An example of purity

[genebo]

In this instance, you will start out with a box of new toothbrushes. Take one of the toothbrushes out and use it to scrub your toilet.

Wash the toothbrush in pure, clean water. Most of the impurities will be washed away.

Now wash the toothbrush again. More of the impurities will be washed away.

Repeat the same process of washing with pure, clean water until you've washed it 9 times.

At this point, it is time to brush your teeth. Will you choose to use the toothbrush that was cleaned 9 times or one of those from the box of new toothbrushes?

The American Dexter herd, up until late in the 20th century, was like a box of new toothbrushes. Pure Dexter. They had been that way for about 100 years, ever since the breed was established.

[jamshundred]

Yuck only one answer to that question.



This brings up a pet peeve. Unless one is dealing with a solid form and dividing it into parts and putting it back together there seems to me no basis in reality in the upgrading theory. Even with a solid form, I would think there would be a loss of some minute quality of material in the splitting.



Here is my example;



I have an 8 oz cup of black coffee. I pour it into a large 64 oz container and I add an additional 8 oz container of cream.



I now have my first offspring which I can register in the Coffee appendix registry - category A



I now add 8 oz black coffee to my container and I  have an upgraded offspring with I can register in the Coffee appendix registry - category B






I now add 8oz black coffee to my container and I  have an upgraded offspring which I can register in the Coffee appendix registry
category C

I now add 8oz black coffee to my container and I have an upgraded offspring which I can register in the regular pure coffee registry as a purebred cup of coffee ! ! 





Is my original pure coffee the same shade of black as my purebred coffee? Should I concern myself that my my future pure  black coffee offsprings are  going to be lightened by the addition of this upgraded coffee ?

Judy

[Deleted]

[legendrockranch]

Dec 15, 2014 15:35:39 GMT genebo said:

In this instance, you will start out with a box of new toothbrushes.

Sorry I don't believe in your analogy, since it can not be proven. All you have to do is look back the last couple of years to see that mistakes have happened.  Yet you expect others to believe that for the first 90 or so years before parentage verification started there were NO errors.

Using toothbrushes and coffee to explain purity or the lack there of, is just ludicrous.

[jamshundred]

Barb,

What cannot be proven?   Those upgrades are in the herd books ! !    They are in writing.   There is a science to mutation.  Do you realize that the supposed reasoning that a "number of scientists" declared GE had to be a mutation because of polled offsping data  ( all these supposed scientists  remained un-named)   has been disproven.    ( It was made up and wrong to begin with).    Barb, please!  How can I diaglogue with you when you keep pretending.   You are an educated woman.  You know very well there were NOT two mutations ( neither of them scientifically evaluated)  at the same time.   Do you apply "common sense" to other life issues?  Of course you do!  So, common sense alone leads one to the determination that the English registry, after nearly 50 years of intense upgrading and probably beaucoup polled cattle that did not qualify for registration. . . . .  .but a strong band of traditionalists against it. . . .  found the means to resolve permitting polled cattle to be registered.   They just went along with "novel mutation", probably having no idea of the astronomical odds against it.  Before we can talk, we have to find common ground.  For me, common ground is common sense.


My coffee experiment is as faulty as the novel mutation theory.  I have to rework it.    I left Mommy and Daddy in the jar, and only baby moves forward.   Drat.


So. . . my black coffee goes out on a date with a cream broulee.  

The baby is now 50% black and 50% cream.  and is an "A" baby.

I now breed my coffee to a nother black coffee and it is supposed to be 3/4 black now and it is a B baby.   Still looks a bit pale though.   Maybe it has caught a lethal gene.  Oh Dear

I now breed my B baby to another cup of black coffee and the baby is now 7/8 coffee again and a C coffee.   ( But what are those blond colored bubbles floating on top?  I am getting concerned.

My C baby breeds back to another cup of black coffee. . . . . . . and is a full-fledged purebred cup of black coffee.     Hmmmm.  Well, it IS supposed to be black by now.   Where did that caramel tint come from?


It is just junk science.  Period.    And junk black coffee too!

