Kinds of red?

[zephyrhillsusan]

Will somebody please explain the difference between wild type red and red?  And are there only two types of red?  I have one black cow that's ED/e, which UCD calls dominant black with one copy of "recessive red."  I have one black cow and one black heifer that are ED/E+, which UCD calls dominant black with one copy of "wild type red."  I understand that they are different genetically, but I mean practically--phenotypically--what is the difference?  And is nose color associated with the red gene or is it a completely different gene?  (In other words, can you have two red animals with wild type red and one will have a pink nose and one a black nose?)

We're getting a red bull.  I won't have copies of his testing until he gets here to know which kind of red he is.  Will it make a difference what kind of red genes he and the cows carry?  Or does any red gene + any red gene still = red?  I'm assuming yes, but just thought I'd ask for clarification. 

I'm sure I should already understand this (!) but it never mattered much because everyone was black, anyway!  Now with the prospect of some red animals in the future, I'm getting curious.

[Deleted]

Hi Susan

Wild red or E+ is made up of black and red pigments while true, recessive red is purely red pigment.

We have a boy who is E+/E+ and he is a beautiful deep maghony red.
We have a girl who is e/e and she is a 'brighter' red, and another who is E+/e and gets a beautiful sheen to her summer coat.

They say the wild reds are more likely to have a black nose and those who are true red have pinks, but our wild red boy while he has a darker nose than the girls, I wouldn't say it was black.........but he has only just turned 1 yr whether this makes a difference or not.

Will look for his pic posted in this forum for you re horns and come back and edit to add the link.

Our true red girl is on our Facebook page www.facebook.com/lindonestate ( think that's the address. ) as the cover pic.

Our combination girl should also have a pic on the Facebook page.....will go and check.

Cheers Donna

[kansasdexters]

Susan,

E+ is "wild type" (not "wild red") and it is expressed as red in Dexter cattle. But in other cattle breeds it may be expressed as brownish, or brownish-reddish, or other shades of color. Dexters that are homozygous for wild type, E+/E+, may have dark noses. An E+ allele must be present at the Extension locus on Chromosome 18, in order for the expression of the brindle color pattern.

e is "true red", it is expressed as red in all cattle when it occurs as a homozygous pair at the Extension locus: e/e . Cattle that are true red (e/e) have pink noses.

Here is a good reference: homepage.usask.ca/~schmutz/Variant%20Red.html


Patti

[legendrockranch]

Susan, as far as the nose colors are concerned, it isn't always the case of "black" or "pink" there are also variants between the two.
A few years back John Potter and I were exchanging pictures of the different colors noses of our red Dexters.

I have a tendency to like the dark noses and dark eyeliner. The current bull I have is e/e "true red" I thought using him I might lose the dark coloration.
I was happy to see that even with only one E+ on some of my cows, my calves still express the dark color on noses & eyeliner

I'm still trying to figure out while most of my animals have black (dark) noses and eyeliner, some of them only have the dark noses with no eyeliner.

Barb

[zephyrhillsusan]

Hi all, thanks for the explanations. Please excuse any typos, btw, as I have a 5 year old on one leg and a 3 year old on the other! Grandkids here for the night. I did know about red being recessive to black (and being the only color that always breeds true), but the rest is new. Let's see if I got it:

E+ wild type in Dexters is red (while it might be other colors in other breeds) and is a mix of red and black hairs. This can look like mahogany red.
e red is "true red" and is purely red hairs. This can look like a lighter or brighter red.
E+/E+ may have dark noses.
e/e may have pink noses.

Let me know if I left anything out or got it wrong.

I did my quotation marks wrong in my initial question. I should have been more accurate in copying what UCD said:
ED/d "Animal has one copy of dominant black and one copy of recessive red.
ED/E+ "Animal has one copy of dominant black and one copy of wild type (red)."

So I was looking at nose colors in my photos to see what the sires have. ED/d cow has a sire with a pink nose. ED/E+ heifer's sire has a pink nose, but his face is dark, shading from his poll hair down to extremely dark around his nose (if that makes sense). Our new bull has a dark nose and it looks like dark eyeliner from the photos, but I'll be able to tell better next week when he gets here. So I guess we could be getting all kinds of nose colors and eyeliner or not when he gets here and gets to work.

