Pedigree breeding - value of maternal lines.

patsy_mccabe

This is something I've been wondering about for a while. Are there genetics that can only be transferred down the maternal genetic line?
You hear a lot of it in the pedigree game, but I thought it was the usual sales pitch, you get from certain breeders.

I've a pedigree cow here and she's the descendant of a well known show cow in the limousin breed. Going back a few generations to this cow. The thing is the sire, grandsire etc are nothing special so I'm thinking its her material line thats doing it for her, as she's a nice cow and breeding well.

For those of you at the pedigree breeding a good while, what do you think?

J.O. Farmer

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

This is something I've been wondering about for a while. Are there genetics that can only be transferred down the maternal genetic line?
You hear a lot of it in the pedigree game, but I thought it was the usual sales pitch, you get from certain breeders.

I've a pedigree cow here and she's the descendant of a well known show cow in the limousin breed. Going back a few generations to this cow. The thing is the sire, grandsire etc are nothing special so I'm thinking its her material line thats doing it for her, as she's a nice cow and breeding well.

For those of you at the pedigree breeding a good while, what do you think?

Not a pedigree breeder but genetics could just as easily come down the maternal side than the paternal side as half comes from each side.

The only difference is a cow can generally only have 1 calf per year while a bull could potentially sire thousands if in AI or at least all calves on a single farm where he's a stock bull so his genes get spread around more hence the traditional focus on the bull.

TooOldBoots

Genetics can be very strange, some cows add nothing to the calf. One of the smallest cows I have breeds the best calves you'd ever see. In fact its kinda funny in autumn to see the calf nearly bigger than the cow suckling away