you either practice close breeding or you don`t...nothing wrong with not; so why the pretense? because down in the core, I think some know it`s a breeder`s ultimate step, and most never had the courage to do it...or had enough confidence in their stock...
Danny Miller
Posts : 31 Join date : 2010-11-11 Age : 66 Location : KY
you either practice close breeding or you don`t...nothing wrong with not; so why the pretense? because down in the core, I think some know it`s a breeder`s ultimate step, and most never had the courage to do it...or had enough confidence in their stock...[/quote] That pretty much says it all.
jonken
Posts : 109 Join date : 2011-12-17 Location : nemo
Jon, was the registered hog business as silly as the registered Angus business before it was replaced by the PIC`s of the world?Cow, Lot 446[ tag 7749] by Net Worth, born in 2007. Reg No. +15774639. SAV Emblynette Diamond 6377 is her dam, now 16 years old. She has 109 progeny totalling $457,900. Lot 446 is the dam of SAV Harvestor, top 2011 bull at $275,000. Lot 446 brought $350,000 on Feb. 11, 2012! Lot 446 values: BW 4.9, Milk 34, YW 105, Marb +.35, Rea +.28 Lot 446 sold open and ready to flush. No doubt she is very familiar with the process! Heifer lot 447 [tag 1370] is a May 14, 2011 daughter of Lot 446, and sired by SAV Heavy Hitter. Lot 447 sold for $105,000. Lot 505, Jan, 2011 heifer by Iron Mountain sold for $52,000 to Herbster.
Other top females at [451-$15,500], [481-$27,000], [455-$25,000], [455-$25,000], [458-$25,000], [497-$32,000], 504-$23,000], [503-$20,000]
As mentioned above, this was simply a fantastic merchandising event ,accenting the terrific demand and market for the documented traits of the Aberdeen Angus breed. Today's Angus breeders should be very, very thankful for the previous pioneer breeders and AAA staff that understood the value of measuring and recording the important traits, and thus were able to produce and market high quality beef through the fantastic CAB program. CAB can rightly claim to have saved the beef industry. All the folks attending this sale will be talking about it for their lifetime, or at least until someone can top it! I have all bull prices plus their updated EPDs and adjusted IMF and REA scans.
I find it quite incredulous that the old man who wrote the above could be so awed by such an event....but there`s a bright side in it for me; there`s worse things than being old...one of them is being old and still ignorant...though ignorance can be bliss... they seem to operate on the theory that A rising con raises all con ships...
Mike , I'm sure the hogs are worse and what you have listed looks like the payroll for the n.y. yankees . Jon
jonken
Posts : 109 Join date : 2011-12-17 Location : nemo
As I embark upon my second Dear Jon letter, I am filled with angst, over etiquette and proper protocol for responce, from a response to a Dear Jon letter. This is becoming twisted in my mind. In a slower time, weeks, or even months could transpire between correspondence. In this age of instant gratification, I am not sure if I am gratified. Relying on others for our own gratification is an ungratifying experience in and of itself, though the dangers of self gratifcation appear just as dangerous. As in all things, be they goats, chickens or pigs or cows, a moderate level of medium gratifaction seems best.
In a world of medium selection, with equal parts of contribution from man and nature, would Hildalgos be more repeatable, or a more regular occurance?
I am currently involved in a very scientific, Hidlagoesque experiment, in which all the billies get to mate with all the nannies. The only selection being practiced is the unfit get removed from the population before mother nature has the final say. This would be far too expensive of a venture to make on cows or horses, but goats are basically just ugly little cows, with uglier kids. The laws of nature still apply to them as well. The beefiest goats are seldom the milkiest. The milkiest are never the beefiests. Somewhere in between seems to make a pretty nice little functional goat. It all gets to sounding really familar of other sermons preached from Mountaintop.
As I ramble on I forget just what we were quarreling over to begin with, so I forgive you, but I do wish for you to expand upon your true thoughts of Hildalgo and the ways to mimic the selection methods, of superior creations of nature.
Bootheel
Dear Joe, I can’t remember ever being deemed worthy of a second Dear Jon letter, so when you wrote “I forget just what we were quarreling over to begin with, so I forgive you.” I surely do have an over whelming concern for how our spouses might misinterpret the depth of this relationship.
