th phenotypes

GONEWEST said:

Duncan Livestock said:

Our little experience with using club calf sires says that more often than not th carrrier sires/dams produce calves with "the look" needed to compete in the show ring.

We started out by saying we would not use carrier bulls but found out quickly that our calves from th/pha free bulls (for the most part) could not keep up.  From our experience the only clean bull that still provided the calves with the look on a consistent basis needed for today is Who Made Who.  We are speaking for ourselves in this case.  That being said we haven't used him in the past 2 years.

Our best Ali show steer ever was out of an All About You cow.  

This year, our best Mercedes Benz show steer prospect is out of another All About You cow.  We also have another steer sired by our purebred Angus bull out of a Heatwave dam that will work well in the show ring.

95% of the semen we used this year is from carrier bulls.  The only non carrier bulls we used were on th females and first calf heifers.

We have never tested any of our cattle for th/pha.  All of our cows are clean by pedigree except for the calves that we have retained as females (All About You, Heatwave, Eye Candy (this year) Monopoly (next year))

I wouldn't bet the farm on being able to pick out our carriers and non-carriers, but I think we would be right most of the time.

All that being said, we want/need clean females to breed/flush to our th/pha bulls.  The club calf females are more of an experiment than anything and we don't think they will ever out produce our clean pedigree/non club calf females.

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If your carrier cows don't produce as well as the clean cows if will be because of their mongrel genetics not because they carry the TH gene. HOWEVER, I think you can reason from what you have written about your heard, that the best calves you have are from Hi-Maine bulls (clean) and Cows with carrier genetics, probable carriers. Isn't that the same thing as using TH carrier bulls on clean pedigreed cows? So used in that way why wouldn't they produce as well as clean pedigreed cows and TH carrier bulls. When you breed two animals of very, very, mixed heritage is where you ad to the already high inconsistency as well as the probability of the defect expressing itself.

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Our experience is that using THC bulls on our clean pedigree cows will give us better show calves every year.  The 2 examples given were just the best of our usage of clean bulls only, besides Who Made Who who has given us similar results to carrier bulls in terms of quality calves.  Most of our cows are purebreds (black angus) and F1s with a few heinz 57s as well.  For us, we believe the purebred or F1 cow helps.

For us, the purebred/non th/pha carrier cow is not our first choice, but we're trying a few.  If for some reason, we get out of the club calf side of things, we still have our purebred and F1 cows to use for a different market (bulls, replacement heifers, feeders).  For example, next year, we would like to have more purebred heifers to put in to our cow base, so we'll use some sexed female semen.

We're only dealing with a few cows, but that's where we are at right now.

I wasnt stating that you specifically said it was sex linkage, but the scenario you described is most definately sex linkage. Secretariats daughters produced better than him because the big heart defect was found on the X Chromosome, Secretariats sons couldnt inherit or pass on the gene because they didnt get an X Chromosome from him, thus couldnt get the gene.  His daughters however only got an X chromosome from him, making it more likely that they would in turn pass it on.  Regardless that defect does not work the same because in that scenario the size of the heart isnt a matter of dominant and recessive genes, those genes are codominant.  Which is most likely why even though Secretariats daughters produced better racers than most of the racers Secretariat produced, none of those horses have ever lived up to Secretariat himself.

I dont claim to be an expert on genetics, but I do have a pretty good understanding of it.  I am not arguing that the genes for hair, bone, etc and the TH gene are all located closely together on the chromosome, however that doesnt make them closely related or make them have dittily squat to do with each other.  I will agree that they are the same type of genes, but they dont affect each other.  And the TH gene itself has nothing to do with hair.  The fact of the matter is that TH cattle are more likely to have better hair, bone, and look than they are not to have it is because the cattle that passed the mutation on also carried the genes for those things.  If this mutation would have occured in a Holstein then carrier Holstein cattle wouldnt have hair and bone and look like clubby steers.  They would most likely look like whatever Holstein had the mutation. The same as if it would have happened in brahman cattle, they would look like brahmans.  But the fact is here that by coincidence the mutation occured in hairy, big boned, clubby type cattle, though I dont know they were considered clubby at that time.  The recessive gene had nothing to do with making those cattle hairier or bigger boned, if you could trace the same blood lines back before the mutation occured you would see no physical difference between the generation before the defect and the carriers of the next generation. If the "look" that everyone says is special to carriers was caused by the fact that they are carriers , then the gene most likely would have been bred out by default, because cattle with this look have not always been what has been desired.

aj said:

The free market has dictated that you cannot win a steer show with a calf that is not a th carrier. Other wise the th free genetics would take over....PERIOD. If heetseeker wasn't a th carrier he would be worthless. Probably....fun to think about.

