Angus Bull Sires Scurred calf

This Past weekend we had the cows up to freeze brand them and then we blacklegged and did some other stuff to the calves. Anyhow, while running the calves through the chute I noticed that one of the bull calves out of our Reg. Angus herd bull (a Spartan Son) is scurred, the calf's dam is scurred as well (both individuals have very small scurrs). It just surprised me because I had always heard that Angus bulls will always sire polled calves.

Does anyone else know anymore on the topic or had this happen?

Scurrs and white spots are a common sense on Angus breed now. Some promiscuous matings are resulting these kind of characteristics. I saw lots of fullblood calves with long pedigree lines with white belly (all belloy), white marks on shoulders, stars in front, and scurrs as well.
Some american bulls are describe to insert this white marks and I hear that an old Red Angus bulls also introduced some scurrs.
Or our genetics books and Mendel is wrong or something is wrong! Believe on second!
Polled character is dominante under horns. As well as black coat is dominante too. So...

That's funny! Not that it happened to you, just that someone told you that it would NEVER happen.  Talk to some of those old time breeders...there may have been some horned...or scurred critters in  your bulls pedigree along the way.  Some breeders took some short cuts when they were trying to chase some of the SIZE fads, or at least that's what I have been told more than a few times.  It's too bad that they felt they had to do that, but there 's not much you can do about it now.  

The polled gene and scurred gene are two different genes.  The scurred gene is also sexed linked, in that a bull calf only needs one scurred gene to express scurs, where as a female needs both scurred genes to express scurs.  If the cow has scurs, then she has both genes, and will always pass one on.  If an animal is horned, it will cover up the scurs and not allow them to be expressed.  It gets even more complicated - if an animal has both polled genes (homozygous polled) that will also cause the scurred gene not to be expressed.

HGC said:

The polled gene and scurred gene are two different genes.  The scurred gene is also sexed linked, in that a bull calf only needs one scurred gene to express scurs, where as a female needs both scurred genes to express scurs.  If the cow has scurs, then she has both genes, and will always pass one on.  If an animal is horned, it will cover up the scurs and not allow them to be expressed.  It gets even more complicated - if an animal has both polled genes (homozygous polled) that will also cause the scurred gene not to be expressed.

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Thanks HGC...you beat me to the punch on the genetics 101 lesson. This is absolutely true. Every bull calf out of a scurred cow will be scurred. If he's homozygous polled, you may only find a tiny scab of a scur, and that probably won't even show up until he's at least a yearling, but he will sire a lot of scurred bull calves if you mate him to horned cows. Your bull calf got his scur gene from his mother, which is all he needed to show scurs. He's likely heterozygous polled, and none of this proves anything about his sire's pedigree or phenotype for scurs or the polled factor.

HGC said:

if an animal has both polled genes (homozygous polled) that will also cause the scurred gene not to be expressed.

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Being that ALL true purebred Aberdeen Angus are homozygous polled thus carry both polled genes,  how could this scurred gene be expressed?

Jacob B said:

Some breeders took some short cuts when they were trying to chase some of the SIZE fads, or at least that's what I have been told more than a few times.  It's too bad that they felt they had to do that, but there 's not much you can do about it now. 

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You have hit the nail on the head.  Coincidentally, all of the breeds that were infused into the Angus gene pool during the chase for the latest and greatest- Chi, Holstein, Jersey- are all horned. 

-XBAR- said:

Coincidentally, all of the breeds that were infused into the Angus gene pool during the chase for the latest and greatest- Chi, Holstein, Jersey- are all horned. 

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don't forget maine's.  which breeds have horns but do not have the scurred gene?

Any time you get into the black operation that is no more that once had an indiana address, you are apt to see Scurs, horns and all else.nearly all the other came along before D N A and blood typing were good enough to find the outlaws, the bull jackpot, is one and lucky strike was another. Go to the angus web site and the genetic defects are there.

Where do you think all these Angus genetic defects come from ,sure is funny that there is another breed that has had these for a long time ...  Angus the BUSINESS BREED

They call it giving you the business

I don't necessarily think somebody needs to be here to take up for the most popular breed of cattle in the country, and I'm not an Angus breeder, but good grief... It's disappointing to me that some of us prefer to be so accusatory, especially when the accusations are completely unwarranted! Beginning with the title of this thread, this conversation has been nothing but a bludgeoning of the Angus breed and Angus breeders. The fact is, the sire of the calf mentioned had nothing to do with him having scurs! Anybody who would bother to be a little bit informed on the topic could easily learn that the scur condition is sex-linked and in this case, inherited from the dam. This site should be a place to get support and information...not a place where we all come to cannibalize each other and point out every weakness in the industry. Geez...

