Question about the A&M Lab

[ladena]

Here's the story. We bought a cow and had her genotyped with UCDavis and then transferred her genotype to A&M to have her sire qualified since her sire's genotype is on file with them. Now fast forward about a year and a half and I talk to her breeder and find out that he recently had her dam genotyped with A&M so I, forgetting that I had previously transferred our cow's genotype, transfer the genotype to A&M and ask for dam qualification. Now they are telling me that both the sire, who they previously verified, and the dam are disqualified and they asked me to reference the report from UCDavis saying it does not have parent qualification. If I had parentage verification from UCDavis I would not need to involve the A&M lab. I tried to explain that in an email but haven't gotten a response yet. I'm really just wondering if anyone has gone through this and might have any advice. I'm at my wit's end. This is going on about a month and a half.

Thanks in advance, LaDena

[kansasdexters]

LaDena,

If it was my cow, I would send in her tail hairs to Texas A&M, have them genotype her and compare her genotype to the sire and dam (already on file there) and resolve the issue for $25. Your time is worth something, and stressing over this isn't worth it.

Alternately, if you can obtain a copy of the Texas A&M genotypes for the sire and dam, spend $2.00 per report, and transfer them online to UC-Davis and have them do the parentage report. Problem solved for only $ 4.00.


Patti

[ladena]

Thanks, Patti, always the voice of reason. I guess I'll see what response I get by email and go from there.

[ladena]

Update: I resubmitted the tests to UCDavis and they disqualified the sire for both of my cows. On the upside they did qualify the dams for both of the cows. After doing some checking on the breeder's and previous owner's ADCA page I think I might know who the sire is so I will now have to contact A&M where his genotype is and see if he is a match.

[zephyrhillsusan]

Bummer! So sorry! I'm trying to get straight what you first wrote.

We bought a cow and had her genotyped with UCDavis and then transferred her genotype to A&M to have her sire qualified since her sire's genotype is on file with them.

Read more: dextercattle.proboards.com/post/new/4186#ixzz3GROAqJuo

You didn't specify, but I assume you actually had her sire qualified at A&M?  If so, then as I understand, she sire qualified there until you tried to have her dam qualified, too?  Was it adding dam qualification to the mix that made the problem with the sire show up?  (I ask because I understand that can indeed happen.)

[ladena]

Hey, Susan, that's what I thought but no, it wasn't adding the dam that was the problem. It just went unnoticed until I submitted the dam. So the two cows that I thought were by Circle H's Frederick are not. I think they are by the bull Lone Star Brutus and now have to contact A&M and see what they have to say. I did get an email from Mike Morris, who I bought the cows from, saying that Brutus should be the sire. We'll see.

[zephyrhillsusan]

Okay, I'm trying to follow along here. Tell me if I go wrong somewhere . . .
Your cows were supposed to be the offspring of Circle H Frederick by AI? (Or did Mike Morris once own him?)
If their dams were AId to him, but Lone Star Brutus is really the sire, that means Brutus either got to them before the AI or they didn't take and he bred them after?
I assume Brutus was the only bull Mike had at the time and so is presumed to be the only other possible sire?

And then to ask a question about A&M, how did it go "unnoticed" that Frederick wasn't the sire? Didn't you have him qualified at A&M as the sire of the cow you first mentioned? Sorry, I'm confused about what actually happened at A&M.

I'm so sorry this has happened. What happens with your cows' pedigrees and the pedigrees of their offspring? I'm glad Mike is trying to help you straighten it out.

[ladena]

Susan, they were supposed to be the offspring by Frederick through natural service from the time when he was owned by Jon Morris, the actual breeder and Mike's cousin. After purchasing them, I had them genotyped and transferred the information to A&M and they sire qualified both of them as offspring of Frederick. This past summer I noticed that Mike had genotyped the dam to one of my cows with A&M so I sent in a request for dam qualification. That is when A&M told me that neither sire nor dam qualified as parents for that cow even though they had previously qualified Frederick as the sire.
Fortunately, even though UCDavis disqualified Frederick as the sire to both cows, they were able to verify the dam to both cows.
I'm in contact with the registrar and I've resubmitted the PV for the suspected bull with A&M where he is on file. Hopefully I'll know something soon and I can get all this straightened out.

[zephyrhillsusan]

Thanks for clearing that up. Unfortunately, unless we've been in the ADCA for awhile, we have no idea who were the interim owners of an animal between the breeder and the current owner. If someone doesn't know who they were, that would make it difficult to track down things like this.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and wonder whether this might be one of those instances where sire (alone) OR dam (alone) checks out by a lab, but sire AND dam together does not. During an earlier discussion on sire qualification, I wanted to get it straight from the "horse's mouth," so to speak, so I called someone at UCDavis. I don't remember the name of the person I spoke with, but they explained to me with actual genotype numbers (no names!) how Sire A could qualify as the sire of Calf C. Then, ignoring the sire, they took Dam B's genotype, and she also qualified as the dam of Calf C. Then, what was fascinating, was that they took the sire AND dam together, and you could see that one of them had to be wrong.  I was explaining very badly, but I'm wondering if this didn't happen to you at A&M rather than an error on their part.

