Meuse-Rhine-Yssel

[librarian]

I was trying to find information about a very old herd of cattle known as the Studley White Cattle. In the course of that, I ran across this picture of a Meuse-Rhine-Yssel bull that caught my attention. I read the fine print and it seems many believed this was the breed from a Holland that was infused into the Teeswater Shorthorns. The catch is that around 1745 there was an episode of Murraine, that must be a disease, than wiped out most of the old type. After that, an inferior type existed that gave Dutch cattle a bad reputation. Much later, a few of the better type were discovered in remote herds. The photograph, of a bull circa turn of the century, supposedly represents the features useful to improving the original Shorthorns before 1745. Too bad the resolution is so poor on these books. To really read them, one must look at the PDF.
https://books.google.com/books?id=hZI5AQAAMAAJ&dq=Studley%20white%20shorthorn&pg=PA1176#v=onepage&q=Studley%20white%20shorthorn&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=6io_AQAAMAAJ&dq=Studley%20white%20shorthorn&pg=PA364#v=onepage&q=Studley%20white%20shorthorn&f=false

 

[librarian]

From a different article

 

[librarian]

Notice the white inside his ears and could that be a slight white line down his back? or just the light.

 

[knabe]

i can't remember if true but closely related to mancelle/shorthorn (maine anjou) and people who fiddled with Maine's, even over here, fiddled with them.  some semen i got from a maine breeder, had some in there.  i donated it to the national repository in colorado.

 

[cbcr]

As we register some of the dairy breeds, we find the MRI in the ancestry.  Mostly in bulls from the Netherlands.

 

[librarian]

As we register some of the dairy breeds, we find the MRI in the ancestry.  Mostly in bulls from the Netherlands.

The same photograph is used to illustrate type in this description of Brandrood. https://www.regionalcattlebreeds.eu/breeds/Brandrood.html

 

[oakview]

I've got an old AI catalog with an MRI bull or 2 in it.  The photo I remember was of a bull with a lot of white on him.  They seemed similar to the old Maines if I remember correctly.  Off the subject a little, but I was just given a complete set of 1955 Milking Shorthorn Journals.  It sure is fun to look at those truly dual purpose cattle.  This was about 7 years post "the great divide."  It would be nice to have some of those cattle today.

 

[justintime]

I remember having to meet a truck that was delivering a load of imported European cattle through Western Canada. There was several MRI cattle on that load including 3 that a neighbour had imported. He got a bull and two heifers that day and quite frankly they were pretty horrible creatures. My neighbor had a large herd of Polled Hereford and all he said when he loaded these MRI was that he had 150 weaned heifer calves and these imported MRI were going to be the worst in the pen. I never heard of his MRI cattle again and I have a good notion that he accepted that he had made a mistake and shipped them to market. There was one or two decent MRI bulls here for a few years but they didn't set the world on fire and we soon gone as well,

 

[idalee]

In early 1970,  the English Dairy Shorthorn initiated a breed improvement scheme to improve milk yields,  monitor growth rate and feed efficiency as well as carcass composition.  Their objective was to produce a red, red and white or roan hybrid based on the Dairy Shorthorn.  They introduced several breeds including the Red and White Friesian,  Red Dane,  Finnish Ayrshire,  Swedish Red and White,  Meuse Rhine Issel,  British Friesian and British Ayrshire.  The Meuse Rhine Issel fell out of favor quickly. 

 

[knabe]

their dna would be good for studies of regions of interest not yet well characterized from a bottlenecking of performance traits essentially from almost forced feeding of dense feedstuffs.

 

[librarian]

their dna would be good for studies of regions of interest not yet well characterized from a bottlenecking of performance traits essentially from almost forced feeding of dense feedstuffs.

Knabe, I’m working on my epigenetic hypothesis about myostatin.
There are two aspects feeding and exercise. I read this about how “Sulforaphane causes a major epigenetic repression of myostatin in porcine satellite cells.” Rutabagas, or Yellow Swedes, the favored feed of days gone by, are full of suloraphane.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23092945/
And then this pretty cool publication about Cattle, Sheep and Hog feeding in Europe, 1905. Trying to figure out if turnips were fed a lot in France. Not so much, but beet pulp was.
https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/5421299/PDF
From that publication concerning dual purpose shorthorns:
“The production of milk generally forms an important part of English farming operations, and dual-purpose cows are usually kept. The blood of the milking Shorthorn prevails in practically all parts of the country, and the special-purpose dairy breeds are more largely found on the estates of the wealthy classes and the nobility than on the farms of the small tenant farmers. The market value of the cows at the end of the milking period and the demand for calves from such cows for feeding exert an important influence in popularizing
the cows of the dual-purpose type. This condition of affairs, in a measure, has an influence on methods of feeding. As milk is not the only source of revenue for which cows are maintained, methods of feeding have not always received as close study from such farmers as is given the subject when dairy farming is conducted as a specialty. Mangels, carrots, white, yellow, and swede turnips, and cabbage are fed. Turnips are given in large quantities either before or after milking. In some private dairies, especially on large estates, which are run principally to supply the landlords' households, care is used to select feed which will not impart undesirable flavors to the milk, but in a large number of commercial dairies this discrimination is not exercised.
All feeders feed at least three times daily and many give six or seven feeds.”

 

[librarian]

Part 2
And ( this is a question) if the F94L mutation is a substitution of leucine for phenylalanine, doesn’t that seem like adaptation to the stress of domestication? I keep noticing white animals in the F94L carrier pedigrees. “ Phenylalanine is a precursor for tyrosine, the monoamine neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and epinephrine (adrenaline), and the skin pigment melanin.”- wikipaedia. —-Replaced by leucine, “ Another benefit of leucine is that it reduces muscle breakdown. If you consume a low-calorie diet or do excessive cardio while dieting, your body goes into a catabolic state and breaks down muscle tissue. The liver can harvest the amino acids from protein breakdown to make glucose. It’s a nifty little mechanism your body has for creating glucose when you need fuel. Leucine helps to keep your body out of a muscle wasting, catabolic state. This makes leucine especially important during times when your body is under stress.” https://cathe.com/why-leucine-is-key-for-muscle-growth/
And, finally, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277683824_Ruminant_glycogen_metabolism
I wish some grad student would look into this.

 

[mark tenenbaum]

Are those chi looking draft animals from WW 1 O0

 

[librarian]

Are those chi looking draft animals from WW 1 O0

The caption says, “ Oxen transporting French heavy artillery during WW1. Oxen were useful in pulling the heaviest equipment.” https://www.britishpathe.com/gallery/war-animals/8?epik=dj0yJnU9MUJocDNQWC1ua1ZHbVYyY2RSYmZxZUt2d3dqanF5NTMmcD0wJm49eEN0d191TUhEUnRwTVN4WDB4c1pvUSZ0PUFBQUFBR0FZUkRZ
When thinking of dual purpose animals, we sometimes forget that for most of history, beef was the end product after an animals usefulness for dairy and draft was ended. If one was breeding animals for pulling very heavy loads, plowing, logging etc, the males would need to be able to store their energy in muscle and need the ability to rebuild muscle tissue and recover energy storage after being worked. The female counterpart would probably not be very milky, but the milk, due to reduced volume, might have very high butterfat or other qualities conducive to cheese and butter. Limousin, Aubrac, Charolais, Blonde d'Aquitaine are all French dual purpose breeds that have developed myostatin mutations. Not far away we’re Piedmontese in NW Italy and Belgian Blue in from Belgium. Maybe these are Charolais. I would expect pre-industrial European warfare maintained a steady demand for heavily muscled breeds.

 

[librarian]

And one must notice that these oxen are white