Commend the AAA

The American Angus Association has made rules to govern AM, NH and CA so that by January 1, 2012 for AM, and June 15, 2012 for NH, no Angus will be registered that is a carrier. After that time, owners may use carrier bulls or carrier cows in their own herds but cannot register offspring unless the offspring are tested defect free. This extended time period allows breeders to recover their registered herds by replacing carrier mothers with non-carrier daughters. An animal designated as a carrier of dwarfism will not have offspring registered.


Come on American Shorthorn Assoc-  step up to the plate- MAKE A PLAY!

we need to have a LIKE button...  (clapping)

I second the motion.  At the least, I would like to see some sort of notation on the pedigree of carrier animals, which in my opinion should include untested offspring of carrier animals.  We retain an asterisk for eternity.  Could it be too difficult to put some other symbol on the pedigree for genetic defect carriers?  I know the ASA website shows the TH and PHA status, if known, but this information appears in no sale catalogs that I am aware of.  I do commend those breeders that plainly identify all carriers in their catalogs.  There needs to be some avenue to uniformly identify these cattle to the uninformed.  To just tell people they buy at their own risk just isn't good enough.  Shorthorn plus papers are green.  Maybe defect carrier papers should be blue.  Maybe untested offspring of carriers should have a yellow pedigree.  Just let people know.

-XBAR- said:

The American Angus Association has made rules to govern AM, NH and CA so that by January 1, 2012 for AM, and June 15, 2012 for NH, no Angus will be registered that is a carrier. After that time, owners may use carrier bulls or carrier cows in their own herds but cannot register offspring unless the offspring are tested defect free. This extended time period allows breeders to recover their registered herds by replacing carrier mothers with non-carrier daughters. An animal designated as a carrier of dwarfism will not have offspring registered.


Come on American Shorthorn Assoc-  step up to the plate- MAKE A PLAY!

Click to expand...

So you think the AAA is the paragon of virtue when it comes to recessive defects, eh?

9J9 was identified by DNA as a carrier (and likely founder)  of AM in Dec of 2008; 1680 was identified by DNA as a carrier (and likely founder) of NH in June of 2009; Premier Independence was identified as a carrier of CA in July of 2010 - the defects were identified way before the DNA test was developed

the long time frame gives ample opportunity for people to dump their carrier genetics on commercial cattlemen - check out some of the old catalogs -

The AAA did not really lead the way in identifying these recessive defects - in fact it took several years and lots of pressure for them to acknowledge they existed - CA (FCS) had been demonstrated to be a recessive mutation in Angus (and the putative founder identified by pedigree analysis) by breeding trials done in Australia in and around 2006 - the AAA didn't jump on that information.

Different forms of dwarfism still exists in the Angus breed but no one is looking. The long nose dwarf appeared in the breed at the turn of this century - and the mutation identified - despite a test for the long nosed dwarf, and evidence that the dam of the carrier sire 7D7 (a popular and prolific flush female) was a carrier, the board stated "Viewed in terms of registration numbers, the pedigree of the eight identified carriers in issue here number 388 registered progeny and 457 registered grand progeny. Those numbers stand in marked contrast to the 2,791,450 animals that have been registered by the Association since 1993, the year the oldest of the eight animals was registered". These numbers do not include offspring of the dam of the 7D7 bull - - she only just recently turned up as a carrier on their list

OS has been traced to a black Angus bull born at the turn of the century (1900)  but the association still maintains that the test for the  mutation in Red Angus will not work for black - even though a registered Black Angus bull in the ASA (Simmie) herd book tested as a carrier for OS

While the notion of not registering carriers might be considered noble, if it was truly noble then registration of carriers would have ceased on the day the DNA test was available for commercial use - which of course it did not.

On a different note, of the 10 most popular Shorthorn AI sires for 2006 calves, three were carriers for both TH and PHA and one was a carrier of TH (Shorthorn Country, April 2007) -  do you really think they will not register carriers??? can they afford not to register carriers?

If people really understood lethal recessive defects and people were breeders not multipliers the frequency of carriers would decrease without association intervention to limit registration

Guess all those carrier cows will be bred to simi bulls to jump on the sim-angus commercial bull band wagon.  I noticed more of the commercial sim-angus bulls at angus bull sales.  Is it just that it is a good cross for commercial cattlemen or is it a way to use the carrier cows in the program and pass them on to the unsuspecting commercial guy?