Judy

 

[legendrockranch]

Judy, it's probably me for not explaining it well enough. I am not talking about mutations or polled.  But being able to prove that there were no crosses in the Dexter breed before parentage verification started here in the US.  That the purity of Dexters once they entererd the US is unblemished, this is just something I can not believe. Nor can it be proven.

[Donlin Stud]

It is well known in Australia where PV of both sire and dam has been a requirement for Dexter registration for decades that mistakes are made, and made frequently. Many times, not all the time it is the result of [incorrectly marked] steers running with open cows.

There are more cases than you would expect where even the dam has been incorrectly identified.

Also posted on this forum are the results of joings and calves born in a controlled test environment that strongly support PV for both sire and dam are necessary for accurate record keeping.

I have never read anything from anyone on this forum claiming that ‘mistakes’ were “never” made.

What I have read is that truth/details have either not been sought, ignored or has been covered up with waffle.

[legendrockranch]

Donlindexters,  That is exactly my point.  How can you say no errors or mistakes happened for the first 90 some years before parentage verification started her in the U.S.

Thank you

[Donlin Stud]

You missed the part above where I also wrote:

I have never read anything from anyone on this forum claiming that ‘mistakes’ were “never” made.

What I have read is that truth/details have either not been sought, ignored or has been covered up with waffle.

[genebo]

Ms. Netti,

I didn't invite you into this discussion, and yet you have completely taken it over, outposting all others with silly, meaningless objections. If you don't like this subject, go somewhere else to feed your arguing habit.

You'd think, from your reaction, that I was writing about you. Don't flatter yourself. I was writing about the beauty of still being able to choose from the new box of toothbrushes, or Traditional Dexters.

Dexter cattle are a unique breed, with qualities that are not available in any other breed. I can't blame those people who want to use a Dexter bull to breed their Jersey or Angus or other breed. They want what Traditional Dexters have to offer. Many of those crosses yield excellent cattle, with some of the endearing qualities of a Dexter. I've sold a lot of Traditional Dexter semen to be used for that exact purpose. Even bred a few myself.

However, I'm always offended when someone calls their crossbred result a Dexter. Not being satisfied with infusing their calves with some of the Dexter qualities, they want the whole shebang, including the reputation that our great little breed has garnered over the hundred years that they have existed in America.

That is grand theft.

The most blatant evidence that an animal is the bearer of outcrossed genetics is being polled. That is a definite, obvious non-Dexter trait. Those who chose the keep that type of cattle, and register them as Dexters, are people like yourself, who find it necessary to denigrate Traditional Dexters in order to legitimize what you have chosen to do.

Meanwhile, during all this rhetoric to assert that your cattle are in fact pure Dexters, you continue to selectively breed for the most blatant non-Dexter trait of all, polledness. Possibly, if the keepers of that type of cattle were to replace their breeding bulls with Traditional Dexters and aggressively select for the most Dexter-like traits while simultaneously culling for non-Dexter traits, then over a period of many years and many generations, I might entertain the possibility that their type of cattle had become sufficiently Dexter-like to deserve the name.

Would you care to be the first to begin? At this time I can recommend a very nice Traditional Dexter bull, from a line that throws very small calves and has great conformation. You can get him for a fraction of the inflated pyramid price of an imposter bull.

Put your money where it will do some good and become a leader in the effort to reclaim the Dexter breed. You'll sleep well.

[legendrockranch]

Donlindexters, Maybe you should talk with Judy and have her explain the principles of the American Legacy herd.

[genebo]

Four out of eleven posts, so far. Methinks thou dost protest too much. Isn't there anyone left to argue with you where you came from?

[legendrockranch]

Genebo,  I sleep very well, thank you very much.

First of all I didn't realize that I had to be invited into this discussion. In fact I didn't even want to be part of this forum AT ALL until I was brought in by others who were using me as example.  Apparently you didn't notice that.

[lakeportfarms]

You're all leaving out other possibilities here.  When you have a situation where polled is the bandwagon, you're going to have some breeders who want to be on the bandwagon come hell or high water.  The problem is there isn't enough space to jump on, because the numbers of polled are limited for a long time.  