Hildalgo’s creation more than likely had more to do with a proper relation between humanity and nature than anything else. Better than any words I can come up with, I’ll let Wendell Berry’s words taken from his essay “Preserving Wildness” speak for my line of thinking.
“Breeders of domestic animals, likewise, know that, when a breeding program is too much governed by human intention, by economic considerations, or by fashion, uselessness is the result. Size or productivity, for instance, will be gained at the cost of health, vigor, or reproductive ability. In other words, so-called domestic animals must remain half wild, or more than half, because they are creatures of nature. Humans are intelligent enough to select for a type of creature; they are not intelligent enough to make a creature. Their efforts to make an entirely domestic animal, like their efforts to make an entirely domestic human, are doomed to failure because they do not have and undoubtedly are never going to have the full set of production standards for the making of creatures. From a human point of view, then, creature making is wild. The effort to make plants, animals, and humans ever more governable by human intentions is continuing with more determination and more violence than ever, but that does not mean that it is nearer to success. It means only that we are increasing the violence and the magnitude of the expectable reactions. “ Hoping my simplistic thinking doesn’t tarnish our relationship. Jon
Larry has emailed a long post including pictures, but my main computer has become as unstable as a mainstream registered breeder; it spends most of it`s time checking for problems, even more repairing them, and the job is never fully done...a malware "selling" virus is in the system, and so until I get it debugged, I am relegated to this laptop...and closer to the registered business than I ever want to be
Been lots of good discussion lately on KC..... Kent's archives of history are interesting - linebreeding - cow families - using old vs. new bulls - values - and moreso in particular I'd like to address "heterosis". Just sitting here throwing in my two cents worth of repetitive comments during these much needed rainy but much too cool days - worried about a late frost as the sky clears. I see Tom D. must have plenty of idle time enjoying life in his paradise, or is he just resting after a long day's hard work......if he lived in WY right now, Tom would have his winter clothes on sitting in front of the fireplace with a hot drink .
Will wrote
LL, like always you leave a lot to think about. Max technology is not a luxury it is a necessity. No overlap with expensive chemicals or seed and fertilizer. Do you cross your strains and if so do you get heterosis? .........so is filling in the holes of one sheet of paper with another heterosis ?
Of course it is, what else could it be. The problem is to sustain heterosis, we also keep adding more holes and ultimately chaos prevails ....but Kendra has solved the problem by getting Elly the Elephant an extra large Longaberger Basket - once this solution catches on, I can foresee a flood of people heading to Ohio. If the truth were known, I'd be willing to bet that Kendra is a major stockholder in the Longaberger Basket Mfg Co.
I'm glad to hear you and your son are taking up an affection for farming Will, you're needed to replace those of us who are getting too old, lackadaisical or quitting....we need your ambition especially since "enough is never enough at your place"
Even with Max technology, unlike farming, in cattle breeding it seems to be the nature of the beast that we'll always get overlaps with expensive chemicals in animal form and feedstuffs to support them. I have no clue as to whether or not I get heterosis when I make "crosses" within my isolated population of common lineage...... or whether it will take MORE or LESS than 16 generations over a 96 year period to reach 98% purity if that were my objective. My interpretation of heterosis (hybrid vigor) is that it is a marked vigor or capacity for growth often shown by crossed animals over their parents ; something heterogeneous in origin or composition from the different elements of DNA & RNA.
As sellers of seedstock, I've ofter wondered how much of what the mainstream sells is "heterosis", it must be significant. I found it interesting when Larkota (searching for a reason to maintain registration papers) said if he took the tags out of all his cattle, he couldn't distinguish the difference between his registered and commercial cattle. And I wondered why DF asked Larkota what he thought of Ankony Dynamo's recent progeny, a Champion bull born in 1970.....and whether or not we get heterosis from going back and using bulls out of history.....aren't today's cattle a legacy of their past and how "pure" were they? Someday I must ask Jonken if heterosis causes some pigs to have larger litters than others even though we're familiar with how public breast feeding can snarl traffic.