Unfortunately most associations are more interested in the money than doing the right thing.  Go to any one from dogs, goats, cattle, and horses and you will see the same things.  Follow the money!

i would like a permit process to breed carriers.  who knows what we are throwing away along with 1-6 genes.  it's too early  to narrow the gene pool.

The genetic defect issue has been discussed on here so much...I know how I think it should be handled, but there are as many opinions on genetic defects as politics.  Maybe it just boils down to money in many cases.  As far as I'm concerned, in my herd TH and PHA are a thing of the past.  If they're a carrier or a non-tested descendant of a carrier, they won't be on my place.  I just wish they would get this foot/ankle defect test ready soon.  I handled my issue with this relativeley new problem by getting rid of the bull.  If the calves had been out of my cows, the cows would be gone, too.  But, to illustrate the differing opinions on this issue, a friend of mine actually got mad at me for selling the bull at the sale barn.  He said that they had used the bloodlines often and sold offspring for quite a bit of money.  They will continue to use those genetics with no reservations.  They will most likely continue to sell possible TH carriers with no test results, too.  I could talk until I'm blue in the face with no results.  I guess if that is what some people want to do, as long as it is legal there is little I can do about it.  

This is an old topic that will take years, and according to an earlier poster's info, maybe more than a century.  (thumbsup) I do like an earlier poster's suggestion of "permits" when registering carrier cattle. I do have fears that "our breed" (no matter what kind you prefer) will be deemed as totally taboo if we keep allowing carrier cattle to be sold to commercial buyers, especially without educating them on the risks of carriers. However, as most of us know, people that have cattle only to keep an agricultural tax exemption (and we have thousands of them in Texas) will never care enough to take care of business, even if provided with correct information. We as seedstock producers need to be more than careful selling carrier cattle to "civilians". <rock>
I have taken a more lenient view recently on slaughtering all carrier cattle. Amazing what happens when you happen to own some...If we slaughtered every genetically defective cow in America, our gene pool would become amazing small. The key to this debacle is to produce clean cattle from the carrier cattle that look like/perform like carriers. The reason we have carriers is these matings were what we desired to produce in the first place...
One of my favorite "life" quotes is from Sam Rayburn, "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a damned good carpenter to build one."
I see this quote as being very relevant to where we are. We need a ton of carpenters in our business.... <party>

I suspect that it is a struggle for every breed association besides the AAA to just keep the doors open financially.  There's no way there is much in the way of money coming in the doors. 

In my opinion, it's not an Association's job to regulate the kind of cattle we breed.  That's our job.  Their purpose is to provide a consistent mechanism to track pedigrees and performance data. 

The money issue isn't going to get better for breed associations, particularly smaller ones.  There are plenty of purebred Angus breeds that serve primarily commercial customers - that are quitting registration because of the expense and becasue their customers don't care if their bulls are registered or not.  And these aren't Angus breeders with carrier cattle.  I know one that has around 1,000 head of purebred Ohlde-bloodline cows that just said to heck with the registration issue.  It takes a whole lot of advertising and promotion to make the cost of whole herd registration worth the expense.  I'm in the early stages of trying to breed purebred, registered Angus cattle.  Every real Angus breeder I deal with (by real I mean long-term ranches who depend on it for their livelihood - not the Angus "rich man made his money doing something else and has to spend it on something" mafia) cares very little about EPDs in the grand scheme of things - they want middle of the road cows - not the ones with off the chart EPDs.  They don't need numbers to tell them what's a good one. 

So, if anything, I see the role and stature of Breed Associations decreasing in the future.  Which ones are even truly strong now?  There just aren't that many Shorthorn cattle in the U.S.  Same thing with Maines.  Red Angus are probably doing ok.  Simis might be in decent shape.  No idea on the American breed cattle.

I have always wondered why the breed associations just don't restrict registrations on Bulls? I mean if all bulls must be clean to be registered then all purebred producers, and a lot of commercial producers would only be using TH and PHA free bulls. All TH and PHA carrier bulls must be steered or unregistered. This would not effect cow herds in anyway. It would also prevent any TH and PHA defected calves in registered herds and through time would help to eliminated some of the problems.