Cunia Bulls

[CAB]

McM93. PB Angus cattle according to AAA regitry rules are smoothe double polled so if that is true they would not have the genetics to ever have a horned/scurred animal. They are homo. polled.

The horn gene and scurred gene are separate genes with different modes of inheritance.  The scur gene has a sex link component to it in that for scurs to be expressed a female must be homozygous for the scur gene while a male need only be heterozygous.  Furthermore in most cases an animal that is homozygous polled will not show scurs even if it carries the scurred gene and would show scurs if heterozygous polled.  There are however cases of homozygous polled animals having scurs.

Thus a bull calf sired by Cunia out of a true purebred angus could have scurs if he inherited the scurred gene from Cunia.  However, a heifer calf of the same mating should never have scurs as it would need to be homozygous for them and the angus female should not carry the scur gene.

Now the injection of foreign blood into the Angus gene pool is a totally different story and not many would argue that it has happenned and there most definitely are purebred angus cattle that carry the scurred gene and some that carry the horned gene.   Although I have read arguments that in the early days of the Angus breed development that there were horned animals and that any horns or scurs that turn up today are merely carryovers in the gene pool from that time.  How is that for denial?

You're probably right as rain, but 40/50 years ago if half of the equation was an Angus, you got smooth polled babies.

 

[Lucky_P]

vcsf nailed it.  The scurs came from the Cunia side of the equation.
I've had scurred steers sired by Angus bulls - but the cows are SimAngus - and I know the horn and scur genes are floating along in the background there - still have one horned cow(all her Angus-sired daughters are smooth-polled, but carry the horn gene), and a couple of smooth-polled 3/4 Angus cows that have thrown male calves with scurs - but I have no doubt that the scurs came from the dam's side of the mating - and, bred to a horned bull, I wouldn't be surprised for those (and maybe some others in the herd) to throw horned calves.

That said, as CAB noted, some of the 'foundation' sires in the Angus breed - notably 'Hanton 80' and 'Shah' - both had scurs.

Have there been 'infusions' of non-Angus genetics into the Angus breed from time to time?  Some say yes, some say no; I say...could be...

 

[Freddy]

wHERE do you think all these genitic problems came from ,seems funny that Holsteins had these same problems ,but before the Angus ...