Senator Simpson once described big government as a giant pig with a million teats and the public is fighting over a teat to hang onto. I think of the registered business as being similar looking for the next great bull or cow to latch onto. The question that begs an answer then is how pure are the mainstream regiistered directions .....or, are what we market under the banner of "purebreds" just one giant hoax? In either straight or cross breeding we've observed that certain animals "nick" well in a positive way with some animals and also at the same time negatively with others.....repeating what I call temporary complimentarity - sometimes positive for some traits and/or negative for others - fightin' genetic correlations. We get it and then we lose it, so is filling in the holes of one sheet of paper with another heterosis ?
I've reconciled myself with the fact that nature persists in sustaining variation to preserve adaptability, that deleterious genes are a part of the self-governing population control mechanisms and we remain baffled by the self-regulatory mechanisms within the DNA that turn genes off and on, not really understanding why some genes are dominant over others. I cannot foresee how Max technology can change any of that..... perhaps it can only confirm what we've observed which will force us to accept what is.....is.
So I theorized that in cattle breeding we must learn how to be chemists in order to put the right chemistry formulas together to produce the preferred product......an ongoing tedious process of trial and error trading our free advertising caps or cowboy hats and boots in for white lab coats and dark rimmed glasses. Not being a spendthrift, the beef industry and the average consumer can ill afford to support all those PHD's wearing professional white lab coats and other parasitic elements within the industry doing things for us that we can do better ourselves a whole lot cheaper. I don't know if that would help or hinder the overall economy. Dylan says " the modern pattern is an economy that defines success as perpetual growth and personal achievement expectations that are defined by a perpetually expanding ability to aquire and consume ever better and more of everything, like the well conditioned consumers an ever growing economy requires. The general mindset is one of perpetual deficiency defined in relative context by those who have more. And their is always someone with more. Within our modern consumption ability quality of life defined culture enough is for losers. Of course over the long term perpetual national economic growth is impossible."
Perpetual growth rates in cattle are also impossible, both economically and by natural limitations....we've already pushed the envelope too far. We all worry about our own economy first. In my own circumstance, for my own survival I need to be concerned about my customer's economic well being. My objective is to help assure their survival from a genetic standpoint with a more reliable product. In accordance with the hetero/homo chart I've previously submitted here on KC, nature would never allow "98% purity of the whole animal".... a 50% relationship of the "whole animal" seems to be the divisive centerpoint. But in a breakdown of the "parts", I see no reason after breeding cattle for a couple hundred years, that we need to tolerate poor udders, bad feet or other structural weaknesses.....Lord knows we all have too many of those problems lurking in our herds.....yet those qualitative parts could be 98% "pure"the same as polled or horned..
Progress is not about using progeny differences to change cattle, it is about sustaining the good ones absent self-inflicted problems. By the beginning of the early 80's, I had seen enough to know that the performance era would come to a series of crossroads. What goes up must come back down. With all the diverse forms of performance, what I didn't realize is that it would last so long through so many different cycles which actually hinders improving efficiencies. We have an enormous job to do that will keep us busy for the next 75 years after the elite bungled the last 75 chasing rarity values offering quick fixes.
Yet, it has allowed me time to reach towards my sole ambition which remains to improve the prepotency of the preferred characters of a more economical functional type...... by the absence of other variables allowing nature to self-govern the degree of overall purity attainable via constant selection from a common lineage or type.....all for the single purpose to improve the reliability of the cattle for both myself and my customers.....for our joint survival. For example, it would drive me crazy if I needed Max technology to know what the exact DNA purity of the cow pictured below (#6166) actually is - whatever she is, she symbolizes my preferred balance of symmetrical functional characters (parts) fashioned together over time to create the whole - selecting to increase the frequency for the preferred components by reducing the variables to achieve a much higher percent of the purity of the components...... in fewer generations and years than my heretofore helter skelter lottery selection processes trying to capitalize on variation or "heterosis".
