Dexter Cattle For Sale Discussion Board

I own animals from a herd in the US that was founded on 5 cows and one bull in the mid 1960's. The original bull was replaced in 1973 and the herd moved and relocated in a sparse agricultural area across country. For nearly 40 years this herd was closed. I have DNA typed animals from this herd and their DNA types have hardly any diversity.

I am curious and interested to build a DNA profile of the DNA types on Woodmagic as that was also a closed herd for many years.

If owners of original Woodmagic animals have the ability to provide samples for testing, or results on animals already tested, I would appreciate receiving them, If the animals have never been DNA typed, I will do so, and send the results back to the owner. If you have animals that are entirely Woodmagic, or may have a different herd name but two Woodmagic parents, I would be grateful for copies of the results. If you happen to have any used straw from modern or "antique" Woodmagic bulls, they usually work very well for DNA extraction.

You can email me direct: JamsHundred@aol.com


Time is running out to make a record of these animals.
I am aware that Andrew Sheppy had many samples from Woodmagic, and there are already DNA types. .. . . . but they were not reported to what is known as the "ISAG" standard, and without them being adjusted by Mr. Bray or Cardiff they are not helpful to me.

Judy

I will email you Judy I have about 20 pure Woodmagic cattle as you know and 2 bulls on AI.

This is a bit off topic but does illustrate the pervasive nature of Woodmagic genetics, specifically Woodmagic Dormouse. As older contributors to this forum are aware, I'm trying to minimise the Woodmagic influence in my herd. Last year I had a dun bull calf from a red bull and black cow, followed by a full sister dun heifer this year. There's no Woodmagic breeding or dun in the 5 generation pedigrees. However, when I did 5 generation pedigrees on their great grandparents, Dormouse appeared in every line. This dun line has been dormant for generations as these animals are the first duns in these lines since Dormouse.
Also off topic, Judy have you looked at the Chillingham cattle genetics? This is a closed inbred herd with all animals being, in effect, clones, with no genetic diversity.

Louisa the dictionary describes "pervasive" as especially of an unwelcome influence or physical effect) spreading widely throughout an area or a group of people. I hope you did not mean to suggest that Woodmagic lines were in themselves undesirable. I can of course understand that anyone may wish to keep lines separate, and indeed this is an essential part of a healthy breed, ie having several separate bloodlines. But the use of the word pervasive suggests that Woodmagic is in some way undesirable.

I would have thought that Woodmagic blood is far preferable to that of other breeds introduced in appendix animals, though I have long suspected that we get too worked up over influence from remote ancestors.

We need to remember that the percentage of an animal's genes from ancestors halves each generation, so by 10 generations down the line the influence, good or bad, is 0.09%, in other words less than one thousandth. Of course this may increase if there is influence from the same ancestor more than once this will increase.

It is also worth remembering that there are dun Dexters with no connection to Woodmagic.

Duncan

Sorry Duncan, wrong choice of adjective. It's just interesting to me that the dun was dormant for so many generations and then occurred twice with this particular mating, with Dormouse the only dun in the lineages. Something similar happened with the red variant in Shetland cattle being dormant for decades before re-appearing with a particular mating.

Intresting subject as several years ago my bull at that time, caught his daughter and i didn't realize she was in calf until it was to late to do anything about it, and what popped out, was a dun heifer, I had to my knowledge no dun in my herd so I tracked the pedigree's back ten gen and who should pop up on both side but woodmagic Doormouse. If there is a place up there in the big sky for him, he must be smiling to think his influence could still be popping up.

If we go back 10 generations there are 1024 potential ancestors contributing. Of course with a small population the odds are that any one animal will pop up more than once so may contribute more than others. Some computer programmes for pedigree recording will work out such things for us, and I suspect that grassroots may well be able to do so but we do not have access to that bit of the programme.

Duncan