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That Bazzoo, AJ, was spread around by Club Calf producers who din't want to get rid of their breeding stock. TH is a genotype, not a phenotype. It is an autosomal recessice gene. Neither Deer Park Improver, nor his sire Clare Man were freaky-made, hairy cattle. In fact, all the Improver daughters i ever saw were early-shedders and very adaptable to grazing hot fescue. You can take that for what it's worth about hair being the indicator of a TH "phenotype".

GB

On that note......I say......all steer shows must be tested th free or they do not participate. Th carriers are not a factor. My bad.

aj said:

On that note......I say......all steer shows must be tested th free or they do not participate. Th carriers are not a factor. My bad.

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Start a show, pay premiums.

It is true that none of Secretariat's descnedants met his standards.  However, since he is ranked as the # 2 racehorse of all time, it would appear that very few other stallions produced his equal, either.  I have often wondered why, after so many years of breeding Thoroughbreds, there has been very, very little improvement in times.  Is it training?  Is it genetics?  Every four years we have so many new world records set in so many sports in the Olympics.  Is it because of human genetic "improvement?"  Is it improved training techniques?  Is it the use of performance enhancing drugs (along with the ability to avoid detection)?  I would guess improved training and performance enhancers would be the major influences. 

tracks are probably faster today than 50 years ago, so the performance is probably inflated today.

take away bleeders and you might make some improvement.  doubt it though.

oakview said:

It is true that none of Secretariat's descnedants met his standards.  However, since he is ranked as the # 2 racehorse of all time, it would appear that very few other stallions produced his equal, either.  I have often wondered why, after so many years of breeding Thoroughbreds, there has been very, very little improvement in times.  Is it training?  Is it genetics?  Every four years we have so many new world records set in so many sports in the Olympics.  Is it because of human genetic "improvement?"  Is it improved training techniques?  Is it the use of performance enhancing drugs (along with the ability to avoid detection)?  I would guess improved training and performance enhancers would be the major influences. 

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I believe the main reason for lack of improvement is the loss of the bigger farms that bred to race. Today's money farms breed to sell. They breed for a confirmation that LOOKS like it can run and run early and that confirmation tends to not to be very sturdy. The emphasis really isn't on racing, but making money. Racing horses is a really good way to lose money. Selling race horses can be a really good way to make money.

AND I fully expect a reply from twisted show stock about how the inheritance of making money is indeed NOT a sex linked trait and if Thoroughbreds had mutated the TH gene they wouldn't be big boned or hairy and that they would need two shots of the TH gene to be able to run faster.

I remember reading an article about the difference in how humans can train to become faster where horses can not. It all has to do with their strides as they stride out they inhale and exhale as the legs come together, you can train them to run more efficient but if they took less time between strides they would not get enough O2 in the blood, or something like that.

No I fully agree with why we havent seen improvement in horse racing, I actually think we have seen some improvement in horse racing, maybe the race winnin times havent gotten any faster, but the number of horses running those times each year has gotten larger.  That and there also comes a time when they really just cant improve anymore.  But like was said earlier, back in the days of all these amazing feats in horse racing there were a lot of Breeder/Owner/Trainers and there were for sure a lot of Breeder/Owners on the race tickets, to a lot of those people it was more than money on the line, it was pride.  As was said, these days look at the race tickets for the big races, you very rarely ever see a Breeder/Owner and a Breeder/Owner/Trainer is almost unheard of.  The big breeding farms are producing horses to look awesome as yearlings to bring big money in the yearling sales.  Its kind of the same as pushing a steer for a jackpot, if you try to win every jackpot around you tend to make the calf peak ahead of time and they are to past their prime to perform at the big show.  Same goes here, those colts look their best as yearlings and 2 yr olds and dont perform as 3 yr olds.  Look at the 2 horses that have been at the top of the Derby and the Preakness, neither one of them raced much as a 2 yr old, so they are a lot fresher this year.

