What happens if you breed a carrier to a carrier

What happens if you have a Th carrier cow and breed it to a th carrier bull? will it always come out a th positive calf will some just be a carrier of the gene or could it even be free?

Show Steaks said:

What happens if you have a Th carrier cow and breed it to a th carrier bull? will it always come out a th positive calf will some just be a carrier of the gene or could it even be free?

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simple punnet square.. been discussed on her a zillion times..

1/4 of the time, you get dead calf
1/4 of time, you get clean calf
1/2 of the time, you get "normal" carrier calf

I guess it all boils down to do you risk running the 25% chance that 25% of your calf crop will come dead? 

is the positive calf going to ruin my cow getting it out?

Show Steaks said:

is the positive calf going to ruin my cow getting it out?

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just depends.. TH likely no.. PHA likely yes

To be honest, I couldn't tell you from direct personal experience... just what I have read, seen, and heard about.

Why take a chance???  Yes it could kill your cow.  They are deformed its not an easy exit.  Why would you want to take the chance?

The world ends. I wouldn't risk it...

neighbor has had a few TH calves, always born alive, unassisted.

what happens when you breed a carrier to a carrier is that you didn't buy a better calf who wasn't a carrier for probably less money than the mess you are going to get into and take forever to get out of.

Show Steaks said:

What happens if you have a Th carrier cow and breed it to a th carrier bull? will it always come out a th positive calf will some just be a carrier of the gene or could it even be free?

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Here is an easy way to look at it.

If you breed two animals that carry a lethal genetic defect the offspring can be as follows
1 Calf can be free of any defects becasue neither parent donated the recessive lethal defect. THF
1 Calf will be affected and look like the attached pictures THC- they may live for a while but eventually may succumb to the defects. Abdominal hernia potentially exposed spinal cord or brain with severely twisted legs or even displaced.
2 Calves will go on to carry the lethal gene but appear perfectly normal. THC

Delievery TH calves can be tricky depending on how badly they are deformed. I saw a sale recently where they intentionally mated 2 carriers and sold embryo's. Ethically I couldn't do that to produce a "winning" animal.
Does this help?

PH is a similar in the matings but if much much more severly deformed. Youtube links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bsu7tvjMUM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_CA2qr17n8

Never had a TH calf but the PHA calf we had, or you could say didn't have, because it never made it out of the cow even with a c-section. Needless to say it killed the cow too.

Someone gave you the percentages based on the science, but I would say that the chances of having a defect when breeding two carriers are more than 25%, but that is my opinion.

I don't know why a person would even comptemplate passing on a genetic defect in the first place, especially if the odds are so good that the results would be negative!!

I am not sure if my cow is a carrier seeing how i do not know if her sire or dam was ever a carrier of th that is, she has a ton of hair which raised an eyebrow for me, bred her to a bull not knowing his carrier status and having a perfectly healthy calf a month old, i didnt know what the odds were of two carrier parents have a normal calf was my question

JTM said:

Never had a TH calf but the PHA calf we had, or you could say didn't have, because it never made it out of the cow even with a c-section. Needless to say it killed the cow too.

Someone gave you the percentages based on the science, but I would say that the chances of having a defect when breeding two carriers are more than 25%, but that is my opinion.

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The risk of having a dead calf every time you breed a carrier to a carrier is 25%

so out of 100 calves from this mating there will be about 25 dead. 

That doesn't mean that an individual person with a few of these matings can't get lucky and have no dead calves

Nor does it mean that an individual person with a few of these matings can't get  unlucky (real unlucky) and have all dead calves.

It is sort of like male-female calves -you may have a run of boys but if you look at 100 calves about 50 of them will be female and 50 male -

Hmmm Show Steaks kinda surprised with all the info on this on the board over the 3 years you have been here you didn't know the answer -not all hairy cows are THC -  you could test your cow