into words, or at least have a set of pictures of "top" cows really helps find those traits when choosing your next generation of breeding stock...
Since my cows are mutts, they don't have any EPD's for anything, but I do know their history for 4-6 maternal generations off the top of my head.. I can tell you anything about any of their relatives... To have EPD's would definitely be a bonus, but EPD's don't say everything either. A perfect example is the "docility" EPD.. it tells you that a cow doesn't jump out of the chute, but doesn't tell you if she's going to be wildly protective of her calf for a 3 day window.. My Mega on the other hand I can do anything with.. ride her, milk her, lead her with 1 finger, but she loathes absolutely anyone else and keeps a 50ft 'personal space bubble' around them... meanwhile her 3/4 sisters Kama and Roma ADORE attention from strangers

Putting numbers to your valuable traits helps as well.. For me, I have a method of giving each cow a 'score'... half of the total is from her direct performance from the number of calves she's had, and each calf is valued a little higher than the previous, giving a cow that had 16 calves about twice the score of one that had 10. The other half of her total score comes from the cumulative score of all her daughters, so a cow that may not have had many calves, but had very good performing daughters gets 'credit' for that.

I currently have 6 maternal lines, and within 2 years I will be paring that down to 4.. It may or may not happen that I go down to 3 at some point.

At some point I may look at getting one of my homegrown bulls collected for my own use... I know this would be expensive, and the semen would be pretty much worthless to anyone but me, but if I do get serious about creating my own 'brand' of cow, it's hard to get consistency without being able to go back a few generations to what you originally had.

 

[cotton1]

Dun-Did your Ext cows get smaller and smaller with every generation or did they seem very similar until that last one? I wonder if you would have went to the dam of the little one with a slight variation like maybe a Ext son what the result would have been. Im saying that kind of experiment is extreme, but definately proved Ext bull as "pure" genetically. Also wondering how the calves off of the others were in contrast to their peer groups.

Nesikep-Dont call your cows mutts just because they dont have an EPD attached to them. You kinda have one in your experience and expectations of the animals. I say you are doing things the way even pedigreed herds did them pre-epd days.I know of folks with registered cattle with epds that have done extensive line breeding.Their cattle started off with good or better Epds. As the generations keep on the Epds go flat so to speak, all the while the cattle are the same or better in performance. I can see a producer not really needing epds after a little time with a limited gene pool.

 

[Backbone Ranch]

We just got into breeding Murray Greys in 2011. We purchased our foundation stock out of Oklahoma, first in 2011 and again in 2015, so we are trying to preserve and build off of the work that another breeder has done so well. We are still in the growing phase, and occasionally we will have to breed close relatives together because we have no other options. There was close to a year where we only had one mature bull on the ranch. We had several yearlings bulls, but the best (half siblings and sons of our primary herd sire) had been sold before our breeding season began. We have several exceptional cow lines in our herd; their previous owner flushed several cows from these different dam lines about a decade ago. We have had tremendous success with one of the dam lines in particular, the OK Sadie line. In 2010 and 2011, OK Sadie was bred to OK Boomer. The resulting calves were exceptional.
In 2011, this calf was born: OK Sally. Sally is pictured as a 4 1/2 year old in the photo below.

And in 2012, our current herd sire, BB Uncle Tony. He is pictured here at 3 1/2 years.

Sadie has been flushed once to my knowledge to a Murray Grey bull known as Rockliffe Patron. We have a handful of embryos from this mating. Below are photos of Sadie at the age of 10 and the bull Rockliffe Patron.

The Oklahoma Murray Grey breeder, Beaver Creek Farms, also used the bull named JOPA Elation Power heavily in their AI program. Elation Power had all of the tenderness markers and one of the two marbling genes according to his Genestar test results. JOPA Elation Power was born in 1986, and has sired some exceptional calves over the years. We have some straws from him and intend to breed him to some of our best cows over the coming years. JOPA Elation Power is pictured below as a 3 year old. He passes on his depth, length, and carcass traits to his progeny; most of his daughters have great udders. Some of our cattle are double bred and triple bred JOPA Elation Power and they have the phenotype and softness that we desire in our herd.

The bull below is OK Boomer, a son of JOPA Elation Power, and the sire of OK Sally and BB Uncle Tony (the first two photos in this post). Boomer is just one of Elation Power's many progeny that I have either seen in person or pictures of.

I know that I included a lot of pictures, but I thought that they would give a visual idea of the individuals who have had or will have a significant impact on our breeding program.

 

[dun]

Dun-Did your Ext cows get smaller and smaller with every generation or did they seem very similar until that last one? I wonder if you would have went to the dam of the little one with a slight variation like maybe a Ext son what the result would have been. Im saying that kind of experiment is extreme, but definately proved Ext bull as "pure" genetically. Also wondering how the calves off of the others were in contrast to their peer groups.

