TH and PHA in correlation with quality

From what I have seen and from what i have heard, in this club calf deal the ones that are carriers of either the TH or the PHA are the calves that turn out to be the stoutest. I work mostly with brahman cattle, but cross them up with clubby bulls, so i am trying to learn about them as much as possible. Is the correlation between this carrier gene and quality fact or mith?? And if it is fact is the "club calf world" really trying to remove this genetic disorder from the cattle or carefully leave it in?

Thanks for any input!

What a loaded question!!!

Strictly my opinion: There MIGHT be a correlation between TH and hip structure and hair. BUT.... if you spend some time and give some effort, you can find clean genetics that will compete with the carriers. Go clean!
Those that use that excuse to keep breeding carriers are trying to take the easy way without carrying for the cattle or the breed they are holding the halters of.
There is absolutely no correlation in PHA and "show ring appeal".  The only thing TH and PHA have in common are that when a carrier is bred to a carrier, you can end up with a dead calf (25% of the time).
Point of interest: You mentioned Brahman cattle.... I hope you realize that if you use carrier bulls, and keep the heifer replacements, they can carry the defect. So when you bred your commercial brahman cattle to carrier bulls, they will have dead defective calves. Sometimes the phrase "commericial cattle" is used to decrease the importance of defects. Commercial cattle CAN carry defects, regardless of their breed or bloodlines.

The myth in your statment is that "Club calf world is trying to remove this genetic disorder".... NO THEY ARE NOT.  Again, many in the clubbie world are taking the easy way and to the hell with preservation/health of the breed. It is much easier to breed cattle without looking into defects vs. just picking the "bull of the month" club.

Again, just my opinion!

Many of the popular club calf bulls are TH carriers with the exception of the Who Made Who bloodlines. We have a Hannibal steer we are showing this year out of a cow who is probably a TH carrier because she has Heatseeker in there and the hair is awesome. But if you are breeding for females use a clean bull but in my opinion it is ok to use a carrier bull if you are shooting for steers. You just need to manage the carrier cattle correctly.

Thanks for the comments, and yes i am aware that the replacement heifers out of the brahman cattle have a chance of carrying the gene if they are sired by a carrier bull. Now a more specific question would be if for example you flushed a clean cow to a carrier bull, and had 10 healthy offspring. Say 5 of the calves were impressive and what you were hoping for, and the other 5 were more of a cull type that just were not as good. From my experience the 5 good ones will most of the time be carriers and the 5 bad will most of the time be free....have yall noticed similar results??

th calves just seem to have a 10-30% advantage of a club calf look.I don't know what it is hair,hip,leg, just the look. It is so weird.

  In 2004 all of our cows were clean. Decided to push the club steer deal a little more aggressively & we now have 26 potential carriers out of 56 total head of one or both defects, TH & PHA. Our thoughts were that with the tests that we could breed around it pretty easily and have so far in that we have never had a PHA or TH positive calf born here. 2 weeks ago we pulled blood samples on 17 head of heifers B/C we thought that if we were going to play the club calf game that if we were breeding to clean bulls B/C we did not know the TH/PHA status, especially TH, in the club deal B/c of the " look" that you can gain by using TH carrier bulls, that we were wasting our time. We have 9 more head to test and we will have them all done. I hope that as we proceed forward that there are more clean bulls that rise to the top as far as being competitive in the ring, but until we find those bulls, I will continue to use carriers & testing to make decisions for matings. The ideal situation here is a clean cow bred to a carrier bull. It pains me to say that somewhat, but it is what I perceive as being real in the club world.
  I think that we all will make our own decisions in the end as to what we are going to breed and how we want to manage our herds. Saying that PPL don't care about the cattle B/C they use carrier bulls simply is not true in almost all cases and I sure don't want to be classified in that category. JMO. Brent

ok so when you breed a clean cow to a carrier bull you are now a fifty fifty risk of that calf being a carrier.....therefore you have a fifty fifty chance of having a calf good enough to be competitive. To me it seems like you could take your clean cows and breed to clean bulls and through intense selection get a calf crop that is not only competitive but will be more consistent. I understand this would take time but with ET work now that time interval would be shortened greatly. jmo

When we choose our replacements, we try to keep the best ones kind of regardless of whether or not they are potential carriers. I wish that I could say that we only keep heifers that are 100% clean, but that wouldn't be true so we keep what we think will be the best replacements and test from there. Without the test I admit we would more than likely have a full blown mess and would not be able to use potential carriers. It is almost a catch 22 situation to me. Thank God for the test and could you imagine breeding without the test. It may actually gotten rid of the carrier lines quicker if we didn't have the test. It may actually have gotten rid of breeds of cattle faster, period.

at our place (raising purebred shorthorns, and sometimes mating to a few clubby bulls)- it seems that to get the hair you have to go TH+, and to get the added stoutness- you have to be PHA+...  I also think that the desirable hip structure comes somewhere in there too sometimes!

Although we aren't the biggest herd in the country, it seems that I can tell if a calf is dirty at birth...  IMO it pretty darn hard to make them with the needed hair, bone, look, and whatever else they posses... as we call it the x-factor (quality).  Go into a pen, pick out the frail made, slick haired ones and they'll be double clean.  We have THC cattle, PHAC cattle, and double dirty cattle...  We also have clean ones...  To me, I worry much more about PHA than I do about TH.  IMO TH won't kill the cow, just the calf.  Just my 2 cents.

