True-Short Dexters vs. Chondro-Short Dexters

[Cascade Meadows Farm - Kirk]

We all love our Dexters (for good reason) . All Dexters are compact compared to other breeds of cattle. It's important that we keep them compact and friendly and easy-to-raise because that's one of their most distinguishing features.

While all Dexters are shorter and smaller than most typical breeds of cattle, there is a fairly wide range of heights within the breed.

Some folks love the shorter and more compact Dexters, while others like the more robust-sized Dexters (within the standard range for this small breed of cattle).

For those who love shorter-statured Dexters, there are two approaches:

Approach #1. Select the shortest and best dams and sires generation after generation to produce top-notch true-breeding true-short Dexters. These true-short dexters can throw 100% short-statured calves with no ongoing dna testing required.

Approach #2. Carefully use the potentially lethal Chodrodysplasia Dwarfism gene to instantly shorten any cattle of any breed including dexters. This dwarfing gene can instantly knock 4-8 inches off of cattle height, but the resulting short cattle are hybrids and cannot breed-true and they require ongoing DNA testing (to make certain you don't double up on the lethal gene). These Chondrodysplastic-affected cattle can only pass their shortness to offspring 50% of the time, so half of the calves are short and half can be MUCH larger.

Certainly we all love our current Dexters and we have what we have. But if you enjoy Dexters on the shorter end of the spectrum, why wouldn't you have a long-term goal of moving toward approach #1 (true-short Dexters) so every calf born on your farm is truly short?

Simply breeding whatever you currently have on the best and shortest true-breeding non-chondro dexters, will result in some true-short calves.

If you had a STUNNING true-short (non-chondro) calf born to one of your favorite chondro-affected Dexters, wouldn't you be tempted to keep that stunning true-short (non-chondro) calf to possibly replace its chondro-affected parent at some point in the future?

[aggieelissa]

I typed a very long response to this twice already, my computer has decided to die both times.

So long story short.

I have the current national champion female, she was reserve national champion the year before. She is also a Chondro-Carrier. I would not trade her nor do I have any goal to phase her out of my breeding herd.

I realize there is extra cost associated with testing her calves, she has given me three calves. Two non-carries and one carrier. Both of the female calves she has produced are shorter non-carrier females, I have no plans to replace the dam with the daughters. The dam has proven her self as a superior female. She is worth the extra cost associated with testing, which now thanks to TAMU will be cheaper as new bundle prices go into affect as of December 1st 2012.

As far as "Carefully use the potentially lethal Chodrodysplasia Dwarfism gene " There is a zero percent chance I will lose a calf to chondro, because I do not breed my carrier cow to a carrier bull.

My female will be collected via IVF lab after she calves early next year, I have had a lot of interest in her calves and simply cannot meet demand with one calf a year.


ANYWAYS to answer your question "If you had a STUNNING true-short (non-chondro) calf born to one of your favorite chondro-affected Dexter's, wouldn't you be tempted to keep that stunning true-short (non-chondro) calf to possibly replace its chondro-affected parent at some point in the future? " NO I would not, especially in the case of my National Champion Female.

[Cascade Meadows Farm - Kirk]

Nov 10, 2012 18:14:41 GMT -5 aggieelissa said:

to answer your question "If you had a STUNNING true-short (non-chondro) calf born to one of your favorite chondro-affected Dexter's, wouldn't you be tempted to keep that stunning true-short (non-chondro) calf to possibly replace its chondro-affected parent at some point in the future? " NO I would not, especially in the case of my National Champion Female.

Dexters don't live forever, so it sounds like it will be the end of the line for your champion female when she dies because you have no plans to EVER replace her with a daughter (or granddaughter), ever in the future? That would be a shame.

Let's assume that what you said, isn't what you really meant, and let's assume that you really will replace your champion cow "AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE" when she passes on or whatever.

Lets say you had an amazing true-short non-chondro daughter (or granddaughter) out of your champion chondro-cow who is almost exactly like the champion and maybe even slightly better. The good news about this daughter or granddaughter is that because she is a true-short, she breeds true and nearly 100% of her calves are short too. This daughter (or granddaughter) is better than her champion mom in that she can consistently reproduce her own phenotype nearly 100% if time (where the mom, could only reproduce her own type 50% of the time due to the heterozygous nature of the chondro genetics).

Would you honestly cull this EXCELLENT, consistent-producing non-chondro cow from your herd even if she was the BEST descendent out of your current champion?

