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Inherited Defects in Cattle¹

Department of Dairy Science and Institute of Genetics, Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Wooster

ABSTRACT

Defective calves within our total herd of breeding cattle become important under certain conditions, including heritability of the defect, freqency of occurrence, severity, possibility of cure by nutritional thereapy or surgery, and association with other traits, either deleterious or of economic importance.

With the current viewpoint that all traits are affected by both inheritance and environment (feed, housing, temperature, age, and management), it nevertheless becomes helpful to speak of inherited traits as those predominantly effected by gene action and interaction. Hair and body colors are good illustrations of such traits predominantly conditioned by gene action. Those traits affected to a large extent by any environmental stimulus would be called environmental traits. Highly infectious diseases illustrate this group.

Those traits in each group affected somewhat equally, or significantly, by both inheritance and environment might also be put into an intermediate classification, to emphasize the interaction of both sets of forces. Traits requiring high energy transformation from feed to food, such as milk production, stand as a good example of the importance of this interaction.

¹ Published with the approval of the Associate Director, as Journal article 1-57, The Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station.