With pride, I could stare at the picture of this cow with immeasurable self-satisfaction knowing I had a hand in guiding the formation smiling as I congratulate myself for a job well done. What could be better than being able to produce tens of thousands of these kind of cows without fanfare at a common commercial price......Larkota wouldn't have to bother taggin' em, no more complex record keeping, all he'd have to do is just sit and watch 'em work.....and instead of huntin' birds, he could enjoy huntin' down rustlers, robbers and predators.. After reading MK's sale report on the SAV sale where a cow who produced a half million dollars worth of progeny brought $350,000......that's on another entirely different planet somewhere lost in space.....on the planet I live on, I'd rather produce cows that could SAVE the beef industry millions of dollars.
The only thing super about the cow pictured above (as a twelve year old in 2009) is that she is virtually flawless with nothing left to improve or correct without disrupting something else....she's genetically 100% fertile, carries built-in high quality carcass values and for whatever its worth, her low maintenance requirements place her in the top 2% of the Angus breed.....which certainly doesn't automatically make them poor producers, it makes them efficient ones. These types of leisurely cows are for those who want to enjoy a successful life with reduced stresses....certainly not for those ambitious people who believe "enough is never enough"
So for whatever it's worth, her specific pedigree is shown below - however, no one but the breeder has the wherewithal to know from whence those ancestral components were derived......Will, they certainly weren't derived via heterosis I have a thousand common stories, this is one of them. This particular cow still wears a green tag, not yet a full fledged member of the "X" strain after 4 generations, her ancestry has been in my herd for 7 generations over a time period of 40 years out of forever - she's one of the survivors of this now quite large cow family and her descemdamts are well on their way to earning their "X"traordinary wings.
I have not kept my journey down this road less traveled a big secret although on occasion I wish I had. And I didn't begin this new journey with expensive purchases and great outlays of cash or grant money, but with cattle from within my then current herd. Packing my suitcase only with the essential components needed, ignoring whatever else was in fashion for the day, I just did what anyone could afford to do without expensive "Max technology" trying to keep up with the Jones. With imagination, some of you know I simply began with the below pedigree of this small nucleus formed over a 10 yr period from 1978 thru 1987 to reduce variation. Echo born in 1987 carried an assumed overall average IBC of 39.63%.......I suppose many of Echo's components were much higher than that and others would've been lower.
As a representative of the Prudence cow family, Cow #6166's maternal grandam #6146 - was one of the first Echo daus born in 1989 (one of my many favorites) and when I mated them back to one of the first Echo sons also born in 1989, cow #6146 produced the paternal grandam of Cow #6166 as her first calf, cow #6157 born in 1991, a cow made infamous by John Dockweiler and Mike Keeney's picture of her, a cow John sold when she was 19.....the dam of Mike's Pete and Repete......certainly these cattle cannot be the products of what is commonly referred to as heterosis......and incidentlly, cow's #6146 and #6157 are placed in the top 1% for low maintenance requirements with superior carcass quality.
However, I must forewarn you Will, these more prepotent cattle will not allow you to maximize heterosis, it'll take more than an F1 to "overpower" their prepotency......ahhhh, it's just as well, they don't need much outside help anyway to disrupt their goodness. And Larkota, I'll remind you of another Lingle Wyism as one of the best reasons why I don't offer public registrations on my cattle..... "Injecting outside blood into a proven, attested, selected genetic pattern is a crime of the same enornmity as a burglar's breaking into one's home and leaving furniture, fixtures and precious keepsakes in a state of utter disarray". And for those who may not be aware of my accumulation of data, , I did develop prepotency scores on some of my bulls back in the eighties, both on randomized and specific populations......just as I expected, in the practical world indeed there is a significant difference, generally correlated to the variance in the ancestry.
There is nothing that can upset me more than when someone in IA calls these "blue sky" cattle..... it is not my fault for the industry's ignorance of what constitutes genuine efficiency in beef production. With all it's inconsistencies, genuine efficiency is certainly not a bunch of fat pudgy cows running around our pastures nor measuring feed conversion at bull test stations selecting the winners, I guarantee you'll pay the toll at the next crossroad, believe me or not......shall we blame "Mr. Max Technology" or "Mr Human Nature".....or both Amazed by what our forefathers put together for us to utilize instead of wasting it, someday I'll shorten my posts - in the meantime they'll test your perserverence to determine if you have enough patience to genuinely improve cattle. It matters not whether you will live long enough to see the results, you will already have seen them with your imagination - I know Hilly has .....which is probably better than reality anyway. For any of you readers out there that don't know me, please don't misinterpret these extensive posts as promotions for my own cattle, I am promoting a long overdue beef improvement direction via a system of true purebred strains by exposing all the current BS in the industry LL, dreamin' big anxiously watching Bootheel apply natural law practicing on his less expensive billy goats......sorry MK, too many words, not enough pictures, my word machine is in a state of perpetual motion.
