Cloning cattle and inbreeding

[JeffNY]

One thing that bothers me more than the way certain things like fertility, and longevity have diminished some, is cloning and inbreeding. Many call inbreeding "linebreeding", when it is successfull. For those unfamiliar with what is done, they more or less take a family, and breed it to itself to get something "special". One particular bull, is Damion from Select Sires. This bull has a inbreeding coef of 15% I beleive, compared to the average of 4-5%. Another bull is Drake, who is handled by ABS. While they are both really good bulls, they are inbred purposely. Now there was an article UpNorth posted, about crossbreeding, etc. It is interesting to note many of these bulls are related, causing the animals you breed, and the eventual daughters to be "inbred".


Now there is a difference between that, and actual inbreeding. What is the difference? Well when you take Animal A, breed it to Bull A, then breed Animal A's daughter to Bull B. Now if Bull B and Bull A have similar bulls in their pedigree, oh say 3 generations back. That won't effect things as much as say taking Bull A and breeding it to the daughter of Animal A's daughter. More or less to better explain it. Say you have a heifer, you breed it to Shottle. Take the daughter breed it to Leader, then breed that daughters calf back to Shottle. That is linebreeding, or more or less inbreeding.


Another thing that isn't new, but is beggining to show itself is cloning. There is a bull out there called "Starbuck 2". He is a cloned bull from the famour Starbuck. He isn't being sold in the states, or Canada. He is however being sold down in Columbia, and Brazil. Now recently the FDA approved products from cloned animals to be sold. This is Beef and Dairy. Now ask yourself this, how does selling cloned semen (more or less), to another country going to limit its use here? Because imports aren't illegal, so all it would take is an animal imported from Brazil, a "Starbuck 2" heifer.

Another thing to consider, for all we know starbuck 2 has already been used. Starbuck did exist, and simply putting down starbuck as the sire, won't be checked. Not only that, some still have that bull in their tank. Heck I have seen some animals in the ring from bulls that have been dead for a while, and are no longer sold.

Either way, I do think we will see some significant problems with these cloned genetics in the future. Not so much the bull itself, but the daughters. I do think we will see some fertility issues, whether it is the longevity, or the overall fertility (services per animal increase). We have already seen this, with the push of production, and the overall breeding. Funny how many years ago said they always remembered 1 service 1 cow, not these 2-3 services per heifer or cow. Some do take on the first try, but the keyword is some.


Jeff

[tyusclan]

I am not in favor of cloning at all. I think we're eventually going to see that the problems associated with cloning are going to far outweigh any benefits. I could be totally wrong, but that's my take on what I've seen so far.

I'm not nearly as concerned about "inbreeding" or "linebreeding" as the case may be. For simplicity I'm going to use the term linebreeding. Linebreeding in and of itself is not a bad thing. Every breed of domestic animal that we have today was the result of linebreeding somewhere along the way. Linebreeding in the hands of a knowledgeable and careful breeder will actually improve the breed. In the hands of a novice, or someone who linebreeds for convenience, it can be a disaster. Linebreeding simply intensifies traits, good and bad. That's why culling must be practiced more diligently and ruthlessly if you're going to linebreed. If an animal has an undesirable trait it MUST be removed from the breeding herd, no matter how perfect it is in other ways.

I understand what you're saying about inadvertently breeding related animals because you may not be aware of the pedigree for more than a generation or two. Maybe if the associations made extended pedigrees available, this could be avoided. I raised pit bulls for years, and before I would make a breeding, I wanted to study the pedigree for at least 4 generations. Six generations was even better. Often animals that look totally unrelated on a 3 generation pedigree will have a common ancestor show up several times in the 4th generation or further back.

[james dilley]

Now I read an article in Progressive Farmer about 7 years ago About A set of 8 bulls that were Identical, They split the embryo and implanted them into 8 differnt cows And at the same time the ranch had 40 heifers that were bred doing the same thing, So how would that stack up to be Cloning?? I just wonder. As all the bulls are the same so are all the heifers. But the article did say they were not clones ,But splits. Would that not be the same ?Or close to it??

