Darwin (agrees with XBAR) on Mongrels

[librarian]

To illustrate, we quote Mr. Darwin:
“The possibility of making distinct races by crossing has been greatly exaggerated. Many cases are on record, showing that a race may be modified by occasional crosses, if aided by the careful selection of the individuals which present the desired character; but to obtain a race intermediate between two quite distinct races would be very diflicult. Sir J. Sebright expressly experimented with this object and failed. The offspring from the first cross between two pure breeds is tolerably and sometimes (as I have found with pigeons) quite uniform in character, and everything seems simple enough; but when these mongrels are crossed one with another for several generations, hardly two of them are alike, and then the difficulty of the task becomes manifest.”

This is a very interesting collection of opinions involved in the how and why of Polled Durhams- sort of a 19th century Polleddurhamplanet. Some reader of long ago marked the passage.
https://books.google.com/books?id=DB4-AQAAMAAJ&dq=McCombie%20cattle%20feeding&pg=PA206#v=onepage&q=McCombie%20cattle%20feeding&f=false

 

[Duncraggan]

Librarian, how much do you research to come up with these gems!

 

[librarian]

Too much! The floor is unswept and the last of the tomatoes are not canned....there is firewood to stack and fence to fix and I am just goofing off.

 

[knabe]

not sure what the proposed novelty of this is.

it's very well known.

all breeds were created this way.


the difficulty of the task is why only a few are breeders.

 

[Cabanha Santa Isabel - BR]

???

 

[RyanChandler]

There's a consensus among geneticist. Its only shady marketeers (and their genuinely naive following) who exploit the temporary effects of heterogeneity to market these animals who still subscribe to the 'blending inheritance' model Mendel debunked over a century ago.

https://www.biologycorner.com/bio2/genetics/notes_mendel.html

 

[librarian]

not sure what the proposed novelty of this is.

it's very well known.

all breeds were created this way.


the difficulty of the task is why only a few are breeders.

That's the point. 

 

[aj]

First of all define purebreds and mongrels. If you go back 200 years most breeds were formed by a couple lines and then selection was done over a couple hundred years. So you got that to explain. You could argue that a breed that has bwts that range from 60 -120 pounds is very unpredicable. You may have a 120 pound baby calf pop up from genetics that was floating 4 generations back. I would argue that a compostites who have no bwts over 80 pounds......5 generations back in the lineage would be more predictable than a say 100 % Shorthorn for birth weights. I would argue that if you made composites between say the Red Angus and Shorthorns for 50 years.......selected what worked and culled stuff and applied natural selection. You could call this combination predictable. I would also agrue that if you take a say Shorthorn plus that was quarter,Shorthorn, Chi, Maine, and in say a 3 generation time period would be a mongrel.

 

[aj]

I would argue that any cattle that are carriers of lethal genetic defects should not be considered a purebred because they have that bad variation of genetic back ground. Lets kick that idea around. I wouldn't consider DS to be lethal.....especially if all pha carriers were kicked out of purebred registeries.

 

[librarian]

Yes, aj. Its not about pure breeds or not, it's about chronic outcrossing so that there is stochastic heritability instead of predictable heritability.
If selection pressure ( applied by culling or other mortality) is in a consistent direction and there is only occasional outcrossing followed by a return to the selected gene pool, then that animal has reduced genetic diversity, which qualifies it as a non-mongrel.
A mongrel, in livestock, is an animal that combines some selection for birthweight in one grandsire with some selection for growth in another grandsire with some selection for color in some other grandsire and some selection for polled in another grandsire and some selection for moderation in another ancestor and some selection for ribeye in another ancestor and some selection for prefix in all the ancestors, put in a blender and recombined into a curve bending epd's that can never be expected to transmit to the next generation in any manner other than random recombination.
There are many examples of mongrel breeding within a BREED as well as in composites.
In the wild, mongrelization is held in check by dominant males and females and their dominant get. Dominance is the consequence of fitness. Fitness is the consequence of epigenetic selection.