LL, thank you for that excellent post. Your commitment, patience and diplomacy in communicating your lifes work is admirable to say the least.
Also for sharing your pedigree of the cow below, even at the considerable risk of offending Will's sensitive familial mating sensibilities. A son to Mommy mating might be to much for him, hopefully not.
In addition as you say thank goodness for the last 200 years of progressive matings that have afforded us the luxury of only having to tolerate poor udders, bad feet or other structural weaknesses. Imagine the mess we would have been in had we stuck to matings from within our own herds. Who could stand to put up with a herd of cows like those below. Maybe max technology will spare us the agony. The sooner she gets diluted, hybridized or outcrossed the better.
outsidethebox
Posts : 71 Join date : 2010-11-17 Age : 71 Location : Goessel, Kansas
Truth and fact are stranger than fiction. If I understood my slow coming to the realizations you have laid forth here I could explain why that obstinate, bitter Iowan who represents the 99% does not get it...other than I was simply ignorant while "he" is simply a fool-an ignorant one no less. I shall attempt to remain teachable.
MVCatt
Posts : 112 Join date : 2010-09-24 Age : 49 Location : SW Penn
Larry, I for one hope you never shorten your posts. Conversation here makes tractor seat time so much more tolerable. TechnoWill would wince at these piles of scrap I call equipment. Anyway...Thanks!
Larry, I for one hope you never shorten your posts. Conversation here makes tractor seat time so much more tolerable. TechnoWill would wince at these piles of scrap I call equipment. Anyway...Thanks!
MVCatt, I really appreciate the lenghty posts also, Techno Will may not have the time to read the entire posts but if he breaks his reading sessions up into many small sessions he make make it to the end. If TechnoWill saw my antique JD Van Brundt seed drill he may die laughing.
larkota
Posts : 294 Join date : 2010-09-23 Age : 63 Location : Kimball South Dakota
I'll remind you of another Lingle Wyism as one of the best reasons why I don't offer public registrations on my cattle..... "Injecting outside blood into a proven, attested, selected genetic pattern is a crime of the same enornmity as a burglar's breaking into one's home and leaving furniture, fixtures and precious keepsakes in a state of utter disarray".
TechnoWill has the time to read entire posts if he finds them interesting. TechnoWill also use to have scrap iron for equipment. Fixxing at 4:00 AM every morning just hoping everything hung together til night, so I could repeat it the next morning. Glad those days are over! No problem with long posts, junk for equipment, sons sleeping with mothers or no need for technology. We are in America. Drizzling and really cold. Need to get our sunflowers seeded. I spread fertilizer ahead of the drill. Took mapping out of sprayer and put on fertilizer spreader. Awesome! Now I know where I have been and where I need to go! Simply awesome!!!!!
Tom D Admin
Posts : 443 Join date : 2010-09-25 Age : 45 Location : Michigan
Boom boom boom, now Boom boom boom, now Boom boom pow Boom boom pow
I'm on the supersonic boom Y'all hear the spaceship zoom When, when I step inside the room Them girls go ape-shit, uh
Y'all stuck on Super 8 shit That low-fi stupid 8 bit I'm on that HD flat This beat go boom boom bap
I'm a beast when you turn me on Into the future cybertron Harder, faster, better, stronger Sexy ladies extra longer
'Cause we got the beat that bounce We got the beat that pound We got the beat that 808 That the boom, boom in your town
People in the place If you wanna get down Put your hands in the air Will.i.am drop the beat now
Techno Will.i.am the reflective and futuristic cyber-boomer, I know where I'm going and where I've been too, and all I need to figure it out is a cup of coffee in the morning and a beer at night.