[tyusclan]

I don't know if that would be considered cloning. It seems to me that it would not. That would be more like a set of identical octuplets. Cloning is reproducing offspring identical to the parent animal. I didn't read the article that you're referring to, but if I'm understanding your post it sounds like these were embryos that were split after fertilization.

[JeffNY]

Remember this though. With many different breeds of dogs, some have health problems, and I beleive it is because of linebreeding. Black labs have hip problems, weiner dogs have back problems, and there are many other problems with other breeds. Makes you wonder what will happen with cows, or other livestock? Maybe some health problems, reproductive, etc.


As far as that egg thing, I beleive that is gene splitting. It is similar to cloning, but what is being done in the cloning department, is taking dead bulls, and "bringing" them back into service. That is what I have a problem with, Heck Durham many would love to have come back. I wish I could get Durham for 30 a unit, as one of my cows would match perfectly to Durham. However, I wouldn't want to see a clone of him "durham 2", just to get that inexpensive semen. Also makes you wonder, would Durham 2 be as good genetic wise as Durham 1. Every animal grows differently, and the clone would be out of a different dam, and could develop differently, genetic wise as well. Many, many possible problems.


Jeff

[tyusclan]

Yes, I agree about the tendency toward health problems of many breeds. I think, though, that the problem lies in a failure to properly cull breeding stock more so than the inbreeding itself. I'll use the pit bull as an example again, as that is what I have the most experience with in purebreds. I don't want to tell anyone more than they want to know, so I'll be as brief as possible. The pit bull historically has been one of the most inbred of any breed of dog. The reason for this is that the trait most sought after by old-time pit bull breeders was gameness. Gameness is an elusive trait that is very difficult to perpetuate. Because inbreeding intensifies traits, that has been the best way for the trait to be maintained. But the old-time pit bull owners were absolutely ruthless in their culling practices. The slightest hint of any undesirable trait, and they were immediately removed from the breeding pool. As a result, the pit bull has virtually no health problems to this day. Now, I do believe that some of the temperament problems that you see in "pit bulls" today, many of which are not true pit bulls, are the result of novices breeding animals with these undesirable traits.

So, to bring the discussion back to cattle, again I don't think the problem lies with the inbreeding itself, but in the uneducated and improper application of the inbreeding. If you're going to employ inbreeding/linebreeding in your program, you must be a dedicated student of genetics and pedigrees, and you MUST cull ANY undesirable trait from the herd, regardless of how much you like everything else about the animal.

[Jennifer L.]

I don't think you'll see cloning as a big problem, at least, not with dairy. The big benefit with the bull studs is constant improvement. Every dairy geneticist will tell you you get the most improvement on your first calf heifers because they have the newest improved genetics in the herd. So you look at a cloned bull and what do you have? Old genetics. Yes, the bull was good, but he'll be surpassed by new ones. Remember 30 years ago it was all Bootmaker, Sunnyside Standout and Elevation in the Holsteins? Well, they were great bulls and I had a lot of Elevation genetics in my herd at one time, but they wouldn't stand up to today's bulls.

Cloning cows might have some benefit, but probably way too expensive since they can't be used widely like a bull can.

Jennifer

[kgchis]

Originally Posted by james dilley

Now I read an article in Progressive Farmer about 7 years ago About A set of 8 bulls that were Identical, They split the embryo and implanted them into 8 differnt cows And at the same time the ranch had 40 heifers that were bred doing the same thing, So how would that stack up to be Cloning?? I just wonder. As all the bulls are the same so are all the heifers. But the article did say they were not clones ,But splits. Would that not be the same ?Or close to it??

I think the difference here is the article you referred to just split an embryo after it started replicating. Much like identical twins where the embryo just splits into 2 different embryos. The embroys are indentical but not an exact replica of say a parent.

In cloning, you would actually remove the DNA from a cell and replace that DNA with a strand of DNA from the animal you wish to clone. Thus having an exact replica of the already existing (or existed) animal.