I'm not trying to be "so accusatory".  This is what breeders have told me.  When shorties needed all that size  they did the same types of things.  My grandfather got around this by bringing a milking shorthorn bull into the mix instead of going totaly out of the way like others did, it took a pretty good fight to get him accepted into the beef books, but he did.  At least he didn't come out and lie about what he was doing like so many other did.  I know there are angus cows out there that are supposed to be "purebred", bulls too.  Just saying it happend back in that time, not just with the angus breed by others as well.  I just have more knowledge of it going on in the angus and shorthorn deal.

I'm not saying that kind of shenanigans never happened, but I really don't think it's the way leading breeders today get ahead. These are the things small breeders talk about to convince themselves and others of things they want to believe. We ignore the obvious truths and we focus on these details that may or may not be true and don't even matter. It kinda sticks in my craw when people throw out blanket statements about any breed or group of breeders in general, especially when you admit the breed you're involved in is very likely just as guilty of the same shenanigans. Hello, Pot...This is Kettle.

My stance here should not be confused with an argument to disregard or ignore the "shenanigans" we're talking about. I believe breeders who purposefully try to get away with crap like that should be barred from an association if they're caught doing it. I just don't see that blanket accusations about any breed being corrupt can benefit the industry or further your own agenda in the long run.

Scurs have been present in the Angus breed since its inception - long before the big frame swings that took place in the last 50 years.
If you look back through the herdbook, at least two prominent foundation sires - Shah and Hanton 80, both had scurs.

Here's a nice little table detailing our current knowledge of the inheritance of scurs...
http://homepage.usask.ca/~schmutz/ScurredTable.html  

This is a subject that will proably continue doing what has been done in the past,for you people not associated with the breed there is other problems besides scurs, but they all originate from illegal things done ...The best way to explain it is some time dig up some of the Angus
Champion pictures of the 1950's and try to get some of the  60's -70's-etc to now and then explain how there is that a drastic change in the breed ...  One of the pictures of a champion in denver in the 70's,really shocked me how much he looked like another breed ....I am a true Angus guy ,but you also
haft to deal with what is right in front of your face ....Change is great but at what costs ...

  (lol)

Horned, scurred, and polled inheritance is not as straight forward as we once believed it was. More on that later.
In this situation it is completely possible that the Angus sire was homozygous polled. If we call big P the polled allele and little p the horned allele, then this cow could be Pp and scurred. The Angus bull could be PP. Thus, half of the offspring would be Pp with scurs or polled, and the other half would be PP and polled. So, if the cow is scurred there is no reason to assume the Angus bull is not homozygous PP polled. The polled gene has been identified. It is located on chromosome 1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039477 DNA testing companies have tests to see how many copies of the polled variant an animal has. Since horned is recessive (i.e. masked by the polled variant) it is very difficult to completely remove it from a population without a DNA test, which was not available till last year.

There are other genes which contain variants that led to the scurred trait. There is a gene, TWIST1, on chromosome 4 that if the animal inherits one of the broken gene variants, the animal develops scurs. But, if an embryo inherits two copies of the broken gene variant, the embryo fails to develop and the pregnancy is lost. See http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022242 The inheritance of "type 2 scurs" in French Charolais due to the  TWIST1 gene is independent of the chromosome 1 variant.

I'm not aware of any scurred variants that have been identified on the X and Y sex chromosomes. So, scurs is not sex-linked, but rather sex-influenced. Sex-linked means the gene is on the X or Y chromosome. It appears that genes involved in horn formation produce different levels of their products in males and females.

I have analyzed the genomes of 3,664 Angus animals, and in that sample we don't see any evidence of crossbred animals. If there are crossbred animals in that data set, they have a very high percentage of Angus ancestry. If you have a straw of semen on a registered bull you know is crossbred, I would be happy to pay to have it genotyped.

It is possible for a population or breed to change very rapidly due to selection. There are lots of examples of this in flies, mice, corn, bacteria, yeast, etc. Here is a blog post I wrote about the effects of selection on the genomes of Angus cattle. http://steakgenomics.blogspot.com/2012/11/birth-date-selection-mapping.html

The point is not scurrs related to a sex-link. It's genetics. To me, personally, the point is...Aberdeen Angus is a black breed with a little white accepted on scrotum and udder and a polled breed (no scurr and no horns!!) If the Association rules not allow scurrs, horns or white off these body places...animals can be not registered. FINAL! In other hand, close the register herd books and make a big club calf country!
Herd books rules must to be respect, genetics is another matter.

-XBAR- said:

  (lol)

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That is a steer and it was probably a crossbred like all the other show steers we classify into breeds.