Gonewest-I wasnt trying to down you in my last posts.  I am far to mature and have far to much else to worry about that to be playing nanana booboo on here.  You were entirely correct in your reasoning for Secretariat not producing colts but producing filly's that produced well.  I was simply stating that I disagree with your opinion and theory on the coorelation to the clean bulls.  I dont think it applies, I dont think it is at all the same thing, but that is my opinion and it is okay for people to disagree.  The thing that I dislike on here is if someone disagrees with someone then people have to get all deffesnsive and start calling names and being jerks about it. You know if people never disagreed then nothing would ever change or improve.  Disagreement is what leads to thought.  And sidagreement doesnt have to be mean spirited.  You have your thoughts and theories on the way things are and I have mine.  Hell we could both be wrong because a lot of these arguments still havent been proven by science.  The first step to proving them would be testing every steer that goes in a showring and keeping track of how many of the players are carriers and how many arent. I know a lot of you disagree with me and thats fins.  But my opinion, from my college educated understanding of genetics(I am not just pulling this out of my ass nor am I in any way an expert) but my opinion is that TH doesnt make a difference like so many thinks it does.  I do agree that if we overnight wiped out every animal that was a carrier then we would lose a lot of the top producing genetics and a lot of the top show calves in the nation, but my opinion is that it has nothing to do with Th helping them be better andeverything to do with the fact that some of the best phenotypical producing genetics out there just so happen to be carriers.

In my opinion twistedhock you are 100% wrong. If clean genetics gave the same results a clean line line would have been figured out. I don't know the details of the deal but carriers win shows...PERIOD. You can rationalize and pray to god and do anything you want to you are wrong. Hundreds of thousands of matings have been poured in the grinder and no clean genetics have worked. |Its kinda like the economy. |In my opinion there are some things that work and some things don't work. Ypu can hold your head at an angle and you can try and redistribute wealth and the government can pick and choose winners and loosers and this and that.....but at the end of the day profit runs economies. Producing products at a least cost is the economy. Man.....neither on the right or on the left can steer economies...you have to get out of the damn way and cut er loose. You cannot win wthth free genetics. These genetics thus are worthless to the beef industry. |I know it hurts like hell but it is the truth. YOU CANNOT WIN WITH CLEAN GENETICS. Its not right or wrong but it is a fact.

I am not arguing the fact that carrier genetics have dominated the steer ring, but that doesnt mean that all the steers that have won are carriers, yes there is a high likelihood they are carriers and yes we all assume they are carriers.  I dont argue that.  The part I disagree with is the argument that it is impossible to get the show winning phenotype without having the bad part of the genotype.  I dont think that is the case, I think it is possible, but it doesnt happen overnight, it is a long process with much breeding and selection to get these carrier genetics to produce calves of equal phenotype that dont have the bad part of the genotype. 
Look at the AQHA Halter Horse industry.  Impressive brought in a defect called HYPP and it exploded because those genetics were producing horses that dominated the show ring.  The same thought was there for a while, that you had to live with HYPP if you wanted to be competitive.  But through a lot of selective breeding they have produced double negative horses that are equally as good if not better than the carriers or homozygous horses.  Now yes it took a lot of selective breeding and several years to do, but it happened.  The same with the show pig industry and the stress gene.  Now we still see some HYPP carriers out there and we still see some stress carriers out there, but not as many and they are not as dominant as they once were.
I dont think it will ever happen as quickly in the club calf industry as it did in those industries, and I honestly dont know that it will ever happen.  I am just saying it is possible to do.  There are 2 reasons I dont think it will happen as quickly or may neverhappen in this situation.  First, with both HYPP and Stress homozygous specimens are not lethal at birth and appear perfectly normal.  Thus a lot of people spent a lot of money on animals that they had to handle with kid gloves because the slightest stress could trigger a fatal attack, and still a lot of people lost a lot of money when  they lost animals to those defects. So that gave producers in those industries incentive  a lot of motivation to try and wipe the  deffects out completely so they worked diligently to breed selectively, test, and get the phenotype without the deffect. And it eventually worked.  In this situation homozygous individuals are lethal at birth, thiere isnt any risk of putting a lot into an animal and then losing right before the big show.  The big risk is losing part of the calf crop and losing a cow.  And from I see the people that are knowingly taking a risk of having a lethal calf arent greatly affected by the loss in the big picture.  The people who absolutely cant afford to lose even one calf or cow are taking precautions to not breed carrier to carrier so that they dont have the risk.  The second part with the AQHA is they phsed out the carriers, they put regulations on registration which gave more motivation to selectively breed the deffect out while keeping the phenotype.  Without that type of motivation and with so many people thinking that TH is so important to having good phenotype, we most likely will never get rid of TH and for the time being  they will most likely continue to dominant the  ring.  My argument is not at all against  the fact that dirty genetics are dominating or that if you want to be producing super competitive steers in the foreseeable future that you have to at least be willing to use dirty genetics.  My argument is against the notion that it is absolutely set in stone scientifically impossible to obtain the desired phenotype without having the deffect.  I disagree with that .  No harm done if you disagree with me, I am just stating my opinion on the matter.

Point taken.