About lethal genetic defects excluding an animal from purebred status- the defects are not the problem; purebred status is not the solution.

 

[Duncraggan]

Is this the reason a lot of the Canadians and programmes like Kaper, YY, Waukaru, Peakview are successful? Classic linebreeding!

 

[librarian]

Is this the reason a lot of the Canadians and programmes like Kaper, YY, Waukaru, Peakview are successful? Classic linebreeding!

Or maybe lineculling
Interesting to me is an old idea that a line bred, prepotent, sire will have more lasting effect on a mongrel cow than on a well bred cow of another breed. The thinking being that there will be no competing forces from fixed breed characteristics in the cow. The guidelines for breed establishment of Polled Shorthorns, where this Dawin quote came from, stipulated Polled animals must be bred up only from Purebred Polled Shorthorn sires put on native mulley's, not polled cows of other established breeds- so the Durham character would be more indelible. The cow genetics were supposed to just wash out- except for the polled aspect. Kind of Colonial thinking for Ohio.

 

[aj]

If the goal of a breed is be consistent in economic traits. If the goal it to pump out ideal animals......to obtain heritability....peas in a pod......never produce a surprise....... . If these are the goals of real breeding cattle........seems like having a dead th calf laying dead in the snow would be considered a inconsistent product. A dead cow and dead calf at the vets....with a 1,000 dollar vet bill.....might be inconsistent the predictable norm.......a pha problem. Why is that not a problem for all the ivory tower purebred guys? How would that be tolerated by people who even had a smidget of integrity?

 

[knabe]

If the goal of a breed is be consistent in economic traits. If the goal it to pump out ideal animals......to obtain heritability....peas in a pod......never produce a surprise....... . If these are the goals of real breeding cattle........seems like having a dead th calf laying dead in the snow would be considered a inconsistent product. A dead cow and dead calf at the vets....with a 1,000 dollar vet bill.....might be inconsistent the predictable norm.......a pha problem. Why is that not a problem for all the ivory tower purebred guys? why is this not a problem when you do it? pathetic. How would that be tolerated by people who even had a smidget of integrity? i don't tolerate your hypocrisy.  many do however, so keep it up. you have quite the following.  people seem to value hypocrites over integrity.

yawn.  cull your carriers.  you should have done it years ago.  pathetic.  do what you complain about in others.

why you having carriers at this point is pathetic.  you are your own ivory tower.

taking another carrier to denver?

as you put it, you have no integrity.  you easily criticize others but refuse to follow your own advice and do what you criticize in others.

you are so plainly a hypocrite and have no integrity.

 

[librarian]

If one does not cull out genetic defect carriers, thru testing or observation and deduction, then eventually dead calves will become a breed characteristic. That breed will probably become extinct and no animals will be registered, bred, bought, sold, shown or eaten. But will the defect be extinct?

The problem persists when nothing is mentioned about the pile of homozygous dead calves behind the barn to the buyers of heterozygous breeding stock.
Consider the person selling the defective genetics to be a money addict. If you attempt an intervention between them and money, things will get ugly.

But what does this have to do with Darwin?  Darwin would test, or research lineages, ask questions and get to the bottom of it- not invest his time on moral arguments about inheritance.

 

[aj]

Darwin asked all the right questions. But man didn't come from monkeys. As I understand it current scientist think that monkeys and man came from the same ancestry but the split was way before the monkey. Did the bison bison come from the bison antiqious? Has there ever been a polled bison? Is the Red color from a actual mutation or is it from a Shorthorn infusion.

 

[aj]

Knabe.......I reread my post.......and my presented arguement. Although pointed I didn't think it deserved a personal attack. My website pretty much lays out my philosophies. Jesus loves you knabe. You are a fine man. I would encourage people to participate in these discussions.

