Observations of type

Dylans post prompted me to take a few photos. It's pleasing me no end to see similarities of type emerging among the descendants of my foundation cow. Without the luxury of numbers or any real selection I'm working with what I have, breeding genetically close animals to each other, even if phenotypically there is quite a bit of variation. I think I can see a type starting to emerge. I don't have a preference of type among the closer related animals and have no clue how to select them other than as commercial cattle. If they produce and perform they stay, if they don't they are gone. I use the only bulls I have, from the same gene pool, and juggle them as best I can to make appropriate matings aiming to produce everything with around 50% of the original cow's blood. My bulls are of different phenotypes but using them back onto this closer related pool of females tends to make the calves more similar with each generation. I'm quite encouraged in my small endeavour, only 10 years in - just wish I had 10 generations under my belt already. The captions highlight the relationship to the foundation cow.

The matriarch


A daughter


A tighter bred daughter


Same cow in her winter gear to ease the transition to early spring photos


A bred heifer that is a double grand-daughter


A yearling heifer that is by a son and out of a great grand-daughter

good stuff...no matter the breed, the same general " type" emerges when reproduction is a priority...

Ok here is a stupid question for all. I see all of these pictures of cows. i ask myself what is a good cow? grassy your cows look dam fine to me and so do Joes and Dylans. All of you give me a inferiority complex when i look in the pasture. Now for the big question. How many generations do most of you see before the type starts to stabilize? I look at MS's Chars and i see the same cows with a different coat? Is this the purity of the bovine starting to show? All ears here just looking for insight.

Quote :

Ok here is a stupid question for all.

W. T., you cannot push me out of my position of "Official Dumb Question Asker at the Corner". I'm claiming my traditional spot here! Don't make me buy this site and tell you that you are a hateful, non-salty type.

This deal of generations and cow looks is a puzzle. Traditionally folks talk about lines or individuals "nicking" or not "nicking". But the bigger question for me is not in the current look of the cattle but is the type fixed enough to transfer to most or all of the next generations. A lot of the nick type breeders never fix the type of the genes will not transfer to the next generations. It is just a one-time deal like an extra 10% free in a bag of pet food. Is it really free or are you going to pay for it with the next 9 or 10 bags of the same brand that you buy that are the regular weight?

In a herd of cows that are not tightly bred, I think that you will see more of a range of "look" that will function for you and your environment because of nicking, a little pop on cross of lines and your tolerance to keep a cow that brings in a calf every year even if it never is kept as a replacement. More economically driven in the short term than a long term genetic decision.

What I keep seeing in the pictures are cows and heifers that have feminity, less bulk of muscling, moderate weight for the breed, good feet and udders, no extremes of milking ability, various amounts of stomach capacity (depending of local forage quality) and different hair types based on climatic fit.

I'm still waiting with baited breath to get LL's description of a sight-seen fertile cow and a bull that will sire her.

Eddie, waiting with baited breath, ... whatever that means.

I really don't have answers to your questions because I don't know them myself. I can give some background on the generations in my example here. My first cow was quite an outcross, or to put it more favourably a merging of types. Her sire was a 100% Scottish Luing import and her dam was 25% Scottish Luing blood and 75% totally unrelated Canadian developed Snowlander (technically a different breed due to different proportion of Highland/Shorthorn blood)
Luckily for my first generation of calves out of her I was able to breed her back to a better than 75% shared ancestry bull to produce 2 of my bulls and the daughter pictured here in the summer+winter shots. That daughter shows a 6 generation IBC of 16.41%.
The bred heifer is only my second generation from the outcross start and has a 15.62% IBC.
I suppose the yearling could be considered the 4th generation but I view her more as the 3rd her IBC is 13.28%.
With the matings I have planned on these two younger animals their offspring will be 19-21% IBC scores.

So I don't know if my "type" is "stabilizing" in this remarkably short generational time span - when it's all coming from one cow how much stabilizing does it need? With my limited numbers i've maybe got a lot of genetic truths to uncover down the line. Will my future generations continue to appear more phenotypically similar or will there be a divergence of type? What is the value of phenotypic similarity? What I read indicates we shouldn't have any kind of predictability given the crossbred origins of our "breed" anyway, not all that many generations back. Could the reputed "breed purity" of the Highland race of cattle be helping fix a type?

GF - Having more questions than answers too.

EddieM wrote:

Quote :

Ok here is a stupid question for all.

W. T., you cannot push me out of my position of "Official Dumb Question Asker at the Corner". I'm claiming my traditional spot here! Don't make me buy this site and tell you that you are a hateful, non-salty type.

This deal of generations and cow looks is a puzzle. Traditionally folks talk about lines or individuals "nicking" or not "nicking". But the bigger question for me is not in the current look of the cattle but is the type fixed enough to transfer to most or all of the next generations. A lot of the nick type breeders never fix the type of the genes will not transfer to the next generations. It is just a one-time deal like an extra 10% free in a bag of pet food. Is it really free or are you going to pay for it with the next 9 or 10 bags of the same brand that you buy that are the regular weight?

In a herd of cows that are not tightly bred, I think that you will see more of a range of "look" that will function for you and your environment because of nicking, a little pop on cross of lines and your tolerance to keep a cow that brings in a calf every year even if it never is kept as a replacement. More economically driven in the short term than a long term genetic decision.