[lakeportfarms]

Elissa,

Very nice response...and congratulations on Mornstar Ruby's win this year, a well deserved win over another superior cow, Wieringa's Paula MD, also a chondro carrier who is a multi time national champion herself.
Kirk, as I think you are aware, we own the sire of Paula MD, and although we are always on the lookout for a small non-carrier bull to breed our carrier cows, we have no interest in "trading in" Mike to use a non-carrier bull exclusively, because he has also demonstrated an ability to produce superior progeny. In fact, we have worked very hard to acquire other cows out of Mike's dam, who also was a carrier and a beautiful cow herself. Most of them are also carriers. Flo's Gracie is now deceased or we would have been trying to acquire her too. Mike is now nearly 11 years old. We have bred him to a very small non-chondro (40") cow and have a yearling chondro bull calf who looks like a miniature version of him. We will be using him on our non-carrier cows, on the sad day that Mike is retired to his forever resting place at the back of our property under a beautiful white pine tree.

Like Elissa, we have no problem fully testing all of our herd, (including A2 and PHA) , and understand that we'll have a mix of both small chondro carriers, small non-chondro carriers, and larger non-chondro carriers depending on the dam Mike is bred to. We enjoy the diversity of our herd, and we also have the ability to serve the needs of most of our customers by offering them a choice on the type of Dexter they prefer. Most like the small chondro girls, but there are some that prefer to avoid the chondro genetics. That is their choice and we respect the reasons why they choose to pursue that direction. We make a considerable effort to educate all of our customers who are not familiar with Dexters about the genetics. And even though you qualify it with the word "potentially", you know that the chondro gene is no problem as long as they are bred to non-carriers.

If you could show me how to take two small non-carrier Dexters and breed a 34-36" fully grown cow, I'm all ears. Until then, we will continue to breed our mix of carrier/non-carriers, and select some of the best of both to keep as replacements or to increase our herd. If you'll also note from the Missouri thread, at the many of the highest price heifers and cows sold were chondro carriers. Clearly there is and always will be a demand for the look and personality of the chondro carriers. I'll avoid the discussion of personality since it will be argued that it is subjective, but our experience is that there is a difference not just in physical height.

[aggieelissa]

Dexters don't live forever, so it sounds like it will be the end of the line for your champion female when she dies because you have no plans to EVER replace her with a daughter (or granddaughter), ever in the future? That would be a shame.

Let's assume that what you said, isn't what you really meant, and let's assume that you really will replace your champion cow "AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE" when she passes on or whatever.

Lets say you had an amazing true-short non-chondro daughter (or granddaughter) out of your champion chondro-cow who is almost exactly like the champion and maybe even slightly better. The good news about this daughter or granddaughter is that because she is a true-short, she breeds true and nearly 100% of her calves are short too. This daughter (or granddaughter) is better than her champion mom in that she can consistently reproduce her own phenotype nearly 100% if time (where the mom, could only reproduce her own type 50% of the time due to the heterozygous nature of the chondro genetics).

Would you honestly cull this EXCELLENT, consistent-producing non-chondro cow from your herd even if she was the BEST descendent out of your current champion?



Read more: dextercattle.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=post&thread=2707&page=1#ixzz2Bs02uLiA

But that was NOT your question, YOUR question was "If you had a STUNNING true-short (non-chondro) calf born to one of your favorite chondro-affected Dexters, wouldn't you be tempted to keep that stunning true-short (non-chondro) calf to possibly replace its chondro-affected parent at some point in the future? "

AND my answer is still NO. I do intend to keep this years heifer calf, but there is NO way she will "replace" her mother. I am not going to cull out my chondro carrier female and replace her with her calf just because she is a carrier.

Also what you advocate in many of the other posts with extreme line breeding does not always lend to the BEST results.

Would you honestly have me cull my national champion female just because she carries chondro?

[aggieelissa]

Nov 10, 2012 19:31:15 GMT -5 lakeportfarms said:

If you could show me how to take two small non-carrier Dexters and breed a 34-36" fully grown cow, I'm all ears. Until then, we will continue to breed our mix of carrier/non-carriers, and select some of the best of both to keep as replacements or to increase our herd. If you'll also note from the Missouri thread, at the many of the highest price heifers and cows sold were chondro carriers. Clearly there is and always will be a demand for the look and personality of the chondro carriers. I'll avoid the discussion of personality since it will be argued that it is subjective, but our experience is that there is a difference not just in physical height.

Thank you, we love Ruby! I picked her out at 5 days old and knew then she was going to be an amazing Dexter. She was my first Dexter and safe to say my favorite.

Paula is a AMAZING COW. I have told Roberta many times I would gladly take her home with me =)

I did not realize Mike was 11, he looks very good for his age. I did see you have had him collected.


Completely with you on all of the above! Also same experience with other differences beyond just physical height.

[ladena]

My apology ahead of time but I have a question.

I realize there is extra cost associated with testing her calves, she has given me three calves. Two non-carries and one carrier. Both of the female calves she has produced are shorter non-carrier females, I have no plans to replace the dam with the daughters. The dam has proven her self as a superior female. She is worth the extra cost associated with testing, which now thanks to TAMU will be cheaper as new bundle prices go into affect as of December 1st 2012.

