Brindle

[Louisa Gidney]

Brindle is not an official Dexter colour, nevertheless it is seen in some otherwise red Dexters. I was therefore intrigued to read in "Cattle", published 1896, that the Kerry breed was "either red, brindled or black".
Some assumptions have been made that brindle could indicate Channel Island introgression but this passage could suggest that brindle might be a relic of C19th Kerry crosses.

[Broomcroft]

Don't know whether this helps the topic Louisa, but I have a brindle who is pedigree registered. I know she shouldn't be, but she wasn't brindle when I registered her, she was red!

Anyhow, she looks to me like introgression from another breed in the past passed on to her by her dam. As it happens, she has very nice "dairy cow" udders and is one of the top two cows at producing the best beef calves. I don't understand why her face has been chopped off when posted to this forum, it is there in the photo. Her dam produced quite a few that started life red and went all black, or black with a red stripe down the back, or just plain brindle like this one.



The photo doesn't do her "brindleness" justice, as she is much more stripey in real life.

[Kathleen]

Does the British breed standard still mention Brindle?

I know our breed guidelines no longer mention it - and there has been much angst over here (Australia) for some breedesr who have red cattle with darker markings.

Nevertheless - According to my Cattle genetics books - Brindle is a dominant gene that affects coat colour and is carried by Angus cattle as well as some other breeds. From my own experience and as far as I have been able to ascertain brindle can only be expressed in the phenotype when the animal is wild red. Thus if a Jersey (pure Jersey cattle are homozygous wild) carriers the brindle gene - it would be visually brindle ... I have never seen any pure Jersey animals that were brindle.

I don't doubt the 1896 source which stated that the Kerry breed was "either red, brindled or black". I do however think that you don't need to go back to the 1890's but the 1960's for the source - the English Appendix / Experimental Registers are a nearer and more definite source - it used bulls that were part Angus and part Jersey - a time bomb for brindle.

Re: "Her dam produced quite a few that started life red and went all black, or black with a red stripe down the back, or just plain brindle like this one."

Brindle alone does not 'prove' Jersey ancestry - the wild gene could have come from another source BUT the 'red' stripe down the back does prove Jersey ancestry ... I could go into all the genetics involved in this coat colour variation but I would probably just bore everyone so I wont.

[Broomcroft]

Kathleen - I haven't a clue about the genetics, but this cow IMO has a dairy background because her udders are exceptional and have that dairy look. Not very scientific! She has gone to a pedigree black Angus bull for the last two calves and those two calves are large-framed (the biggest I have) making me think there's something larger than a Dexter lurking there in her background. Her first calf has very definite red tinge to his coat, much more than a tinge but I can't think of a word. I do get a very slight red tinge in other Angus-Dexter crosses, but nothing like this one.

Her dam was black and her pedigree shows all black going back 4 generations.

Her sire was a red polled Dexter bull (an Elite bull I think).

[Kathleen]

Clive - its ok I know what you mean by more than a red tinge to the coat.

I have seen animals that were pure bred (and we have DNA PV here) from imported lines that were black with red stripping - so an opposite of the brindle colouration if you will - its quite interesting really.

Does the English herdbook allow you to register Brindle animals?

[Broomcroft]

Someone else can answer whether you can register brindles or not, I don't know but assume they shouldn't be registered? Or should be de-registered.

I don't see why a brindle cow should be de-registered because when put to my red stock bull, all I got was pure red calves, maybe with a bit of black in the hair round their face etc as is fairly common. Whereas her dam, who was black and registered was the one creating the brindles, and no doubt still is if a red bull is being used! So you'd be de-registering the wrong animal by concentrating on the brindle itself in this case. I saw a brindle bull sold recently, sold as birth-notified but registerable, doubt it!

But I would make the comment that when calves are normally registered, i.e. very early, you can't see, or at least someone who is not so expert can't see that the calf is going to be brindle. Ours have started red and been registered red, as was the brindle above.

I can't remember anything on the cow above that as a calf would have told me she was going to be brindle in the future. She also does not / did not have black skin, her nose and skin are pink.

Unlike this one that was registered as red and then turned black, as you can tell I assume from the black nose/skin:

[Kathleen]

Hi Clive,

I agree its not right to de-register/ refuse registration based on the fact that an animal is brindle because it happens to be red and show it... when the black ones don't have any bother because they don't show it.

And you are dead right about someone not knowing if an animal is going to be brindle when it is first born - there are some small signs when they are first born but usually it starts to happen when they loose their baby coats - same time and process as those brown calves that turn black.

The worst - really - are those that don't show any markings till they hit sexual maturity. But also there are quite a few variations in the degree to which cattle show 'brindling' - it has to do with what other genes are effecting the wild/red coat colour - I have seen dozens of animals that have the gene but get buy because they only show small degrees of 'brindling' that are not recognized as such by people.