What I keep seeing in the pictures are cows and heifers that have feminity, less bulk of muscling, moderate weight for the breed, good feet and udders, no extremes of milking ability, various amounts of stomach capacity (depending of local forage quality) and different hair types based on climatic fit.

I'm still waiting with baited breath to get LL's description of a sight-seen fertile cow and a bull that will sire her.

Eddie, waiting with baited breath, ... whatever that means.

Move over Eddie and let me share your place on the podium. I have a theory but am still reluctant to share. I need more time with my theory to either prove out or fail. But here is a Question I have several very tight matings and the result appears to be a more feminine result than either parent or grand parent is this just random? or have I began stabilization to a type? the cross is extremely close and I would take quite a bit of explaining to post. way easier to just hear some thought at this point.

W.T wrote:

Ok here is a stupid question for all. I see all of these pictures of cows. i ask myself what is a good cow? grassy your cows look dam fine to me and so do Joes and Dylans. All of you give me a inferiority complex when i look in the pasture. Now for the big question. How many generations do most of you see before the type starts to stabilize? I look at MS's Chars and i see the same cows with a different coat? Is this the purity of the bovine starting to show? All ears here just looking for insight.

Never fret the picture game. I could just as easily take pictures of the bad ones, and have, and will. Breeding the so called best to the best, never left me with more, that were better. As I have said before, in my ignorance, the clean up bulls here usually did a better job, with longer lasting positive influence, with less money invested, than nearly all of the GREATEST of the greatest being marketed.

Simplicity of life, peace, enjoyment of life, serentity of cows being cows while being serviced by bulls being bulls; just simply fits me better. There is enough complication of life without my unneccessary addition to the complication of it. Being simple is not bad, no moreso than being a Luing is bad, or being an Angus is good.


Grassfarmer, I wouldn't worry one bit about the complicated history of your cattle. The tragedy would be to continue the complication of the perceived improvement of the ''right way''. Somewhere along the way a Scot had some cattle that weren't all the same, and turned them into Highlanders, and whatever else the Scots made. Or maybe they were Highlanders all along and someone just named them. Naming them may be good enough, if the name is a sufficient identifier.


Bootheel, with nameless non-photogenic cows

the "Angus" cow...a picture is worth a thousand pedigrees

Grassfarmer, like you say, starting with one cow may be a considerable help. The similarity between the matriarch and daughter is quite remarable. Is the daughter sired by a relation to the matriarch?

WT, I may have some type similarity in some of my cattle but I think there is still a long ways to go to reach a fixed type. One of my challenges is making a decision, I am like a kid in a candy shop, can't make up my mind, though if I all my cows were the functional type of the 90T cow.......she has a ways to go to prove her longevity yet though. As far as your more feminine result from your tight mating, I don't have a clue. Eddie made a good point re testing stabilization, "bigger question for me is not in the current look of the cattle but is the type fixed enough to transfer to most or all of the next generations.". If you could take a number of bulls and mate them to a commercial herd and all the calves were consistent in type, then that would be a good indication.

DB

I'm assuming you are talking about the first daughter pictured Dylan? There is not a close relationship in that mating - sire of the daughter is a grandson of a 3/4 brother to the matriarch. This is a case of the camera fooling you, I was amazed how close they looked when I saw the two pictures together but in reality they are not as close as they look here. I think in time the second daughter pictured will turn out to be more like the old cow's type once she has some age on her - she was only a 2 and 3 year old in these pictures compared to the first daughter who was 9.

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Grassfarmer, like you say, starting with one cow may be a considerable help. The similarity between the matriarch and daughter is quite remarable. Is the daughter sired by a relation to the matriarch?

WT, I may have some type similarity in some of my cattle but I think there is still a long ways to go to reach a fixed type. One of my challenges is making a decision, I am like a kid in a candy shop, can't make up my mind, though if I all my cows were the functional type of the 90T cow.......she has a ways to go to prove her longevity yet though. As far as your more feminine result from your tight mating, I don't have a clue. Eddie made a good point re testing stabilization, "bigger question for me is not in the current look of the cattle but is the type fixed enough to transfer to most or all of the next generations.". If you could take a number of bulls and mate them to a commercial herd and all the calves were consistent in type, then that would be a good indication.
DB

A registered herd would be an even better indication I would think

Hilly wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Grassfarmer, like you say, starting with one cow may be a considerable help. The similarity between the matriarch and daughter is quite remarable. Is the daughter sired by a relation to the matriarch?

WT, I may have some type similarity in some of my cattle but I think there is still a long ways to go to reach a fixed type. One of my challenges is making a decision, I am like a kid in a candy shop, can't make up my mind, though if I all my cows were the functional type of the 90T cow.......she has a ways to go to prove her longevity yet though. As far as your more feminine result from your tight mating, I don't have a clue. Eddie made a good point re testing stabilization, "bigger question for me is not in the current look of the cattle but is the type fixed enough to transfer to most or all of the next generations.". If you could take a number of bulls and mate them to a commercial herd and all the calves were consistent in type, then that would be a good indication.
DB

A registered herd would be an even better indication I would think

NO DOUBT!

GF, yes I was talking a bout the first daughter you had under the matriarch. From the pics it seemed there was a great similarity in structure from the muzzle to the hips. The daughter appears to have less slope from hooks to pins, otherwise from the pics they do appear very similar....like you say though not hard to be fooled by pics.

MKeeney wrote:

the "Angus" cow...a picture is worth a thousand pedigrees

Twins?