Here is a hypothetical story:

How do I create more space to jump on this polled bandwagon?  Well, semen from an AI bull helps, but for a number of years most bulls were heterozygous, so 50% of the time I get horned calves.  I also might need to make several attempts to get a cow settled through AI, and that semen sure is expensive to purchase and ship!   AI  still is not fast enough for me; I want to get a LOT of polled calves on the ground to sell and make money!  

How else do I create more polled calves to take advantage of the high prices for this new polled thing in Dexters? I can use polled cows...but that takes time initially,  I can only have one calf/year from each and they're awfully expensive, and I don't want to retain everything I have to build my herd, I need to sell something to help pay the bills.

Hey!  What do you know!   The ADCA doesn't have anything in place to genotype bulls, or verify parentage of the bull calves prior to 2009, and to this date still doesn't require it for cows!  A loophole!!!

Knowing that polled was the new hot ticket to Dexter sales, I purchased that expensive straw back in 2005 of polled bull semen, and the AI didn't work....  Now what???  I know what I'll do, I'll get myself a Red Angus, or Devon, or some other type of polled bull with very similar phenotype to a polled Dexter bull to breed my Dexter cow and say it was the AI bull that I purchased the expensive straw from.  There is no requirement to prove parentage after all.  Or, I have my one polled Dexter bull, now genotyped, and breed some fairly inexpensive (at the time) HOMOZYGOUS polled Angus cows and since there is no genotyping or PV required of the dams I can just use the names of some of my Dexter cows that produced bull calves that are being steered,  and create 100% polled calves out of the Angus cows.  I can genotype the calves, sell the Angus cows for what I paid for them and then some, and I can take my genotyped polled calves and create more polled calves from them.  Better yet I'll genotype all my future calves and my entire herd is parentage verified now!  The older cows and bulls are gone, so there is no way to go back and check parentage any longer, at least not easily.

Of course I'm selling many of these fully parentage verified polled heifers (and bulls) to other breeders who are more reputable, and believe in doing it the hard way by spending a lot of money to buy in to polled stock, because they'll make it back in the long run.  But those calves that that are sold look just a little bit different than what they're used to???  I tell them it must be that they have a polled head I guess.  Of course they're a bit taller, and they sure have a much beefier look than those other Dexters that you have had in the past.  But people like beefier calves I tell them, and you can work on your size by finding some shorter examples to breed to.  Why here is a homozygous polled AI bull that is only 40" tall!  Sure he was measured at 2 years old, but he won't grow much past that.  Sorry, no picture available of the 2 year old 40" AI bull at 5 or 7 years of age, they don't own him any longer or he was butchered.   Oh well...more beef for the freezer and that's what people want!  And those buyers sure spent a lot of money buying into the polled craze and they sure have to sell some calves to make that money back, so they'll just overlook all that for now and push the narrative to their customer that if they don't like horns here is a Dexter that can produce other Dexters without horns!  You gotta make that money back after all.  And the cycle goes on an on..... with more and more people getting sucked into the mix. 

At this point in time other than the holdouts, you're only selling them to each other, and trying to lure new people into Dexters.  

Sure, they all look legitimate now, and I can safely demand parentage verification for calves because the polled cows and bulls have reached a stage of saturation, and mine are all genotyped and PV with the bulls and calves one or two generations back long gone so they look 100% legitimate.  I call into question other breeders and their Dexters that are not parentage verified, or make repeated statements about the questionable parentage of their Dexters that look FAR more like the Dexter you see in photos past.  

Now how muddled looking is that coffee, or gross is the toothbrush?  And how pure is that polled Dexter that was bred primarily for one specific trait again???  You don't know, do you?  


P.S...don't you wonder why Saltaire Platinum has so few progeny for being such a famous AI bull? One collection from Mike at 9 years old produced 238 straws. He has more progeny on the ground than SP through natural service alone, with many more to come as the straws are used. Why so relatively few calves here from SP???  And I still haven't heard how long SP ultimately lived?

[legendrockranch]

Hans, how far back can you prove Shamrock Mikes parentage verification? Both sire and dam?

I have not made any claims about the purity of my animals or any other Dexters for that matter.

The first of my animals that show up as fully PV is in 2006. 

