herd foundation females

The below 8 females are the foundation of the 80 plus registered females of the cow herd.
12521145

12331546

9931385

10411471

11544203

12778255

10948619

10948623

some of the sires of daughters of above cows

SAv 8180 traveler 004 11 daughters in production
SA neutron 377 3 daughters 1 home raised son 1 daughter
Sitz alliance 6595 7 daughters
Norwest 004 black duke 736
Schurrtop Supreme 5 daughters
Woodhill Checkmate and 2 home raised sons 1 daughter each
Norwest Bushwacker 992 6 daughters
Lemmon Newsline 3 daughters
War Hall of fame 8023 2 daughters
BCC bushwacker 41-93 1 daughter

Plus other bulls

At what point will you see inbred regression from the female side if home raised bulls are used with occiasional infusion of new genetics via AI? How much inbreeding can be done before you need to bring in new genetics? All natural service will be by home raised bulls out of top producing cows.

Why do you ever need to bring in new genetics?
With 80 cows and on paper quite a bit of diversity why can't you split them into two permanent breeding groups and interbreed the offspring in perpetuity? You could still select the cattle to be of the same type although they are sub groups within the herd. I don't see why would you need new genetics.

Land base/wintering facilities does not allow for running 2 breeding groups of cattle. We usually AI the first month on visual heats and then the yearling herd bull goes in to breed the rest. May go back and revisit several AI sires used in the past if I can still get semen.

"It depends". If a guy wanted to keep inbreeding low, you can do it with much less genetic diversity than you have, I think. 80 cows from 8 cow families with 8 different sire lines-- with the freedom to use additional outside sires, it should be pretty easy to avoid any substantial inbreeding. On the other hand, if you started by using three paternal half brothers out of your best three cows, then kept back their daughters and bred the daughters to sons of the original three, you'd get a fairly inbred group pretty quickly. So, it depends.

I forgot to add the foundation cows were bought 1997 or before and some were 8 plus years old at the time. Most of the cows produced into their teens here or in several small starter herds. These 8 families are whats left of 20 some different cows families. How many bulls have people used that have no offspring left in the herd 5 or 6 years after use?

patb wrote:

I forgot to add the foundation cows were bought 1997 or before and some were 8 plus years old at the time. Most of the cows produced into their teens here or in several small starter herds. These 8 families are whats left of 20 some different cows families. How many bulls have people used that have no offspring left in the herd 5 or 6 years after use?

why are you naming and crediting the sires ? Would not the dams of these cows have contributed just as much..or likely more? Is there a common type among these stayers?

Quote :

Land base/wintering facilities does not allow for running 2 breeding groups of cattle. We usually AI the first month on visual heats and then the yearling herd bull goes in to breed the rest. May go back and revisit several AI sires used in the past if I can still get semen.

Sounds like you plan to linebreed to outside AI bulls. Can you not collect your own bulls and AI to them? Or use several bulls and do ID through DNA? I guess I wonder what is the point if you keep going to outside genetics? Are you interested in the old A I bulls or just want to mantain what you have, so to speak? Some of the discussions on paternal/maternal sounds like you are somewhere inbetween, but more toward paternal.

MKeeney wrote:

patb wrote:

I forgot to add the foundation cows were bought 1997 or before and some were 8 plus years old at the time. Most of the cows produced into their teens here or in several small starter herds. These 8 families are whats left of 20 some different cows families. How many bulls have people used that have no offspring left in the herd 5 or 6 years after use?

why are you naming and crediting the sires ? Would not the dams of these cows have contributed just as much..or likely more? Is there a common type among these stayers?

Sires are 1/2 of the genetics of animal and those are sires who produced daughters that are still active in the herd. Whole sire groups have drop out of the herd or have been culled do to challenges. Some of the sires appear 2 or more times on the 3 gen pedigree of descendants of foundation cows. Some of the sires have had greater impact from a son used. The sires are the fastest way to change the herd genetics.

The dams are deep will alot of capacity to utilized low quality forage for the most part frame score around 5 plus or minus 1.

EddieM wrote:

Quote :

Land base/wintering facilities does not allow for running 2 breeding groups of cattle. We usually AI the first month on visual heats and then the yearling herd bull goes in to breed the rest. May go back and revisit several AI sires used in the past if I can still get semen.

Sounds like you plan to linebreed to outside AI bulls. Can you not collect your own bulls and AI to them? Or use several bulls and do ID through DNA? I guess I wonder what is the point if you keep going to outside genetics? Are you interested in the old A I bulls or just want to mantain what you have, so to speak? Some of the discussions on paternal/maternal sounds like you are somewhere inbetween, but more toward paternal.

I want to maintain what I have and make small improvement in multiple areas. The bulls listed are ones that have been used over the last 10 years an have had a positive impact on the herd. I believe the closest AI collection facility is around 300 miles away in NY.

"The sires are the fastest way to change the herd genetics."

If you have a cowherd that you are happy with why do you want to change the herd genetics? Using outside AI bulls will change your herd genetics but if you want to reproduce the good old cows you already have shouldn't you be using their home-bred, closed herd sons?

For what it sounds like you want to do, I don't think you"ll ever have to " worry" about too much inbreeding.