Is “Avoiding Inbreeding” just a scam? -- to take over your herd breeding?

Mark Curry     (989) 984- 7027      Route Services and Sales

Sue Palen        (989) 277- 0480      Store/Products manager  (Order desk)

Greg Palen      (989) 277- 6031      “aAa” Breeding Guide/  Certified Seed Specialist

Mich Livestock Service, Inc   ***   “For the Best in Bulls”    “High Energy Forages”
110 N Main St  (PO Box 661)   Ovid,  MI  48866           office phone (989) 834- 2661
          email: greg@michiganlivestock.com          www.michiganlivestock.com 

 

I took a phone call from a Casein researcher in Iowa recently who had discovered a currently promoted high-Genomic-value AI bull already had twenty crosses to “Mogul” in his pedigree!
“Mogul” was still alive as recently as five years ago (passing in his eighth year due to paralysis in his rear end) and at that point had sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons with semen available.

“Mogul” himself was noted to have over 40 crosses to Round Oak Rag Apple Elevation who was born in 1965.    “Elevation” currently represents 13% of the modern Holstein genotype.    “How can we avoid massive inbreeding under intense Genomic selection from so few ancestors?” my new friend asked.    Good question, I thought…

Generations are moving so fast that few already remember that “Delta Lambda”, also deceased at only five years of age, the current leader in AI sons and grandsons, is a grandson of “Mogul”.   “Lambda” has 90 crosses to SWD Valiant and 40 crosses to Walkway Chief Mark, arguably the two greatest sons of Pawnee Farm Arlinda Chief, who was born in 1962.    “Arlinda Chief” sits close to “Elevation” representing 12% of the modern Holstein genotype.     Thus in these two great bulls from the beginnings of the “index” era you have 25% of the Holstein breed’s genes.

And it does not stop there.   Genosource Captain, who is the highest living GTPI Holstein sire of AI sons has 30 crosses to Norrielake Cleitus Luke (direct grandson of “Elevation”).   With In Vitro Fertilization added to Embryo Transfer, pre-pubescent heifers can have immature Ovum cells surgically aspirated from their undeveloped ovaries, fertilized with semen massaged from newly pubescent bulls, and have calves on the ground (incubated in and nursed by beef cows in Iowa) by the time they are 15 months old—the age you might have first bred them…  Except surgical exposure of a pre-pubescent uterus generally ruins them for breeding and calving normally, so their sons are generally “blank” in pedigree development.    75% of active Genomic sires do not have milking daughters; their ever-younger sires also have no milking daughters; their dam and both grandams may never have calved and so have no records or classification scores.    All the published “genetic value” is based on imputed trait values assigned to marker genes.

Does “inbreeding depression” come directly from shared ancestors?

The last great study of “inbreeding depression” was done in Europe, where after only three generations using North American progeny-ranked Holstein sires on native Friesian origin cows, they were seeing the usual effects:   lower fertility, more stillborn calves, slower growth rates, less will to live, frailty of frame and lower immunity, thus more health costs, and shortened herdlife.    Yet the “threshold” for “inbreeding coefficient” (ibc= 8.25% pedigree relationships) defined from American studies had not been reached.    The obvious conclusion: inbreeding “depression” is caused from SINGLE TRAIT SELECTION  (in Holland Genetics’ case, a total focus on PTA Protein yield for selecting bull dams and mating sires) --  NOT from pedigree.     

While this study was never publicly acknowledged in the USA  (I only learned of it through our Canadian Holstein connections)  it had the effect of changing the simplistic USDA “Net Merit” in favor of adding health (mostly SCS), fertility (DPR) and Productive Life traits to the total index, which reranked the available sires.    AI studs hoped this “Net Merit”change would counteract the trends in favor of dairy crossbreeding that had resulted in more foreign semen importation and less use of AI stud computer mating systems that gave them near-total control of sire use.

At this point, with accelerated generations of Genomic youngsters leading to aggressive levels of ibc% in the bulls and rising efi% (expected future inbreeding) in heifer lots, a few studs still attempt to sell computer pedigree-based linear mating on “avoiding inbreeding”…  BUT if the same stud is breeding donors back to their sons and crossing brothers to full sisters routinely to impute the highest Genomic indexes, why should they tell you to do the opposite?

It is past time to face facts.    Avoiding “inbreeding” through a computer mating based on the sire and maternal grandsire (increasingly, linear trait data on your cows is no longer collected; they just encourage you to buy their genotype testing) is an expensive exercise in futility.   Just as Holland saw in the later 1990s, after totally outcrossing their Friesians to Holstein bulls, it is “single trait selection” – in the case of Genomics, defining an “ideal” genotype and discarding all animals from the breeding population that represent outcross genotypes – or basing all your matings on a single index over multiple generations – these lead to inbreeding “depression”.

But the symptoms this time are different, and thanks to heavy (expensive) use of technologies such as OvSynch (“synthesized”) reproduction added to gender-selected semen and Genomic testing, are more subtly expressed.    This time, inbreeding to an ideal genotype is producing strong, healthy young cows who are fully aged after two lactations—lacking natural fertility, looking more like steers than cows, behaving more like bulls, only willing to milk on “pig feed” rations, and lacking any will to live if they do get sick.    “Throwaway cows” is the expression of inbreeding you will see today.    And (just like with continuous crossbreeding) in the fourth and later generations, they just don’t milk anywhere near as much as all the “genetic value” says.

“aAa” breeding guide is the only mating method that insures against modern inbreeding loss.
It does this by leading you to “heterosis” combinations, avoiding extreme physical expression.