Linebreeding Info

[Nesikep]

Wow, so that's 43 descendents you currently have? or that you've kept in total?.. I have 22 cows from 5 families (1 is going extinct), and I think I've kept about 19 from some of them, so it's about the same ratio.. Ironically, the family I kept the most from doesn't have the most members in the herd.. I had to keep so many because they kept failing! (thankfully they're better now)
The family that I've kept less animals from (14 of 72 total) makes up a full third of my herd now with 8 of them still around..

Sometimes slow and steady does win the race.. makes a good argument for long lived cows at least

 

[Dubcharo]

I should say we don't linebreed on purpose but we keep a bull from our herd from time to time. We see often the same bull on the 2 sides of a pedegree but we like 2 generations minimum on 1 side and 3 on the other.

 

[Dubcharo]

@Nesikep It's 43 cows or first calf heifer alive in the herd right now. Tattoo PDA 6F born in 1974. Fannie was her name! Another cow that our father bought was Miss Pasco 560 born in 1964. We have 17 cows from her in the herd, her sire was linebreed by FWT BAR 545 grand sire on both side of her father.

 

[Nesikep]

It's nice to know pedigree for such a long ways back. I don't have the land base to increase my total cow-nt, but I figure someday they will all be descended from my original Josie line, if not on the maternal side, they'll have a sire from her in there somewhere

 

[cotton1]

Dubcharo- I think that the FWT Bar 545 bull was the sire to the FWT Bar 951(Sam) bull that was line bred so heavily at Littons. Like Nesi, I think its great that you have so much information for so long about your herd. I wonder what kind of IBC average your herd has. I bet its pretty high.

Would I have to look your cow up on the Canadian data base? I tried looking her up on the AICA, but didn't find her. One thing I don't understand is why the two registry wont indicate a calf that is in the other registry but off of the same parent. I think a lot of the bulls that were used in some linebreeding Charolais in America were also used in Canada a good bit.

Reguardless those must be some good lines you guys have to have lasted so long! If I am right about the FWT bull, those lines have been proven over and over. I have been trying to find some semen on Sam for a little while.

Cotton1

 

[Dubcharo]

You will have to go on the Canadian data base. 70% of our cows come from 4 cows: PDA 6F (43), XAL 1W (17), Miss Pasco 560 (17) and JTP 7C (11)

 

[cotton1]

Dubcharo-thanks for the cow info, I enjoyed looking them up. I noticed the line bred FWT 545 bull you mentioned, and some other Litton breeding. I also noticed your JTP 7C cow is by Reebok. I think I know where a few straws of a son off the 10y bull are called PD Reeboks Reason. If you are interested, I will see if I can get them for you.

You all have used some interesting bulls before including Till.I might know where some of that is too, but probably cant find signatures for registration. The gentleman that may have some Till has been around since the 60s like you all. He made a calf a few years back that he couldn't get signatures on. I don't remember if it was a Alfalfa John, or a International calf. He told me about it and had planned to breed with it, but couldn't get it registered so he sold it to commercial, which I thought was a shame. He let me look at his inventory book for his tank. He and I and one other producer had some great conversation about the old foundation bulls. Before straws came about, that old guy said he made effort to breed 2 or maybe 3 cows with one vile because he had to save money up to buy just a couple viles per year. Right now he is in his 80s and still going strong, still breeding AI and selling registered stock after 50 plus years. Admirable to me

Good stuff, thanks again

Cotton1

 

[Dubcharo]

Tranks Cotton1 on the good comments. If you saw the tatoo LPD often it was my father tatoo. He didn't A.I. that much so we don't have old semen in our tank. A bull who made big impact here was CFQ 30T. Reebok is a bull of the pass I thing, frame 10 or so from memory. We put bulls like Wyoming Wind, Famac 2244, Cigar, Shelco Made Easy to moderate the frame. Till made us some good meaty cows but we don't work that much with horned bulls anymore. On 37 calves this year we have 1 horned from an old half french cow (Marquis). Calves are from SVY Grizzly, GGD 505C, MVY Xplorer, Shelco Made Easy and Wr Wrangler W601

 

[Nesikep]

Going to drag this thread back up.. Found a great article though it's about dogs.. Long read but informative
http://www.westwindgsps.com/linebreeding.htm

 

[cotton1]

Its been a while Nesi. Im currently still fighting the soybean harvest on my farm. When that is over, I look forward to being on line more. I plan to check out the link you posted about the dogs. Also have a couple father/daughter matings coming in December so that should be interesting to watch.

