Rolling the dice with TH, PHA

Several years ago I purchased a heat wave embryo and we implanted it in a leased (from the embryologist) recip cow... pretty bad story ... big dead calf .. hard miserable pull.almost paralyzed the cow..... wife was involved in the pulling etc etc..

.she told me that what I had done was cruel and inhumane and if I ever did that again she would kill the cow first and then kill (or leave) me.. I am sure she meant it.. I felt like a heel

well I think that we know if we could be setting up a TH,PHA disaster when we mate a carrier to a possible carrier..


if we proceed to "roll the dice" and take that chance then I think that is mismanagement (bordering on cruelty)  in my opinion...

Calving is hard enough without buying trouble

OK then

I remember being at the vet one Saturday morning and helping the vet cut out a dead pha calf. It was a mess. It had died during birth or before. It was the nastiest thing I had ever seen. This was back before testing or before people knew what it was. With cattle prices the way they are there is now way I would risk a dead calf plus vet bills. There are way too many good clean bulls for carrier cows or dirty bulls for clean cows to knowingly mate. I saw the comment posted last night from a person that doesnt understand genetics or carrier status I believe.

I don't understand breeding a carrier to a carrier because your chances of having a live carrier are the same as if you bred a non-carrier to a carrier.

hamburgman said:

I don't understand breeding a carrier to a carrier because your chances of having a live carrier are the same as if you bred a non-carrier to a carrier.

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;D

A carrier to a carrrier works out to be 25% dead 25% clean and 50% carrier. That 25% dead is too much of a risk for me. One feeder calf might pay for the whole group to be ai. Plus a dead calf from th or pha can kill the cow or make her not be able to reproduce anymore not to mention vet bills if they have to get involved.

hamburgman said:

I don't understand breeding a carrier to a carrier because your chances of having a live carrier are the same as if you bred a non-carrier to a carrier.

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If you are serious, IMO you don't care about your cows or you don't know how genetics works.......  The theory of if it nicks it would be worth it because it might be "the next heats wave".  Well guess what there is  probably a clean bull that has just as good of chance of nicking just right.  So for the extremely small chance that you can not find a genetically very similar clean bull, that would have just of good of chance of nicking, you are willing to risk your cow.  A cow that you assume might throw the next great one, even if it is "just" a recip cow.  Animal rights groups make up enough to attack us with we don't need to take actions that prove we really don't care about the life of our cows, or the stock we create.......

Pay for the test to KNOW, and mate accordingly.

Limiman12, hamburgman was stating that he did not understand why anyone would breed a carrier to carrier, it does not give them any better chance to get a calf that was a carrier. It does give you a 25 percent chance of a dead calf or worse. I am pretty sure he understands genetics. Now Carlson on the other hand needs to go back and look at some pictures of th and pha calves and see if that is what he wants to put his cows and family through.

vc said:

Limiman12, hamburgman was stating that he did not understand why anyone would breed a carrier to carrier, it does not give them any better chance to get a calf that was a carrier. It does give you a 25 percent chance of a dead calf or worse. I am pretty sure he understands genetics. Now Carlson on the other hand needs to go back and look at some pictures of th and pha calves and see if that is what he wants to put his cows and family through.

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GOOD!    I took it as he was willing to lose a quarter of his calf crop to roll the dice.


Carlson needs to slow down chaing clubby stuff and worry about showing good breeding cattle instead of trying to breed good show cattle.....  I feel fairly confident that he has big dreams and good intentions, just needs to take the steps one a a time.

I saw a post on Facebook today that applies....."PERFECTION IS THE END RESULT! EXCELLENCE IS THE PTH TO GET THERE"

Perfection is the rationalization to reduce freedom.