Breeding questions

[countryguy]

I'm hoping you guys and gals will tell me what I want to hear.Long story short I came across a bull I am just tickled with a few years back and am planning to buy a half brother to him with the goal of creating a whack of females off of them.

My problem is at the moment a lack of pastures to pull the daughters and breed them different.

What problems might I encounter breeding daughter to father? Their calves would just be sale calves and no heifers would be kept back. All this will hopefully be for one calf crop only.Thanks for your help.

[15444]

Breeding sires to daughters will probably create a problem, depending on what breed it is and what recessive traits are in the background of the father.

I had to do it once on a small group of cows when the intended bull to be used was killed by the sire of the cows. Short notice, about a week before breeding season.

I wouldn't do it again. I'd rather leave the cows open and ship them than do it again. Weak calves and hypotrichosis cropped up in one of the calves.

[ASRG]

I will give you a bit of advice.....knowind I will probably get roasted, big time>
Yea, you'll get a few dinks......you'll also get a few individuals who will rock your world!
In the big picture you'll probably break even?
Not in anyway advocating this practice.......but sometimes this stuff is necesary...in tne end it is your money? The "experta" never have to pay the bills!

[grassfarmer]

Countryguy, I wouldn't be too worried - any time
you breed close you might expect to see some
"inbred depression" which might manifest itself as
reduced growth, performance etc - it is the opposite
of hybrid vigour after all. You should get less
variation in the offspring as the outliers on both
extremes will be reduced.
15444's experience sounds like a worse case
scenario. Just remember though there are "genetic
defects" in nearly all cattle - inbreeding or line-
breeding does not create defects it allows them to
be expressed. If you had a purebred herd that
produced this effect when inbred and went back to
outcrossing them to unrelated cattle within the
breed the defects are still there but hidden by the
heterosis.
A thought on your plan to buy a half brother to a
bull you liked previously - according to Lingle the
odds of ever reproducing an identical full sister or
brother are a staggering 205,891,132,694,649 to 1
So your chances of getting any degree of
"sameness" from two half brothers would be
considerably worse.

[rkaiser]

I might ad that the 1/2 brother is likely from the same sire rather than the same Dam. This is the usual choice. If the bull you are after is going to be for female replacements, the dam is every bit as important; maybe more.

Once you start the process, like GF suggests, I would not be worried and in fact would take a very close look at the progeny and would not jump the gun on calling them sale calves.

Our line breeding program is not quite as tight as father daughter, however just as inbred depression may occur if your choice is faulty, line bred concentration of quality traits leading to consistency and predictability has proven to work very well.

[grassfarmer]

Nothing "faulty" about inbred depression/regression
Randy its a natural consequence of reducing heterosis
and building homozygosity. You can't close breed
without getting it.

[15444]

I'll add, I think a 1/2 sister and brother deal would work well, but sire/daughter is a little too narrow a gene pool for me.

[smcgrath76]

We have used sire/daughter matings
before on a proven sire. We carefully
considered things before we did it and
created some pretty nice cattle. It
happens all the time in wild
populations, but with economic
considerations you might want to limit
the numbers a bit so you don't expose
your whole herd to the marketing
challenge of having some calves with
reduced performance.
If you are concerned there are lots of
good maternal bulls around.
I agree with the fact that half-sibs can
be pretty different. For example, if
you have a sister, they are a full sib
and have at least 1 completely different
chromosome. I would look at cow
families, and type and look for similar
numbers (not necessarily the biggest).
This is at least an indication the 1/2
sib has DNA in common with the bull you
like.

[countryguy]

Thanks for the good info guys. Never had to pay much attention to this stuff in the past.Being primarily a grain guy I want to take the cattle side of the farm a little more seriously now so I have a few things to learn along the way.

I'm thinking I will take out as many of the heifers as I can round up pasture for.It will be interesting to see the difference in the calves.One thing I can say for sure is that I am sure liking these Simmental sired calves coming off the Galloway Angus cross cows.

[SADIE]

countryguy---I would like to step in here now because this has been the direction that have interested me for a long time. All the posts on your topic have been "good comments".

It appears that you are running some type of a cross-bred female herd and by running simmental as your 3 way cross you are achieving some great hybrid vigor. It is no wonder you like the heifers that you are getting. You're steers should have been "eye-catching" as well.