Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
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Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
#2How do two bulls have a daughter? Did they adopt, or use a surrogate?
Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
#3How do two bulls have a daughter? Did they adopt, or use a surrogate?
From the article
This doesn't mean that the bulls in the catalog are genetically identical. They still had lots of different mothers, as well as grandmothers. But it does show that this system of large-scale artificial insemination, with farmers repeatedly picking top-rated bulls, has made cows more genetically similar. Meanwhile, genetic traits that existed in Holstein cows a generation ago have disappeared
Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
#4This basically means that US beef industry is 1 disease away from being obliterated. Genetic diversity is still a requirement for the survival of a species.
Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
#5This is real scary. One genetic flaw exploited by say a virus could wipe out the entire dairy industry.
Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
#6How do two bulls have a daughter? Did they adopt, or use a surrogate?
The two bulls didn't have a child together; it's more like the family trees go up (through n generations) up to one of two award-winning males.
This is like saying 1 in X men are descended from Genghis Khan...
Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
#7What really caught me off-guard in the I didn't see that coming sort of way was that someone named their Bull "Round Oak Rag Apple Elevation" -- that strikes me as an oddly long and specific name. Everything else is, perhaps, bothersome, but not terribly "surprise!".
Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
#8What really caught me off-guard in the I didn't see that coming sort of way was that someone named their Bull " Round Oak Rag Apple Elevation " -- that strikes me as an oddly long and specific name. Everything else is, perhaps, bothersome, but not terribly " surprise! ".
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Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
#9What really caught me off-guard in the I didn't see that coming sort of way was that someone named their Bull " Round Oak Rag Apple Elevation " -- that strikes me as an oddly long and specific name. Everything else is, perhaps, bothersome, but not terribly " surprise! ".
Could be a path, e.g. Round Oak > Rag > Apple > Elevation. That would make sense if the earlier sites had themselves been of high value: then the name would itself be a kind advertisement.
Or you could think of it as constructing an IPv6 address by embedding the MAC in the low order bits.
Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
#10This is real scary. One genetic flaw exploited by say a virus could wipe out the entire dairy industry.
Wait till you find out that all the world's cash crops are essentially genetic clones of each other. We're literally one superbug away from global famine.