Thanks Okotoks-that's really neat.
The original post was an article about mating the imported bull Baron Victor- a red Cruickshank bull born in 1880- with Rose of Sharon cows with good results.
So, since we are on older Shorthorn genetics, etc, I'll say that one of those most regrettable vanishing characters in Shorthorns, to me- is the old purple roan color. I've been studying a lot about color genetics and understand now that the wild type recessive extention allele e+ when combined with roan gives purple roan...or can give if everything lines up that way. My interest in old style Shorthorn genetics kind of went off the deep end all the way to Galloway and I still believe restoration of the beef type imported to Canada from Scotland would involve a reintroduction of Galloway percentage. 1/8 would suffice. Anyway, in Galloway cattle- or a debatably pure strain of Riggit Galloway cattle accused of being tainted with Shorthorn- there are combinations of alleles of roan and color sided genes along with the extension genes ...and their wild types. Here is a photo of a Galloway bull with an unusual expression of all those combinations. He would have Color Sided, Roan and the black version of the extension gene, wild type- or not, because he is a shade of black instead of a shade of red. BUT, what I'm getting at- is imagine he had the wild type red allele instead of black? He'd be purple roan and look an awful lot like Clipper King of Bapton. Not many would fail to confuse him with one of those Bapton type Shorthorns imported to Australia, South America and Canada in the late 1800's. I'm saying all this because of what Medium Rare said about the ridiculously deep bodied Canadian cows. We see it all the time in good Galloway cows and it seems very heritable. I don't see a huge difference between attempting to breed back to these voluminous traits thru embryo transplants from antique Shorthorn genetics or through using a good contemporary Red Galloway bull from Alberta. Not expecting agreement...just a heads up to those who like that body type.