Obese gene

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knabe

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did i read that right? a behavior "gene".


perhaps ext without his behavior gene has more marbling.


one would think so as he's low, but some of his offspring are triple him and grand get some are even higher.


perhaps his behavior is masking a lot of marbling.
 

librarian

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I have often wondered the same about EXT, because I see that he does seem to transmit marbling.  Every time I tell myself that disposition influences marbling, I think, yeah but EXT was a supposed to be jerk and look what he did for carcass quality.

I think the management EPD would probably the most useful information in all this.
 
All this came up because I had a couple mid August calves that stayed on their mothers all winter and were weaned a couple weeks ago.  The mothers had grass hay, all they wanted, and minerals over the winter .  These are the fattest weaning calves I have ever had.  Usually I calve in March and wean in November.
The mothers are in really good condition and we had a long, cold winter.  One mom was a first calf Shorthorn heifer out of my Scotch type bull.  I was kind of knocking this heifer at one point for being too fat and carrying a lot of fat in her brisket.  The other was an old Angus cow that could get fat on "sawdust and sand".  Both calves are out of my Scotch Type bull (the Shorthorn calf is double bred). The double bred calf is an exaggerated version of another heifer I got out of that bull.
I saw a picture (attached) of another related heifer built the same way.
A smart person said the heifer in this picture might have the obese gene, and I assumed that was a bad thing.  Now I am rethinking it.
I am just posting the picture as an example of phenotype. I have no idea what her genotype is and I am not saying she has the obese gene, just saying all these animals are built the same way.

 

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librarian

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I have often studied harlan Richie's Historical Review of Cattle Type
https://www.msu.edu/~ritchieh/historical/cattletype.html
Does the marbling come from Emulation 31 or the ornery gene?

These are my fat calves.  I will just have to get the test, I guess, to check out the hypothesis.
Old timers, is the short fat calf the type that used to be around?  Probably the type Oakview says we are better off without.  I do think she is too extreme.
Yes, she has horns.
 

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GONEWEST

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I am sure there are lots of good things to come out of all this sort of discussion and research. But the fact remains that there is much more variation in carcass related traits BETWEEN breeds than WITHIN breeds. Everyone knows that Angus and Angus cross cattle, Galloways and I am sure Shorthorns if given the opportunity, grade better. European breeds yield higher. Over the last decade Angus breeders have shown us that the animals selected for high carcass trait EPD's are slab sided razor backs that can't cut it in a commercial environment. A tremendous amount carcass quality depends on environment. Days on high quality feed. IMO, and with that fact in mind and knowing that there is not nearly as much variation within a breed, any effort to try to identify animals who are superior in carcass traits is practically useless. As an example, the American Simmental Association has spent no telling how many thousands of dollars and research time so that they can tell me that if I use the highest Rib Eye EPD bull in the breed I can expect to get a carcass with less than one half of one square inch of Rib Eye larger than if my neighbors average Simmental bull gets in the pasture and breeds my cows. Did I REALLY need to know that?????? It would have been much more practical and more advantageous to members of the Simmental Association if the money and effort would have been spent promoting and selling the breed and its advantages. But then these EPD inventors that work for the breed associations wouldn't have any way to justify their high paying jobs.

There are practical reasons that prohibit beef production from being compared with that of swine, poultry or milk production as far as genetic technology is concerned. Chief among these is environment. Swine and poultry and to a lesser extent dairy are all produced in a controlled environment. These industries are dominated by one breed or breed cross of the applicable species. That can't be done in beef production. No one breed or cross fits all the different environments that have to be used to make beef. In any species when you select for one individual trait or even one set of important traits, you lose others. In poultry, pork or dairy production that might be fine. For instance losing the mothering ability in Holsteins. But in beef production, due to the diverse environments used to produce beef, these trade offs can be impractical. Therefore the genetic progress in beef production is slower because there are practical factors that hold it back. The lack of progress does not come from an unwillingness to embrace new technology but from practical reasons that must be addressed before anything else.
 

chambero

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Gonewest - that's a good way of putting it.  In reality, pork and poultry have largely eliminated environment as a variable due the animals much shorter growth periods and smaller size which works together to allow for indoor or highly confined feeding.