Cotton1

 

[Backbone Ranch]

Its been a while Nesi. Im currently still fighting the soybean harvest on my farm. When that is over, I look forward to being on line more. I plan to check out the link you posted about the dogs. Also have a couple father/daughter matings coming in December so that should be interesting to watch.

Cotton1

Glad to see you back on the boards Cotton1! Definitely let us know how those December calves turn out. We had three calves born this fall that are from father/ daughter matings. These are the first calves out of these individuals. We had two bull calves that weighed 68 and 70 lbs at birth, while the heifer calf weighed 58 lbs. They are approaching two months old currently. Of the three, the heifer is average, one bull will most likely be a steer, and the last bull calf looks exceptional. To put things in perspective though, most of our bull calves that are born in the fall to first-calf heifers end up as steers. This is the really nice bull calf at 7 weeks. His IBC is 30.62%.

We also have a yearling heifer that has an IBC of 15.116%. Her dam is the result of a mother/ son mating, and her 2016 fall calf (this 632 heifer) was the best calf raised by a first-calf heifer that year. We will be AIing this heifer in the spring of 2018 to a bull that is an extremely distant relative, her great great grandsire, that was born in 1972.

And the mother of the above heifer at 3 1/2 years. She is due to calve in March to a heritage Murray Grey bull that was born in 1979.

With that being said, we are really trying hard to establish several really strong family lines within our herd. Our best/ most productive line all goes back to OK Sadie. She was the grandmother of our previous herdsire and is the mother of our current herdsire, as well as the dam of the cow above. Sadie will be 15 years old this spring and is in calf currently. We are AIing a number of our top females each year in hopes of adding strength to our cow lines. We are still in the early stages of our AI program because our first AI calves were born in 2015, but we are already getting an idea of which bulls really complement our cows well.

 

[cotton1]

Merry Christmas! I admit that I have completed the harvest here, but still don't seem to have much time to get on the internet. The new addition to our farm this year has been St.Croix hair sheep. We got our starting ewes and a ram from Ebeneezer here on CT. The sheep are much like the cattle in that productive lines must be established and then used to best make progeny. Lucky for me the sheep at Ebeneezer farm have been linebred, culled, sorted, and start process again for many years and the genetics we got in the sheep are ahead in the game so to speak.Long and short, our breeding mentality with the sheep will include linebreeding much like the cattle.

As far as the cattle go, we got a Christmas surprise today: the first daughter off of our current herd bull Injector calved. It was a bull calf sired by Injector. There were 4 legs and one head, 2 eyes and 2 ears so nothing much to see. I did wish I would've had my phone to take a picture due to the first of the first for us here.Got a happy healthy 69lb boy calf with no help and watched him nurse...lifes good. The due date on the calf was 12/30 and there is one other father daughter Injector mating due on the same date, as well as a first calf for a daughter of our G123 donor cow who is also bred to Injector.

BR- those are some great cattle you post up! They always are a pleasure to see, and were a very warm welcome to see after being off the boards for a while! 30+% IBC :clap: Congrats! Thanks for the pictures!

Cotton1

 

[Logar]

Hello all, I'm looking for info on linebreeding with regards to the information obtained by a inbreeding calculator. Some of you already know I have been moving towards reducing my gene pool in my herd for a little while now. As a registered producer I feel it is important to set a type in my cattle to provide uniformity, make my cattle identifiable within the breed, and provide as much heterosis to my customers as possible.

I was playing with a inbreeding calculator this morning using some of the matings that are taking place in my pastures right now, and comparing them to could have beens if I had chosen to AI instead of using my bull. I have looked at the inbreeding calculators before, but not too in depth so I developed a few questions.

Some of my matings offspring next fall could have coefficents ranging from 3.25% to as high as 25% on the father/daughter matings. Those 25% matings will likely become more common here over the next few years as I am pleased with the first crop on my bull and will know much more by this time next year as the second crop here and a crop off his natural service at a friends should be here this spring along with several AI calfs abroad.