Read more: dextercattle.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=post&thread=2707&page=1#ixzz2BsM28lVj

I can't find anything about the bundle pricing for tests on the ADCA website. It is almost the middle of November. When is the ADCA intend on releasing this information to it's members?

[aggieelissa]

No need to apologize, it is a really recent development.

I typed out the handout I was given at the TDCA meeting:

dextercattle.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=dna&thread=2709&page=1

It should be published in the winter bulletin I was told it should be mailing out around November 15th.

[wanette]

I haven't owned Dexter's for very long and I did very little research when I purchased. With that said now that I have been on this forum and seen alot of pics and attended the AGM last year I've learned that I will NEVER have a superior animal produced from my current girls, short or long. I am culling one of my girls in a month after weaning her bull calf, she is thankfully becoming a pasture pet so I don't have to butcher her. I have retained her heifer calf of last year but if she has the same udder problems of her mom she's hamburger.

So, would I retain a lovely nonchondro heifer, yes, I only have one cow and one heifer to bred this year. Would I cull because of chondro? Not at this time, I have too many other issues that are more important to address.

[lakeportfarms]

Gene, you have fainters as well...lol...it must be a chondro/cycling loving thing! We have several miniature silky fainters, I like them because they don't jump and climb.

Dexters don't live forever, so it sounds like it will be the end of the line for your champion female when she dies because you have no plans to EVER replace her with a daughter (or granddaughter), ever in the future? That would be a shame.

Let's assume that what you said, isn't what you really meant, and let's assume that you really will replace your champion cow "AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE" when she passes on or whatever.

Kirk, give Elissa (and the rest of us) more credit than to put all of our eggs in one basket with respect to planning for the future with our herds. Things happen of course that are beyond our control, but to seriously think that Ruby would be the end of the line for Elissa's ability to be competitive on a national level is ridiculous. I'll chalk that comment up to you just being provocative. I doubt that she'll wait around for Ruby "to pass" before she'll have another champion caliber Dexter. However as her first, Ruby will no doubt always be special to her.

[Cascade Meadows Farm - Kirk]

Nov 10, 2012 19:45:04 GMT -5 aggieelissa said:

But that was NOT your question, YOUR question was "If you had a STUNNING true-short (non-chondro) calf born to one of your favorite chondro-affected Dexters, wouldn't you be tempted to keep that stunning true-short (non-chondro) calf to possibly replace its chondro-affected parent at some point in the future? "

AND my answer is still NO. I do intend to keep this years heifer calf, but there is NO way she will "replace" her mother. I am not going to cull out my chondro carrier female and replace her with her calf just because she is a carrier.

Also what you advocate in many of the other posts with extreme line breeding does not always lend to the BEST results.

Would you honestly have me cull my national champion female just because she carries chondro?

I said: "If you had a STUNNING true-short (non-chondro) calf born to one of your favorite chondro-affected Dexters, wouldn't you be tempted to keep that stunning true-short (non-chondro) calf to possibly replace its chondro-affected parent at some point in the future?"

By "at some point in the future" I really meant "in the future" and that could be 5 or 10 years from now when the show-winning chondro-mom has an accident, or illness, or dies, or becomes infertile... it happens.

There's no way that I would cull your very fine show-winning chondro-cow, but I would continue to extract some of her great features to build into an ongoing family of true-breeding, non-chondro, show-winning, short cows. I would however, dead-end any of her chondro sons and chondro daughters that were anything less than A+ perfect. The less than perfect ones could make good lawn ornaments and the perfect ones could be used as a source of good genes.

Concerning line-breeding/inbreeding.... Linebreeding/inbreeding NEVER CREATES A GENETIC PROBLEM. Linebreeding only does one thing - it doubles up on EXISTING genes. If an animal is carrying some EXISTING bad recessive genes, then line breeding doubles up on those bad genes and then you can see the problem genes that have been hiding all along. Linebreeding also doubles up on great genes and can help you create a pre-potent true-breeding superstar animal.

A superstar-looking and behaving animal with no linebreeding behind it, could be carrying all sorts of unknown problem genes and trash genetics that are hidden. Non line-bred animals may LOOK great and behave well, but they may throw all sorts of inconsistent and poor results. It's similar to hybrid tomatoes... Hybrid tomatoes look great, but they don't breed true because they are heterozygous for so many of their traits. You can get some rather bad tomatoes if you breed out of those heterozygous hybrid tomatoes.

A superstar-looking and behaving animal that's the result of heavy linebreeding/inbreeding, almost certainly has many homozygous pairs of consistent superstar genes and so he/she most always contributes greatness to his/her calves.