Donna, I really like your banner photo with all three colors, and your cow really is shiny! Her coat reminds me of the champagne color in Tennessee Walking Horses that actually looks metallic.
Patti, I'll read Dr. Schmuck's link tomorrow after the grandkids and kids are gone. We're having late Christmas as they were all sick, and I'm just finishing this after the GKs went to bed and their parents went out for date night.
Barb, I'm with you; I like the dark noses. It's nice not having to put eyeliner on my cows! Not to mention chickens, Sheri!
Gene, my sister-in-law and her husband raise/d Longhorns. (He just died so I don't know what she'll do with them.) I'll read your link, but if I raised Longhorns, I'd just give up on the genetics and wait and see what I got!

[cddexter]

Susan:

E+ is red in Dexters, black in Limo's, brownish in Jersey and Brown Swiss, and black with red highlights especially on the poll in Holsteins. That's why it's called a 'wild' gene. Varies between breeds but consistent within a breed.

It is possible to get mahogany and carrot in either E+ or e, so you can't count on the colour to be an indicator. Ditto black faces on bright reds, and pink, black, and grey, and spotted noses on either red.

I really like it that I no longer have to be the one to answer these questions. I don't remember where it was, but Dahdo posted a link to the first papers on coat colour from 1998. I think they are in the ADCA Bulletin archives.

cheers, c.

[midhilldexters]

Patti in general e/e may have pink noses but check out the 3 Dexter that I posted pics of below, scroll down on the first page and all 3 have speckled black on their noses.

dextercattle.proboards.com/thread/358/basic-concepts-dexter-color-genetics

Carol K

[kansasdexters]

Carol K,

Thanks for the link, those are very interesting photos! I had a black calf born two years ago and he had a black nose at birth, but it became specked with pink coloration sometime between 5 and 6 months old (it had a lot of pink skin interspersed with the gray/black skin, and it was not due to an injury). However, his nose had returned to a solid gray/black color, by the time he was 2 years old. His coat color was always black during this time and he was castrated at 5 months old. That calf's dam was ED/ED, B/B - she doesn't carry red or dun, and his sire was red.

So now I'm wondering if your speckle-nosed true red (e/e) animals always had specks on their noses, or if they were born with pink noses and then developed specks as they matured. If so, then perhaps the specks are due to hormonal influences (like "age spots" on human skin).

Patti

[midhilldexters]

Hey Patti,
That's pretty cool on the black, never seen pink on a black nose. Fun stuff. I'm not sure on the three pics, they were of Johns animals as examples of e/e. The one cow came to him as an adult, the other two are bulls which he bred.

Carol K

[zephyrhillsusan]

So it seems pretty clear that you can't guess an animal's genotype by looking at its shade of red and nose color. Just check the test result if you want to know!

[legendrockranch]

Carol K, we must have been exchanging the pictures of nose colors, I have the same ones.

Barb

[Deleted]

I find Genitcs facinating too, and have been reading as much as I can about Dexter colors mating etc. I understand that black dominates, two reds will always throw red. A dun cow bred to a red bull will throw black. What about two duns throwing a red? I heard that is possible, would that calf carry both red and dun then? I am just trying to sort some of this out as I am new to raising purebred Dexters. Cathy

[legendrockranch]

Apr 18, 2014 23:01:43 GMT -5 @pinevalleydexters said:

A dun cow bred to a red bull will throw black. What about two duns throwing a red?

A dun cow bred to a red bull will not necessarily throw a black, it depends on what other colors the dun cow and red bull carry. Two duns can throw a red, again it depends on if they both carry red.
See the below links.

www.dextercattle.org/adca/adca_article_color_genetics.html

www.dextercattle.org/PDF%20files/ColorGeneticsProbabilityExamples.pdf

Barb

[Deleted]

So the way to know what your cattle carry for color genetics would be to pull tail hairs and test.

[hollydzie]

Pinevalley ~ yes pull your tail hair and send to UC Davis. Make sure that you specify that you want all 3 colors tested for. I had a calf born to a mother that was black and carried dun. The sire was black carried red. The calf ended up homozygous black, meaning no matter what she is bred to she will only ever have black. I find it fun to see who carries what.. Best of luck

Holly