So, opinions on how much coeffiecent is too much? How much is not enough( to make any difference)?

Next question: Can the % blood be used to sway the direction of the genotype for a better chance at getting the desired type in the offspring? This refers to the generations back in the pedigree a little. As an example, one of the cows had a bull in there I know is not consistent. When I did the 4 gen calculation, he was only at 6% blood. The bulls I do know are consistent, and desired for my use are at like 18% I think. I think I am wondering if I can find a magic %blood number to keep undisreables at or under untill I have some stacked genes in the first part of the pedigrees, like the father daughter matings should produce.

One more for now: If i do a 4 gen calculation and have the same bull in there 3-4 times, how does that compare to doing a say 10 gen calculation and some foundation bull back there being in there say 10 times? Will I be "mining" the old traits out?

This is not easy for me to understand. Putting the boy with the girls is easy, but I want to line breed with purpose, so I need to learn all I can.

Thanks in advance,

Cotton1

Quite frankly it is my experience that line breeding is a lot of talk but mostly luck.

If it works you look like a genius.

When it fails you get the truth.

As a mother or a father - do you want to breed your son or daughter to improve your own family line?

Of course not.

Most often it does not improve the line but in fact takes it down a notch or two.

That is what I think of line breeding.

So - while many will call themselves experts, will have written lots of info on it and more.............

I figure it is better to stay away from it.

In the end what is it you want?

A herd of robust cattle that can take the weather, do not get sick, reproduce easily and pack on the pounds in a short time frame.

There are many ways to make this happen without going the "line breeding" way.

In fact that is always a question I ask when I am buying cattle for me - "Is this one line bred?"

If it is I pass on it - no matter how nice it looks. I do not know what the next one coming out of the back end will be like - even if bred to an animal far removed from the family line.

Just my thoughts.

Cheers.

 

[pdfangus]

I would take a more middle ground approach.

To me line breeding is more selecting individuals who share atruly superior ancestor in an attempt to replicate that animal.

Sire daughter matings indicate to me that the breeder has the opinion that there is no other equivalent animal availble for breeding.

Line breeding is simply ncentration of the genetics of thr target animal.

Such concentration will expose both the superior genetics and the inferior genetics.

Before dna testing the way to prove a bull fault free was to have clean calves from at least 35 of his own daughters.

There were precious few bulls so proven.

 

[pdfangus]

Like line breeding..

Typing on a phone keyboard exposes flaws in typing ability

 

[Ebenezer]

Quite frankly it is my experience that line breeding is a lot of talk but mostly luck.

If it works you look like a genius.

When it fails you get the truth.

Had to chuckle - have you ever noticed how many new and great bulls disappear out of an AI catalog and a breeder's bull pen each year or wonder what happened that your AI calves by the bull that did so well for the owner were merely average or worse for you? When you use line crosses, expansive modern AI efforts and new bulls of varied genetic differences you can say the exact same thing:

If it works you look like a genius.

When it fails you get the truth.

Linebreeding is not merely a topic of discussion. Linebreeding is a tool to speed to the last chapter to know how the story ends. But you need to have a purpose or not do it merely as a fad effort or to be a part of the minority. To minimize linebreeding is to completely erase the work of past breeders who were masters, to forget how breeds were formed and stabilized and to forget that not too many decades ago that folks and livestock were not as mobile in all herds and flocks and there were regional lines, line associations, ...

My estimate: expect 85% failure in tight linebred populations from start up. The remaining 15% will need to be expanded and selected phenotypically for line type. The purpose is still not stated but it is the key to setting a goal or starting the journey. You are seeking a stabilized population so that they will benefit you and others so that the last words of the last chapter are "and they lived happier and with known results ever after".

 

[slick4591]

It's not a real tight breeding, but I have maternal grandson over his grandmother calf due in March. I'm kinda excited to see what I get.

 

[Supa Dexta]

Bump. Whats everyone up to these days in the line breeding department?

I spent a lot of today planning for 2020 calves, and who's going to be bred to whom this coming season.

And what are you using for a program for calculating pairings?

 

[Silver]

Divide my cows by 25, add one or two and that's how many bulls I throw out and hope for the best.
Decent cows bred to decent bulls should make decent calves. If they don't, hopefully their replacements will.

 

[Supa Dexta]

That has nothing to do with this thread^