 

[librarian]

“The possibility of making distinct races by crossing has been greatly exaggerated. Many cases are on record, showing that a race may be modified by occasional crosses, if aided by the careful selection of the individuals which present the desired character; but to obtain a race intermediate between two quite distinct races would be very diflicult. Sir J. Sebright expressly experimented with this object and failed. The offspring from the first cross between two pure breeds is tolerably and sometimes (as I have found with pigeons) quite uniform in character, and everything seems simple enough; but when these mongrels are crossed one with another for several generations, hardly two of them are alike, and then the difficulty of the task becomes manifest.”

Let's go back to what Darwin, and many other learned persons, have observed about the possibility of making distinct races ( we'll  say breeds) by crossing.

The difference between new breeds, stabilized breed composites and mongrels is the subject.
Genetic defects are easily bred out of a population, so I see no reason to distract ourselves with that topic.

Many breeders on this site have found pursuing the stabilization of Shorthorn composites to be more profitable and satisfying than marketing pure bred animals. In view of that, working toward a better understanding of why composites are neither new breeds, nor mongrels would be interesting.

 

[knabe]

Knabe.......I reread my post.......and my presented arguement. Although pointed I didn't think it deserved a personal attack. My website pretty much lays out my philosophies. Jesus loves you knabe. You are a fine man. I would encourage people to participate in these discussions.

you continue to bash carriers and their use. you have had plenty of time to get rid of them. you still have them.


it's not a personal attack.  i was only using your criteria for how you discredit others and applying it to yourself.


there is nothing wrong with using carriers. the tests allow screening and culling of offspring.


there will be many more defects.  this notion of continually bashing TH and PHA while still having carriers, yet bashing carriers is hypocritical, especially at this point.  that isn't a personal attack.  it just is the facts. if you take your own evaluation of others and interpret that as a personal attack, well then, stop attacking others.


you keep saying i attack you.  i do nothing but turn your words and ethics back on your own cattle. you say words that are high and mighty and expect others to adhere to higher standard than you are willing to do yourself.  pretty much everyone calls that hypocrisy.  it's not a personal attack.  it's just reality.


you have plenty of options. you profess a love for shorthorns but have a maine bull on your website. your herd is sort of a mongrel mix. on one hand you like this, but then say you like purebred shorthorns but nothing that anyone produces yet you don't produce something yourself.  again, this isn't a personal attack, it's just the facts.


jesus loves you in spite of your personal attacks on those who use carriers and you having them.

 

[Okotoks]

“The possibility of making distinct races by crossing has been greatly exaggerated. Many cases are on record, showing that a race may be modified by occasional crosses, if aided by the careful selection of the individuals which present the desired character; but to obtain a race intermediate between two quite distinct races would be very diflicult. Sir J. Sebright expressly experimented with this object and failed. The offspring from the first cross between two pure breeds is tolerably and sometimes (as I have found with pigeons) quite uniform in character, and everything seems simple enough; but when these mongrels are crossed one with another for several generations, hardly two of them are alike, and then the difficulty of the task becomes manifest.”

Let's go back to what Darwin, and many other learned persons, have observed about the possibility of making distinct races ( we'll  say breeds) by crossing.

The difference between new breeds, stabilized breed composites and mongrels is the subject.
Genetic defects are easily bred out of a population, so I see no reason to distract ourselves with that topic.

Many breeders on this site have found pursuing the stabilization of Shorthorn composites to be more profitable and satisfying than marketing pure bred animals. In view of that, working toward a better understanding of why composites are neither new breeds, nor mongrels would be interesting.

Darwin was ahead of his time and his theory of natural selection certainly challenged the current day thinking of his time. Over 150 years later one wonders what he would make of our advances in DNA and the ability to do so much more than he could in his time. Bringing Darwin up seems a bit peripheral to the challenges facing a modern day breeder. In order to breed an acceptable product for the modern market we need to use the tools we so fortunately now have at hand. Breeding domestic livestock is basically taking control of the selection process to develop an animal that offers advantages in one's environment and the current market!