If you engage in heavy line-breeding, you have to be prepared initially for some possible poor results (that need to be culled and eaten), but the great results are truly great. Since line-breeding can help you uncover and cleanse a herd of any negative genes, once the genetic cleanup has occurred, you will only get mostly good results going forward, and no more surprises.

There are famous high-quality lines of Herefords that have been closed for over 100 years with LOTS of inbreeding (they culled the problem genes in the early years). Also, the Woodmagic Dexter Herd in England was closed (no outside animals allowed in) for 50ish years with heavy inbreeding and excellent results.

Thanks for the nice discussion and thanks for the hard work you put into your Dexters.

[aggieelissa]

Gene,

I looked at the hips on them, the ones that faint appear to be rounder, I assume that is the fat.

Intresting.

[Cascade Meadows Farm - Kirk]

You can list the positive features of Chondro-Dexters all day long.... But because they CAN'T BREED TRUE, you can never have a consistent breeding herd of them.

It's hard to sell me on the positive benefits of any animal that only reproduces itself 50% of the time.

I've seen some amazing-looking chondro-dexters and I'd buy them if they could breed true.

[lakeportfarms]

Nov 10, 2012 23:11:13 GMT -5 Cascade Meadows Farm - Kirk said:

You can list the positive features of Chondro-Dexters all day long.... But because they CAN'T BREED TRUE, you can never have a consistent breeding herd of them.

It's hard to sell me on the positive benefits of any animal that only reproduces itself 50% of the time.

I've seen some amazing-looking chondro-dexters and I'd buy them if they could breed true.

As I said before, not everybody has the same tastes in Dexters. You are working on the premise that they do. Why would you intentionally avoid breeding some "amazing chondro-Dexters" yourself when they have a demonstrable following and command good prices and show accolades? If I recall correctly, the highest price paid at the AGM was a chondro carrier 12 month old red polled heifer at $3900.00. That's not chump change.

Since you already have many polled red genetics in your own herd, you already have a good start by AI'ing some of your best cows with a top notch red bull like White O'Morn chief. But you won't because you insist on selecting only those that will "breed true".

I'm looking forward to the day when those that would see chondro eliminated from their herds greatly outnumber those that do choose to keep them. I'll easily sell my chondro carriers to those that love them for what they are, and because they'll be rare. For the 50% of my herd that is not, my chondro cows will wean a steer at 60 plus percent of their weight at 7 months on grass or hay alone while still maintaining an ideal BCS. I agree with Gene regarding the ease at which the chondro carriers keep condition compared to their non-carrier counterparts. Those of us that have both types see this on a daily basis.








[/quote]

[wvdexters]

I like the "little guys". I think eveyone here knows this.

Kirk I understand what you are saying, I get your point. I just don't agree with it or really see the need. I truly believe if we followed this philosophy and "bred out" chondro we would be losing so much. I don't understand the push towards this goal. The price is just too high. Dexters are dexters. Chondro is a part of dexters. They are unique in every way.

I really do hate these words.

Lethal : I know the word was coined years ago, I remember the discussion on it, but my goodness... It sounds like they are just going to explode or something. Like they are walking along, chewing their cud, having a relaxing day and then.., POW down they go. LETHAL!!! Like a lethal heart attack, or a lethal stroke.... BANG! Chondroplasia is very simply a genetic condition where if two chondro pos animals are bred together the resulting conception has a 25% chance of being severely chondro affected and unviable. Around 10% of these matings result in a bulldog calf as the majority end in early pregnancy. It is a condition that is very easily managed. It is not contagious!!!!!!!!

As for "good lawn ornaments" OUCH!! Not too sure about that one either!!


On the subject of line breeding. Good and useful tool DEFINATELY!
Possible genetic disaster DEFINATELY!

Genes are fascinating and mysterious things. We understand the tip of the iceberg. Genes have been handed down through countless generations. Through every kind of stress, disaster, disease the strong lived on to reproduce and pass on their genes. What is sometimes called junk or unwanted might be exactly what will keep and animal alive and reproducing in changing situations. Some will have more natural resistance to certain diseases that may become pandemic, some will do better in extreme cold or heat, some will fare better in drought others in damp wet conditions, some will flourish in grazing conditions others would starve it. We don't know. Genetic diversity is important. It gives strength to a breed.

I don't worry about whether my animals will (breed true) 100%. I am looking for lines of Dexters that are healthy, dual purpose, gentle and fit into the breed guidelines of what a traditional dexter is and should be. I am looking for that sweet disposition, small size, good udders, good lines and feet, easy calving that have made and continue to make Dexters what they are today as an individual and as a breed. I bred my girls to a beautiful traditional bull that will give outstanding calves. I will choose bulls in the future that continue this goal.