Small cows - archaeological DNA

[Louisa Gidney]

Just got the result of the first sample back. This was a cattle metacarpal, probably female, 14th-15th century AD from Newcastle upon Tyne,and a very close match in size & shape to Vycanny Glenfinlet, who was almost certainly BD-C. (I would post a photo but I'm not that good at technology!) The archaeological bone is from a normal cow, not an achondrodysplasia carrier.
Obviously a lot more samples now need to be tested from other sites & other chronological periods. But it does show that very small cows are possible without dwarfism & were probably the norm until 200ish years ago.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Louisa, are you able to estimate what height the cow would have been? I have 1 3rd calver and two second calvers who will be about 37 inches and are non carriers. Our next steer for slaughter is likely to be son of one of these and even shorter, out of DNA tested non carrier parents.

Duncan

[Louisa Gidney]

Duncan - unfortunately it was only the distal half of the bone, but from analogy with Glenfinlet I would expect c. 36 inches.
Personally, I would like to see far more promotion of the small non dwarf Dexters, particularly bulls.

[Woodmagic]

Was so cheered to see your entry, shall look forward to more. Small size is the first thing that attracts most newcomers to the breed, and it would be such a shame if it were ignored on the presumption that it has to be a correlation to the lethal

[Inger]

All we have to do is track down those original shortness genes in among the wider Dexter population and we can increase the number of short non-carriers in the general population.

Woodmagic, have you managed to get some height measurements of 6 month old calves yet? I'd love to know what the average and range of heights is.