No significant variation until the last one. In a way it just goes to show how genes can line up and why flush mates are no different then from any other breeding. We used one particular bull on the same cow for 4 years in a row and got real boomer calves that the feeders loved. The fifth year we got this strange little turd that just didn;t grow worth snot. The next year she was back to the boomer calves. That was the last of his semen. Using different bulls on the same cow later all produced very good calves.
As far as him using EXT sons, I asked him about it and he said it was just an experiment he wanted to do with EXT himself. The last 2 cows from that breeding that he kept are here each summer for about 4 months when he's out of grass and we have excess. He brings over 8-9 cows. Other then one that he got from us years ago, they are all black angus. I can;t tell the difference in them based on their behaviour. I don;t know what that says about EXT siring nutcases.

 

[cotton1]

Dun-you make a great point. Even flush mates could be a good bit different. I once told somebody that I didn't believe you could duplicate exactly without producing several hundred thousand full sibs. Thats just my opinion, but it seems right to me. I think you can get pretty close though. And on that same token, you can get pretty far off.I used to be guilty of thinking if a cow or bull was a ET calf then they must be good, but now I know better.

Backbone-You are not sharing too much. I really like the way you did your post and hope others will do something similar.I like the look of your Murrey Greys, and really think your herd proves a good point about consistency.I look forward to the day my cows all look the same, then I will feel like I am getting somewhere.

Thanks to all so far, this is living up to my expectations. I am enjoying. Please keep em coming. Anybody that could post something about trait selection and its importance, and proper phenotype would be appreciated.A good reference for phenotypical traits and their relation to the function of the cattle would be a good thing. Line breeding can only be effective if starting with the proper animals in my opinion.

 

[dun]

Our replacement selection isn;t scientific. First it has to be out of a good cow. If the cow has lasted here for more then a couple of calves she has to have met or exceeded our expectations. If the calf steadily gains in the 45 day weaning period and doesn;t really blossom and start looking a lot better because she's getting rain, then she's a candidate for replacement. The (il)logic behind that is that if she needs supplement to rally perform, she isn;t going to work here on our fescue pasture/hay. Not a big believer in supplements. During exceptionally cold/wet/snowy weather we will supplement a little to add energy to the diet. Basically we select based on performance under our management conditions.
Thecaveat is that we've been selecting like this for a good many years. But it was darn tough at the beginning to send some of the heifers to the feeders. We also keep track of weights and condition. Birth, workup, weaning, booster, yearling, etc.

 

[Nesikep]

I have been thinking of starting a thread called "Full sisters.. guess which ones"... I have MANY full siblings that are completely different from each other.

I'm with Dun as well, I don't believe in supplements, and my bull calves don't get any either.. yeah, it means my YW's aren't 1400 lbs and they'd look small compared to many bulls from commercial 'bull factories', but feeding them that heavy to get those numbers doesn't affect their genetics or breeding potential.
Same goes for the heifers, they don't get supplements, but they do get the best food I can give them, and as much as they will eat and clean up... The rest is up to them.

Phenotypes I look for? Well, it's a long list that I have always had to compromise a little on.
Good running gear, udders, teats are all a given.
Frame 5-6 is my preferred size
Longevity, My goal is to have an average cull age of 10 years.. I'm not there yet, but I have found some lines of cows just keep on ticking, and others seem to have a black cloud of bad luck around them
For appearance, especially on bulls: Longer, slender heads preferred over blockheads, smooth eyebrows over 'frog eyes', smooth shoulders without being narrow.
For bulls or heifers:

Looking from the front: The appearance of a uniform width when you look down their back, from the shoulders over the loin, through the hooks and to the pins, it should look flat, and a a convex look when you look at the tailhead and pins area.. Hooks below the spine, muscle over it. This is especially true on younger animals, they will all lose that smoothness as they get older, but if they didn't have it young, they'll look like racks as they age.

Looking from the side, a flat belly line, In other words the neither the heart girth nor waist girth should appear pinched, For cows, the udder shouldn't hang below the navel, teats the size of my thumb and cylindrical, not conical. (when full). Teats set squarely and pointing down, not out. Length and depth as well. I love a nice flat topline as much as the next person, but found the 'bottom line' to be of far more importance to the productive value of the animal. Tailheads should be level with the rest of the back (I have a few offenders there)

I am not a great judge of how the legs should be set under the animal, some people will say an animal is too straight in the pasterns, etc, and I can't really pick that out well, but what I will say is I prefer them to stand on their 'toes' rather than 'heels', which promotes better hoof wear.


OK Sally that Backbone ranch posted is a prime example of all these things, and I prefer her looks to OK Sadie by a little bit.


