Rat Tail Calves

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tdarden3k

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I run into what a lot of you refer to as a " Rat tail " Calf. Can some one expand on just what that is and how/why it would occur. A picture of one would be great. Maybe I have seen one and did not realize it.

Thanks
 
I use a lot of charlois bulls. A char cross calf seems to be more prone to it, with my experience. Especially on an eared cow.i like the cross well enough, I'm willing to take my chances.
 
Technical Abstract: A form of congenital hypotrichosis, commonly known as the rat-tail syndrome, occurs in a small percentage of calves produced by crossing some Continental breeds cattle with breeds that are black in color. These calves are characterized by short, curly, malformed, sometimes sparse hair and a lack of normal tail switch development. The performance of 43 rat- tail calves was compared to that of 570 non-rat-tail calves of the same breeding and contemporary groups. All rat-tail calves were sired by Simmental bulls and were from cows with various percentages of Angus breeding. The rat-tail condition had no effect on birth weight, weaning weight, or gain from birth to weaning. However, the rat-tail calves had significantly lower rates of gain from weaning to yearling (during the winter months) than the non-rat-tail calves, resulting in a 19 kg lighter yearling weight. The gains of steers from yearling to slaughter were not significantly different, but the rat-tail steers were 36 kg lighter (P=.01 and 13 days older (P=.15) at slaughter than the non-rat-tail steers. In a second study, Angus-Simmental F1 males and females with the rat-tail condition were mated to produce 64 F2 offspring that were used to determine the mode of inheritance of this syndrome. Analysis showed that the rat- tail syndrome is controlled by interacting genes at two loci. Cattle that express the syndrome must have at least one dominant gene for black color and be heterozygous at the other locus involved.
 
Been pretty busy. I'll be around as much as I can. I see you have everything under control here!!!!!!!
 

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