Boom boom boom, now Boom boom boom, now Boom boom pow Boom boom pow
I'm on the supersonic boom Y'all hear the spaceship zoom When, when I step inside the room Them girls go ape-shit, uh
Y'all stuck on Super 8 shit That low-fi stupid 8 bit I'm on that HD flat This beat go boom boom bap
I'm a beast when you turn me on Into the future cybertron Harder, faster, better, stronger Sexy ladies extra longer
'Cause we got the beat that bounce We got the beat that pound We got the beat that 808 That the boom, boom in your town
People in the place If you wanna get down Put your hands in the air Will.i.am drop the beat now
Techno Will.i.am the reflective and futuristic cyber-boomer, I know where I'm going and where I've been too, and all I need to figure it out is a cup of coffee in the morning and a beer at night.
TD, droppin the beat for MS
TD, glad to hear you cyber boomin on KC, I gave up keeping track of your demerits. We will just call it square. Hanging out in a hammock and drinking beer, boom on Boomer D, Boom on!
Demerit Biggs
Tom D Admin
Posts : 443 Join date : 2010-09-25 Age : 45 Location : Michigan
The excitement is back at KC when ever i see Tom D on a post i ask my self, what am i going to see? should i open this? Do i dare? Oh what the hell and i have yet to be disapointed...
Dylunn, I'm not a boomer, I'm a sticker. Sorry it's been a while, I had some bales to move. TD
Edit- DB, I found the source of the confusion, I should have added a comma after Techno Will.i.am's name.
Sticky Tom, thank you for the clarification, the source of confusion was mostly mine, I can't believe I missed that one, I must have been in an impaired state, mostly from excitement, like WT. says, that TD was posting something. shock:
When Larry commented what goes up must come down and questioning what planet we live on, it got me thinking of the brick vs. the feather and the fact that the law of gravity has the same effect on the different mass and the same formulas works in calculating the acceleration of the objects, the only difference between the moon (where they hit the ground at the same time when dropped) and earth is atmosphere/air which tends to be taken for granted although a necessity.
So when calculating how high we can go, how fast we get there, and how big we can get, air tends to be a nuisance and a resistance here on earth but can’t be ignored without consequence.
The reason I enjoy Larry’s approach to cattle breeding and life is his reasoning is based on the simple and basic laws that govern life as we know it.
In order to Max out everything without understanding the basic fundamental concepts that get us there may explain the confused and questioning looks when we come back down asking “what happened?” why can’t we Max out without input?
Like a bank account you can’t make maximum withdrawals without first putting something in the more you put in from your own effort not others, the more available to withdraw and the less likely to spend the max on something as you are well aware of what it took to make the deposits.
I myself would be more of a boomer then a sticker, I like to think I have what it takes to be a sticker but have never been put to the test.
LL you state "these more preponent cattle will not allow max heterosis." Could you explain why not?
Hilly explained it for me with his brick and feather equations and the affect of invisible forces on D E N S I T Y. Prepotency is the brick, heterosis is the feather that goes wherever the hot air blows it. When fire and ice meet, storms occur. Hot air rises, so why is Death Valley CA so hot while mountain tops remain snow packed??. Our body temperature is a constant 98, why are we unconfortable in temps of 98 setting our household thermostats at a comfortable 65-75 ??
Energy can be neither created nor destroyed only transformed and energy can flow from one place to another but the total energy of an isolated system remains the same.
When trying to quantify the relative volatility of all crossbreeding through the equilibrium stages of the distillation process, I would think that the utility of isolation to establish some control reducing the number of variables and processes involved, would help simplify why all random crossbreeding is not necessarily equal.
Hilly, comfortable with the fact that my appetite runs inverse of the outside temperature but somewhat envious of the low pressure, less congested life W.T lives
Is it possible to make breeding stock or a system of breeding stock useage so demonstratively superior to change the way a mojority of commercial breeders view and buy breeding stock?
Are fads the only way the industry changes type? Who starts fads? Did not university livestock judges start the bigger frame cattle acceptance, and then every one climbed on board? has CAB created the marbling emphasis?
all leading to the final question, how or can what we breed become part of an industry standard?