Tuesday, March 11, 2014

More on the Recessive Spotting Gene

Well, wow it has been a very long time since I added anything here. Didn't have anything really to add.

But the other morning, we had a very interesting calf born....Which made me think (and hubby curse a little I think...lol) I'm in love with her, he's not so much. Anyways if you read a little further down, the post titled 'A Spotting Indicator' this will hopefully make a bit more sense.

So, anyways, here's the darling heifer calf that was born here last night...
Now this little sweetheart really wouldn't seem to be that unusual (colourful but not unusual) when you consider that her sire is a spotted Shorthorn bull (with minimal white) except that this is what her mama looks like...
Now in retrospect, I have to say that spots up there really didn't shock me when I remember what I wrote about in my earlier blog post. After all, this cow is out of a Hereford marked cow and a solid Black bull that we found carried the spotting gene. So I hypothesize that the cow above is Shs and when bred to the Shorthorn bull (ss) she passed on her spotting gene which went nicely with the s gene that the bull passed on and we got some colour. Now, the only problem with all this though is the markings on her face...
Which one might consider to be an expression of the Hereford markings... I have no answer to that other than to keep this sweetheart and breed her to a Solid (SS) bull a few times and see what I get...




1 comment:

mich said...

Did you keep her? What did she produce?