I know there are some good genetics out there that will make great cattle who are double clean- (we're all trying to find them and use them).  And I know there are many more people out there who wouldn't dream of using carrier cattle.  IMO carrier cattle can have their place in the short run.  In the long run, I think raising and producing clean cattle and building a clean herd can and will pay off.  It's so much easier to make a breeding decision- and it's so much more comforting to know there wasn't a mistake at the lab while reading a blood result, or whatever else...  Making, and letting clean cattle reproduce takes the alot of the guess work out in terms of keeping calves and cows alive!  

In the purebred side of things, maintaining a solid, carrier free foundation herd is quite a bit more important than the club calf side of things...  IMO the clubby world is a cluster of big money guys just going with the calendar bull of the month- trying to make THE GREAT ONE- and not worrying about how many dead calves, cows, or crippled sale barn calves they make.  It seems that some guys own 40 cows and breed to 30 different bulls...  Everything is just a mix match of non-uniformity.  The clubby ordeal is all about making a market animal project...  THC and PHA carrier meat doesn't taste any different...  to me.

It seems when that when clubby world gets in a bit of trouble, they just go back to the purebred side of things to fix their problems; and they should...  Defects mainly...  maternal ability & calving ease too!  Just put a little Angus, Maine, or Shorthorn blood in them... All the more reason to maintain a defect free purebred base.  But on the same token, a THC and PHAC cow will still make milk, and raise a calf...  

Basically, it boils down to producer preference, and whether or not they believe in the (dirty factor) that can make a calf better in some area..  Whether it does or doesn't, that's just speculation, sometimes.  I think all cattle, whether dirty or not, have a place in the industry.  Those who want to use it to their advantage- go for it...  Those who want to maintain a clean herd- for their advantage- go for it.  Those who want to do both- by keeping a free herd, and breeding to dirty bulls- for a "Hybrid vigor like effect" go for it...  

but all 3 categories of people still have to worry about...

When's the next defect coming out?  

You won't gain much if anything by breeding to a PHAC bull, however TH will give you a clubbier look.

From my experience and i have some pha carrier cows but no th carriers.
PHA will add bone and muscle over a full sib that is clean of the birth defect.  But are also larger at birth with the added bone and muscle.
TH will add muscle and hair.  I have seen full sibs that are THC and THF and there is no comparison on muscle and hair. 
Look at the winners at the major shows and what they are out of for genetics.  Either sire or dam was a carrier and would say the offspring carriers the defect as well. 
I am  not promoting the defects as i test my cows to make decisions on how to breed them.  But when trying to raise major winners you have to be utilizing these birth defects especially on the market animal side of things.  The breeding animal side of it i would say is not as much of advantage except for the hair. 
There are genetics out there that can compete that are clean but are fewer than the carrier animals.

if everyone cuts off at least 1-2 inches of hair, what do you need all the extra hair for other than to smooth out condition and give a general impression of fullness or extra bone that is antagonistic with marbling?  the other thing that's confusing is that there is a general problem of being too straight in the hocks, yet clip job after clip job seems to accentuate this.

No two full sibs show the difference to me more than Vegas and Sin City - just look at their pics and you can tell the difference in phenotype the THC brings.

We dont have any "possible" th or pha carriers in our herd. All the clubbie cows were tested and are clean. I wanna try and keep it that way so our options to breed are opened up more. Maybe down the road if we get a really good female we will keep her in the herd and breed around it. I like to stay away from the carrier females, but have no problem breeding to a carrier bull. jmo

You won't gain much if anything by breeding to a PHAC bull

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It's too easy to predict carrier status on cattle based solely on bone/muscle to agree with that statement.

Jeff_Schroeder said:

You won't gain much if anything by breeding to a PHAC bull

Click to expand...

It's too easy to predict carrier status on cattle based solely on bone/muscle to agree with that statement.

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I thought that the TH defect was the one that trasmitted the look.  I don't know much about these defects as I raise angus but is there added look with PHA?  Just curious and don't have any experience.

I wasn't referring to the "TH look", just the bone and mass that seems to come with PHA.

The TH gene involves the formation of the hindlimb, hence the mutation influences structure of the hindlimb giving it that "look" - there is apparently no know influence of the gene on hair, but they do appear hairy - so it may be that we don't know the genes effect on hair growth or that the mutation frequently travels with the hairy gene - or it may be that there is no effect of the gene on hair but people pick out the carriers with hair and attribute it to the mutation, and in reality there are thousands of bad haired carriers out there

people often seem to think they can tell the carriers from the clean - just like they can tell who the sire is by looks - no wonder so many pedigrees are wrong

there is no documented effect on PHAC on phenotype of cattle - since we don't really know the function of the gene it is hard to pinpoint what it might do, but the "expert opinion" is that there isn't a characteristic phenotype like PHA -

people see what they want to see even if it isn't there

DL said:

people see what they want to see even if it isn't there

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wait, what?

I'm all for dismissing things based on the science not being there.  However, after looking through a dozen sets of bulls looking specifically for bone and muscle and then seeing their test results it's beyond my ability to claim it was just random.

Is the eye test 100% right?  Nope, that would be crazy to claim.  It also defies logic to think that either of these genetic disorders just randomly propagated through natural selection for unrelated traits and that there is no phenotypic advantage that assisted in their spread.

You cited the selection reasons behind the propagation of TH.  Few Angus people will deny that the chase for carcass traits and the outlier status of 1680 for those traits lead to the NH issues.  Do you think PHA is just a random dumb luck defect that doesn't have any phenotype advantages that would have lead to its spread?