Linebreeding

[grassfarmer]

Any thoughts on linebreeding as a breeding tool to fix specific traits in beef cattle?
I have been reading a lot by a guy called Gearld Fry out of RoseBud, Arkansas who is a bovine genetic consultant/breeder that maintains that a huge proportion of beef bulls in North America today are pretty much just calf getters with little chance of passing on their genes with any consistancy due to lack of properly structured breeding programs. His website is at www.bovineengineering.com.
I would be interested in any experiences some of you might have had with linebreeding.

[ALICIA]

The old saying applys:
If its good its linebreeding, If its bad its inbreding. But you don't seem to get a so so calf, its eather great or its real bad.

I bred my dam of distiction back to her bull calf that is a AI bull. The bull calf she gave me this year is a keeper. Her heifer calf from a year ago is also bred to her half brother, I don't know the resolt yet. But I'll let you know.

[cowman]

Linebreeding is not for the faint of heart! And I'm not talking about inbreeding...
Back in the days when the Hereford ruled North America(probably until the exotic invasion in the early 1970s) the predominant lines were heavy linebred cattle. These cattle bred intensely true. The Prince Domino line and the Silver Standard line. I can remember when just about every bull coming out on top at the test center in Innisfail was pretty well line bred.
Linebreeding is a very expensive proposition as 75% of the offspring are either inferior or just average, but oh that 25%! Those were the bulls that would make you some money.
When I was a boy my grandfather had a 12 year old bull that was an own son of Silver Standard and heavily linebred. He threw his stifle out and got quite thin. When they sold him he weighed just over 2800 lbs.! That was in the days when "pony" cattle were the fad when most mature bulls never made 1600 lbs.! Those real old time Herefords were not small cattle!

[cswilson]

Guys like Gerald Fry seem to pop up every so often in the cattle consulting business-kind of pseodobonsma with a twist. The way I see it if the cattle you run are working for you why change-remember pretty is as pretty does. There was herd in our country that Fry had culled-every cow had a calf running with her and they all bred back good-these were the cows he said were unacceptable. Most people would be better off visiting with a neighbor who runs cattle similar to theres that has been successful. Remember everyones an expert 500 miles from home.

[cswilson]

I liked Gerald Fry a lot more before he became a one breed man. Sure the "Bull that looks like a bull", "Cow that looks like a cow" thoery is great. But if there were only a handful of bulls in North America that deserved to have nuts, as he suggest, where would that put us. There are lots of ways to choose genetic advantages and that is what makes this business intriguing. Linebreeding will imprint traits, but I would bet we would get a lot of different answers if we asked which trait we should be duplicating?

[cakadu]

I am no geneticist by a long shot and I agree with cowman - it is not for the faint of heart. What I do know about it is that you have to be prepared to cull and cull heavily, meaning that the so-so just does not make it into someone else's herd.

Which traits would you want to have expressed - that would take a lot of work to agree on.