[legendrockranch]

Dec 16, 2014 12:58:01 GMT lakeportfarms said:

P.S...don't you wonder why Saltaire Platinum has so few progeny for being such a famous AI bull? One collection from Mike at 9 years old produced 238 straws. He has more progeny on the ground than SP through natural service alone, with many more to come as the straws are used. Why so relatively few calves here from SP???  And I still haven't heard how long SP ultimately lived?

I don't know how many straws of Platinum were sent here to the US.  He shows only 62 progeny on the ADCA website.  There is semen of him still in the US but in very limited quantities.  Since his semen was imported I checked on the UK site to see how many progeny he produce overseas. It shows 147 progeny plus I am sure there are those also in the UK that are holding on to his semen.  Making a total of 209 progeny

The number of progeny for Platinum in the US seems in line.  I Just checked Lucifer of Knotting and he comes up with 64 progeny in the US.

According to the ADCA

[cascade]

Dec 16, 2014 12:58:01 GMT lakeportfarms said:

How else do I create more polled calves to take advantage of the high prices for this new polled thing in Dexters?

Since before 2004, homozygous polled purebred Dexter bulls have been available.  They have 100% polled calves.

We bought a Red, Homozygous Polled, A2/A2 Bull,  in 2004  (he came with paperwork proving his homo-polled status)
We bred him on some horned cows and got 100% polled calves...   mostly red, and mostly A2/A2
We bred him back on his daughters and got lots of terrific homozygous polled, A2/A2 calves including some homo-polled bulls

I've got 3 homozygous polled, A2/A2 bulls out in the pasture right now (not counting the several we already sold a few months ago)

It's very simple...  If you have 50 horned, red dexter cows, you can take one of these red homo-polled bulls and get 50 red polled dexter calves in 9 months and most will be A2/A2

[cascade]

Concerning the original poster's reference to pure water vs. sewer water:

1. ALL the assumed "pure" water that you're drinking and brushing your teeth with today, has been in countless toilets and in countless human and dinosaur and pig and rat excrement, OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER millions of times, yet you still drink it and brush your teeth with it. There is NOT a drop of "pure" water on earth that doesn't contain lots of former sewer water.

2. There is a process that sewer water goes through to reach a standard of "purity" so you can drink it and brush your teeth with it. It involves filtering out impurities via selection (keeping the good, culling the bad)... Nature has several processes to purify sewer water into drinking water and humans have invented similar processes too.

3. ALL Dexters including Traditional and Legacy Dexters started as "sewer water".... a mixture of all sorts of genes from all sorts of non-dexter sources.

4. There is a process that purebred animals go through to reach a standard of "purity"... ALL purebred registered dexters have gone through that process. It involves selecting the features that define Dexters, and culling the rest out (just like purifying water).

5. But even purified water, can become stagnant, so it requires ongoing purification. Likewise, the purest of Dexters require ongoing selection to maintain their "pure" dexter traits by selecting for the best dexter traits generation after generation.

[genebo]

I used to think that the people who bought plain water to drink were way off base. Now I run across one who would gladly drink toilet water, and proclaim it to be as good as, or better than pure water. What an opportunity for a new marketing plan.

Maybe I could get this guy a job as a taster. "Nope, run this batch through again. It still tastes like s**t."

[Donlin Stud]

Dec 16, 2014 1:49:50 GMT legendrockranch said:

Donlindexters, Maybe you should talk with Judy and have her explain the principles of the American Legacy herd.

I have and I like what I hear/read. So do apparently many Australian Dexter Studs as we begin flocking to the Legacy site

[cascade]

Legacy is a failed concept. It depends on 100% paper purity, yet there is no such thing.

1. ALL Dexters have tons of non-dexters in their backgrounds
2. ALL Dexters have a few mistakes on their pedigrees back in time
3. The best you can do is to get yourself a nicely conforming papered purebred dexter, accepted by the registries as purebred. If it has a feature you think isn't dexter enough, then breed that feature out.


PS. Science tells us that ALL water on earth has been through the bodies of billions of animals (including humans) over and over and over. Only folks who shun science don't understand this fact. The good news is that there are processes that purify water, and processes that purify cattle. Selecting for pure dexter traits, generation after generation, is the only way to purify dexters. Paper pedigrees are a help, but since they can't be trusted 100%, you have to trust what you see in the pasture.