Line Breeding

[DenMacII]

Last week one of our cows gave us a beautiful little heifer calf that was sired by our bull. I was talking with another local farmer who recommended that we keep her and line breed her with our bull, since we have a real nice bull, and she is a good looking heifer calf. His belief is that we will have better traits with the next calf that comes from the new heifer.

It was our intention to sell or trade her to bring in another heifer.

I never thought of line breeding as I assumed there was always a greater risk of problems with the calf.

What are your thoughts on line breeding. Should we keep this calf, or sell/trade her to get another heifer that's not related to our bull?

Thanks as always for your insight.

[SVWfarmer]

I have line bred my cattle here with both great and fair results. You never know what the outcome will be but if both parents show desirable traits I would try it. It is more commonly done than you might believe because if you want to reproduce what you have you must breed back to it. You set those desirable traits in stone basically if the breeding goes well. If not, sell the offspring for meat and do not re-breed that pair.

[MO_cows]

Depends on the genetic defects within the breed. If the breed is known to have them and the bull hasn't been tested and confirmed clean, then you are playing with fire to breed a bull to his daughter. Other than that and our cultural taboo about "incest", no reason not to.

[FarmerDavid]

Tested for what?