Judging A Bull By His Teats?

[Star Creek Dexters]

This may be a totally weird question, but I am wondering how many of you pay attention to a bulls teats for a sign of future udder genes? I know that it's best to look at the bull's dam's udder, but if that is not available can you get a judgement from the bulls teat placement and alignment? What do you look for other than spacing, etc?

[J & M Chambers]

Well here's one response. Yes.

Examine the rudimentary teats. Are they: wide apart, squarely placed, and free from the scrotum.

Still should examine the dam, any sibs. or half sibs. and offspring the bull already has.

Jeff

[legendrockranch]

HI Kim,

The teats of a bull was first brought to my attention by a gal from Oklahoma who was looking at crossing her Jerseys with Dexters. She brought up the subject of teats on a bull, and mentioned everything Jeff said. She follows that rule with all her animals and has never been disappointed.

Below is something I found on the web.

"We consider that a well balanced and well shaped udder
in the cow is largely due to the way the rudimentary teats
are placed on the sire. If they are crowded close together,
the result is likely to be narrow pointed udders. If they
are placed well apart, of good size, and well forward of the
scrotum, the effect, we think, will be to influence largely the
production of well shaped udders in the resulting heifers and
counteract the tendency to ill-shaped udders inheritable from
dams deficient in this respect. We believe the future ex-
cellence of the Guernsey cow will be greatly aided by close
attention on the part of her breeders to this point".

[Star Creek Dexters]

Thanks! This was along the lines I had been thinking in my head. It's amazing the things your brain will conjure up to ponder when your head is resting on the flank of a cow, your hands are busy in a monotonous milking motion and your brain is shut off from all the normal bombardments it faces =)

Barb thanks for finding that info! I did some searches before I posted on here and wasn't able to come up with anything helpful...


I think Kooper is pretty good, his teats are well spaced, well uniformed, the only down in they are just a tad to close to the scrotem, imo. I have only seen 1 heifer from him so far, and her udder is exactly like her mommas, which is great except the two extra rudimentary teats.

It will be interesting to see how this year calves turn out.

I love this part of planning and breeding for what you want in good stock! It's like making a detailed Christmas list and then waiting to see if you get what you ask for =D

[cddexter]

The evaluation system I've used for years (custom Aussie that divides the animal into functiion, meat and milk traits--which works really well for our dual purpose breed) looks at the scrotum and teats along with everything else (including hormone balance!).

The teats you see on the bull, their size, placement and shape, are what he's going to pass on to his daughters.

The scrotum has a suspensory ligament which equates to the suspensory ligament in the udder, and whatever he has, is what's going to be passed on to his daughters.

A lot of Dexters have poor rear udder attachment. Check out the sires...often the suspensory ligament fades just above the bottom of the scrotum.

A really good suspensory ligament will cause the balls to hang with a backwrd tilt. The stronger the tilt, the longer and better the attachment.

Check it out. c.

[Star Creek Dexters]

This is such good advice, Carol! Thanks for sharing!
Kooper's balls do hang tilted to the rear, really tilted when it's cold out. I always wondered if that was normal, glad to know it's a good sign! Makes good sense now that I look at it the way you described.
There are so many aspects to picking out your herd sire. I am so glad that we ended up with a bull that I am very happy with, even though when we purchased him, I only knew a smidge of this info. Being raised around beef cattle, I knew what to look for in that aspect, but when you are breeding for dual purpose, with a lean torwards milk, it changes a lot of factors.

Thank you all for you input.

[cddexter]

ahhh, Kim, VERY tongue in cheek: this advice applies to all species of mammal. Feel free to extrapolate. ;D ;D c.