My cows ARE mutts... any one of them has at least 4 breeds, though despite that, we've always had a certain goal in mind on what we liked.. We've been side-tracked along the way a few times and have some roan and chrome, and the frame score goals have changed a bit in the last while (going from frame 6-8 down to 5-6), but as I look at more cows, I realize you have to look at THOUSANDS of them to be able to put into words (and practice) what you like or dislike about them.

About the nutcases.. a lot of that comes from momma as a learned trait... Salers are known to be high-headed, but my MOST DOCILE animals have Saler blood.. The 3 bull calves from Caddy are all 1/8th Saler, and Cenci, Roma, and Kama are 1/4 Saler.. and they are the ones that will run up to the fence to say hello to a stranger. The bull calf I kept 4-5 years ago (3/4 Shorthorn) was a nutcase, and they're usually more known to be a docile breed.

 

[dun]

Nesikep touched on it but I had neglected to mention phenotype. I don;t have a laundry list of specifics, to me it's more of eye appeal. If he or she looks good to me, I'll consider them. A couple of things that I don;t look for specifically but are noticed is top line, width in the rear, muscle, feet and legs, and barrel. I posted a link a while back about selecting by the numbers/measurements. I'm too dam old for that, the eye has steered me pretty well through the years.

 

[Nesikep]

I too dumb a farmer to do it by the numbers, eye appeal (to MY eyes) is what got me to where I am as well, I just have been working on putting it to words what I find I appealing to me so I can describe it

 

[Supa Dexta]

I hate pointy spines. I like table top backs.

 

[cotton1]

Ok. I have now made two decent post to this in the last little bit. keep losing my connection before submitting, and thus the posts. That and two phone calls in the middle of making them have cost me a lot of time for nothing today.

I am thinking I want fs 6 cows that are 1300, but probably they wont look good unless they are either 1500 at fs 6 or 1300 at maybe fs 4.5-5. I know I like a good straight back line with a complementing bottom line to the top. I dont need very leggy cows here, and like plenty of width across the back and depth in the rib/guts. I also would like bigger footed cattle but mine today are pretty average. My new bull has nice size feet on him, and I am hoping that transfers to his offspring. I dont like bug eyed cows, and wont tolerate crazys. There is a place for crazys, but its not here. I also seem to select for plenty of rump muscling and a longer back line.

Im going to stop now before I lose this thing again. I will try more later on...

 

[Nesikep]

I feel your pain about flakey connections and lost posts!

I've never paid attention to the size of the feet, rather to the posture of them. I'm with Supa Dexta on the pointy spines, and it's part of what I was talking about with muscling on each side of the spine being above it, and the area between the hooks and pins being convex.

Until you start to get some reasonable consistency from linebreeding, and having unchanging goals for several generations, I found that the phenotype of the calf sometimes differs from what it is as a cow... I've had some thick looking calves that turned into thin cows, though they raise good calves anyhow... they just aren't front-pasture stuff

 

[Ebenezer]

I am thinking I want fs 6 cows that are 1300, but probably they wont look good unless they are either 1500 at fs 6 or 1300 at maybe fs 4.5-5. I know I like a good straight back line with a complementing bottom line to the top. I dont need very leggy cows here, and like plenty of width across the back and depth in the rib/guts. I also would like bigger footed cattle but mine today are pretty average. My new bull has nice size feet on him, and I am hoping that transfers to his offspring. I dont like bug eyed cows, and wont tolerate crazys. There is a place for crazys, but its not here. I also seem to select for plenty of rump muscling and a longer back line.

I found that the phenotype of the calf sometimes differs from what it is as a cow... I've had some thick looking calves that turned into thin cows, though they raise good calves anyhow

Three things going on here in a closed population setting and two are mentioned.
1-The look of the cows
2-The look of the calves
3-What will the bulls look like?

A thick rumped cow at FS6 will weight 1500+ to look decent. A thick rumped cow at FS4.5 will weight 1300+ to look decent. Is a thick rumped cow the most fertile type? Are the heaviest muscled or fat cattle (flat back) the most fertile?

What changes on the calves when they matured? Maybe a loss of milk fat?

Will the desired type and phenotype of bull create the desired type and phenotype of calves and cows in a tight population? What if the bull calves from your best cows in that situation never please you or me in looks? Do we go with them or try to change the bull and inadvertently change the cows?

Most of this does not matter in most herds because the bull or bull breed can be changed with one purchase. It makes a lot more difference when you close the herd or build lines. Stack a few generations of type that is less fertile and then there is a need to dig out of a hole. Just saying.