Here is the thread, and here's what I posted after that conversation, for those of you who read this forum on your phones:

For those of you who are interested in understanding how the parentage testing procedure works, UCDavis has an explanation on their website. If you scroll down a little way there are several examples given. If you make it all the way to the bottom of the page, you will find this:

"Accuracy of Parentage Analysis

Parentage testing identifies individuals that, due to a specific combination of marker alleles, could qualify as a parent for a particular offspring. Accurate parentage testing requires breeders to identify possible parents since if considering a randomly selected large group of individuals there could be more than one that qualifies as a parent. As an example, human paternity testing was originally developed as a means to verify that a named individual could or could not be the father of a given child. At most it was meant to determine if one of several men could be the father of a child. The same rules hold true for animal parentage testing. A good application for animal parentage testing is verification that the dam is correct and which of the sires on a particular farm are the actual sire.

Finally, it is important to remember that while parentage exclusions are 100% accurate parentage qualifications are not. The accuracy of most animal parentage tests is greater than 99% when both parents are included in the analysis and drops to around 95% when only one parent is included in the analysis. However, this accuracy will decrease when the potential parents are part of a large group of closely related animals. Again, an animal closely related to an actual parent could possess marker alleles that make it appear to be the correct parent. To prevent erroneous parentage qualifications, breeders need to submit samples from all possible parents when first requesting parentage verification. If more than one sire and one dam qualify as parents of an offspring the laboratory can then test with additional DNA markers to sort out the actual parents."

This was very helpful to me, so I wanted to pass it on.


Read more: dextercattle.proboards.com/thread/4230/legacy-dexter-cattle-genotype-registry#ixzz3GiZih8CO

I fixed the link in this quote because it did not come through; I also added " " to accurately reflect what is quoted from the VGL website.

There are examples given in the article, as well as explanations of the accuracy of parent verification.  VERY interesting!  Some of the examples get a bit heady.  I love genetics, but I really have to work to wrap my head around it.  The person I talked to, who gave me a very cogent verbal explanation, said they want to rewrite that page, but apparently they haven't gotten around to it yet.  

I hope some of this will be helpful and interesting to you as you sort things out.

[dexterlady]

LaDena, I have had this mess happen to me THREE times now!.....I have gotten the first two cleared up now and have the right parents ...This last one still has not been found...I have the right dam but not the right sire....I have been waiting since before the AGM to get this straightened out but not getting much help....I will not mention any names but this is suppose to be a reputable breeder....Seems to have the attitude if we find him we find him ,if we don't things will have to stay as they are....Which means one of my heifers has the wrong grandfather....I sold the dam to this heifer and that means I sold cow with the wrong sire!...It was the attitude that this really doesn't affect me as I don't own the dam anymore....Well that's where they are wrong!....I kept a heifer from this dam and I want to know who the sire is!.....So we just wait until any tests results come back....And I MIGHT get to know who the sire was...I know the sire to my heifer but I don't know who the grandsire is....What upsets me is that this person has NO idea who it is....And doesn't seem to much care! ( Well if we find him, we find him---If we don't -things will just stay the same)Very discouraging....Not much integrity as far as I'm concerned....So IF they find him, I will be sure to let you all know....I think this is the biggest reason it didn't pass to make it mandatory for dam qualification....There will be a lot more of these cases....I will admit, the are HONEST mistakes, that is all well and good but when the same person does it at least three times, sure makes you wonder.

[ladena]

Donna, I'm sorry this has happened to you also. If you are like me, you bought cows from different people to build your herd. I think we purchased from four or five different people and out of those only two would I do business with again. In the short time that I've had Dexters I've formed an opinion that the worst thing isn't bad temperaments, feet or udders but dishonest, irreputable "breeders". I use the term breeder loosely.

[lakeportfarms]

Ladena, I know it's frustrating and you probably feel it's water over the bridge, but if you have some specific issues that can be resolved with the attention of the breeders you purchased your Dexters from that you won't do business with again due to unethical behavior, you should give them the opportunity to help correct it. If they don't, report it to the ADCA, and hopefully they'll take some action or sanction. If that doesn't work, then as a last resort consider carefully airing some of your problems with background information in a public forum to help others avoid a similar situation.

[legendrockranch]

Yes I too have had this happen, thankfully at the time I was already sire and dam parentage verifying, that's how I found out about the problem.
You can rest easy knowing what you buy and sell are who they are supposed to be if you fully parentage verify, we can only move forward.
Who knows who was who in the past.

Sorry Hans, I know in Dexterladys, case the ADCA has been made aware and nothing is being done, or able to be done. I'm sure the reason she is saying anything now is because it is "then as a last resort consider carefully airing some of your problems". Plus to let people know that this does happen.

Barb

[ladena]

I received a report back from A&M on the suspected sire. They confirmed that he is the sire to one cow but not the other. That leaves me with one other possible sire so I resubmitted it.

[midhilldexters]

Ladena at least you have one figured out, good job.

I kind of agree with Barb, when nothing is done and you are at your wits end and not getting any help from the breeder (like dexterlady) then name names. After all, all you are doing is covering for them and why should you do that? People need to know where not to buy if their records are bad or they refuse to help. That being said, mistakes happen and if a breeder fixes the situation then all is good.
Dexterlady, for this to happen to you three times is just crazy and my heart goes out to you, thank you for stepping up and talking about it. I hope your case shows people they need to vote for genotyping cows next time it crops up, we'd all be better off in the future.

Carol K