I think environment plays an equal role to genetics on many cattle traits including calving ease and rate of gain
 

GONEWEST

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With more and bigger dry lot dairies, milk production is becoming an even more controlled environment, too.
 

aj

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I really don't know what the heck you guys are talking about. I'd say say 20 replacement heifer calves.....wean them......run them with the cows all winter on stalks.....grass....NO GRAIN. Keep the top 50% and dump the rest. All the talk does NOTHING! Either use natural pressure or shut up. jmo
 

librarian

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Right, let the environment do the sorting rather than a DNA test.  But you could do a DNA test on the cows that are working in your environment to figure out why. Maybe.
The part that I find interesting is the role environment plays in how and when genes are expressed. I wasn't curious about marbling, I was curious about if a cow that raises a fat calf over the winter and stays fat doing it might have the obese gene, and if that were so, then maybe that gene disposed them to put extra fat into their milk as well as on their back.  That type of cow might work well in a fall calving situation, overwintering on a lot of over ripe hay or stockpiled grass.
Most of us think about different types of cattle all the time, and which type is working best for us.
But yes, it is totally using a canon to kill an ant to think about all those proteins and pathways etc.

 

librarian

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from Darwin, Origin of Species, page 284:
...the difficulty lies in understanding how such correlated modifications of structure could have been slowly accumulated by natural selection.
This difficulty, though appearing insuperable, is lessened, or, as I believe, disappears, when it is remembered that selection may be applied to the family, as well as to the individual, and may thus gain the desired end.  Thus, breeders of cattle wish the flesh and fat to be well marbled together; the animal has been slaughtered, but the breeder has gone with confidence to the same stock and has succeeded. ..


In the chart about incidence of tt bulls in various breeds, the highest percentage was in the Hereford breed.  http://homepage.usask.ca/~schmutz/leptin.html
Couldn't some grad student look at this across other breeds, especially the British breeds and see how the expression relates to management?

These questions and observations are not new, and I refer to Dr. Clarke from his book Cattle Problems Explained, from 1880.
http://books.google.com/books?id=kDFFAAAAYAAJ&dq=cattle%20problems%20explained&pg=PA164#v=onepage&q=cattle%20problems%20explained&f=false
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Saving Of Muscle In Fattening Cattle.
Exercise and Juicy Meat versus Waste and Degeneration of the Muscles.

The practice of Mr. John D. Gillette, of Logan Co., 111., and others, in exercising their cattle, including the famous prize steers of 1877, led to much more discussion than would have taken place if he had failed to carry off the prizes at Chicago. But the superior quality of the beef produced by his out-door feeding, under the exercise incident to it, suggests a little further inquiry as to the causes of such a juicy and superior quality in his grade Short-horns, or any other cattle, there having been many other successes in feeding under such or similar management.

In many instances, prize cattle in the London market and elsewhere, have been affected with '' fatty degeneration," or degeneration of the muscles; and, as this condition is met with in stall-fed cattle, while cattle having moderate exercise are not so affected, the origin of fatty degeneration requires some thought. It appears most conspicuously in a degenerated condition of the muscles that are necessarily used during exercise, suggesting the idea that inactivity gives rise to it, as this disorder is known to result from disuse, or inaction, in other parts of the system. It is necessary, first, to see how the size of the muscles is maintained, so that causes and consequences may be compared in ascertaining why the size and substance are reduced, or changed, under certain artificial conditions. Motion in the muscles causes wearing change; wear gives occasion for renewal, causing a demand for nutritive blood supply, in proportion to motion and waste.

Many fat cattle have sufficient vigor of muscle and circulation to escape this disorganizing process—the fatty degeneration of the muscles. But others are seriously affected by it. The disorganization of the fibres and fascicles of the muscles results from disuse and inaction in the legs or other affected parts of the animal; this inaction itself resulting from reduced or prohibited exercise.

In alluding to the practice of Mr. John D. Gillette, and others of Central Illinois, in fattening cattle in their groves and pasture lots, thus allowing them to indulge in considerable voluntary exercise, it was stated that other successes from similar management had been observed. For instance, Hereford steers have been, and probably still are, frequently fatted and finished off in England on good grass, in open pastures, and without night penning; and the juicy quality of their beef is abundantly well known in the London and other markets of that country. On a more extended scale, Short-horn grades and fine common steers and heifers, in hundreds of herds, and many thousands of instances, fatten rapidly and well on the ample, open Western ranges of rich grass, fully maintaining their muscular proportion by adequate daily exercise. And many steers are fatted during winter weather in ample yards, provided with simple sheds, these cattle voluntarily seeking shelter or indulging in gentle activity, as they require.




 

aj

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Can you........could I send in blood for a test......the cc  tt    thing a mcfloppy? I had a cow that was fat all the time....used two of her sons heavily.......she raised good calves......milked good.....is the test like the 50 k test?
 
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