 

[Nesikep]

All good questions, and unfortunately I don't think there's a 'right' answer for any of them but rather a whole lot of gray areas.
I think you're about right on the frame score to weight for a cow to look decent.. Cenci, the thickest cow I have is about a FS5-5.5, and when she's in good condition she's probably about 1400. She's having her 4th calf, been on the first cycle each time, though she gestates longer than any other cow I have.. setting a record here at 305 days (talk about waiting for a cow to calve!)

How important is the 'look' of the bull to you if he makes the calves you like? The cows are where your big day-to-day costs are, so having the 'right' cow is of great importance, and a whole lot of that will depend on your feed... I've found that having small cows on lush grass doesn't pay, they just get fat, especially if they don't have the genetics to produce enough milk, Meanwhile, the inverse is also true, having Frame 8 cows on scrub grass will get you cows that milk more than they can find food for, costing you by having open, skinny cows come fall time. Balance is everything, and a large part of that is keeping an eye on all important traits and not letting anything go out of hand.

 

[cotton1]

Ebenezer, your post is full of good questions. I want to say that in reference to a straight back line I mean structurally straight and not just real fat, or so fat it gives appearance of straight.
I am thinking you can give some examples or opinions of the type that is most fertile in your opinion. I will reserve my thoughts on that for the moment.
Traditional line breeding it seems to me, is based off of the bulls side. Maybe a large concentration of one particular bull. My idea is to use the maternal side with 3 cows in particular. I have flushed the three cows to several different types of bulls within the breed. I am taking note of the differences in the calf's. My plan is to use the best son of one of the 3 cows available at the time. I fully expect to cull in this situation, but feel over time I will see that a particular cow line/ mating will bring balance where it is needed. I hope each will offer something a little different from the others allowing me to stay within my closed group and still make nessesary correction.
Now, I want to hear about the things in cow make up and how they effect different things such as fertility. This is the type discussion I was hoping for here and am enjoying so far

 

[creekdrive]

This is a very interesting thread to me. Genetics are one of my favorite things to study/research. I don't have much experience with it in cattle, but I wouldn't mind trying to experiment with some in the future. My family & I also raise purebred dogs (Whippets) and we have always practiced linebreeding with them and had pretty good success, so I can't see why it wouldn't work with cattle too.

Not really cattle related, but this is an analysis of the pedigree of the last litter my parents raised:
http://thewhippetarchives.net/coi/coi.p ... 21&gens=10
of 2046 possible ancestors in 10 generations there is only 491 actual ancestors. 2 different dogs appear 48 times each. Maybe some would consider it inbreeding, but there really isn't that much duplication in the first few generations. Go back a little further and there is lots of connections. That type of pedigree is what we always tried to create with dogs. If we ever did an outcross we always made sure to go back fairly strong to a particular line in the pedigree the next generation. With an outcross litter the good ones can be great, but the poor ones are usually below average. With a strong linebred pedigree quite often the whole litter is good-great in quality.

My husbands family hasn't done much linebreeding at all, and yet the cattle seem like they are a consistent type (at least to my eye). They have always selected almost entirely by phenotype though, while still paying attention to birthweight. I take from that that if you always select bulls that are the same type as your cows you can create a herd that is very similar looking even if the pedigrees are outcrosses. EPD's never meant anything to them when picking a bull. I find the numbers interesting, but I don't value them that high when selecting an animal. If she *looks* like the type I want and the her parents are the type I want then that is good enough for me.

One of our herd sires is somewhat linebred - paternal great grandsire is the same as maternal grandsire. His calves certainly do have his look. We have one of his sons who we are going to be using this coming year and I sure wouldn't mind throwing a few of his daughters out with their half brother just to see what happens. That being said most of our bull customers are of the mindset that they can't breed their heifers to anything related to them, so we do always keep a few different lines going otherwise they would go elsewhere to buy a bull.

What do most people use to get a frame score measurement on a cow? Just a tape measure while she is in the chute???
We have some cows that weigh quite a bit, but none of them are really tall. I've never measured them but I would say most are FS 5. Maybe I am even overestimating....on average they are a lot shorter in height than most of our neighbours cows. But they are fatties...I bet most weigh at least 1400 once they are mature (say 5 years old). I am sure there is even some that are FS 4 that are over 1500 lbs. Short & dumpy some people have called them, but I like them like that. They don't have a tough life, but they aren't completely spoiled either. They do get some grain as supplement in the winter, because it is easier to feed & cheaper than hay. Most will still go to grass and gain weight all summer and wean a calf close to 50% of their body weight in less than 200 days... For the most part they are naturally easy keeping animals I think. We have very few with any kind of foot issues and none really with a bad bag (some aren't 100% picture perfect, but they sure don't cause any problems either). If we can stick with the type that my husbands family set us up with I think we will do ok.

I hope this thread continues as it's very interesting to me!