April 5, 2010

Dear Customers, Fellow Angus Producers, & Friends:

By now many of you have heard of the recessive gene that causes Mannosidosis in Angus cattle. We received official notification that we have carrier bulls on Friday, April 2, 2010. We did request some time from both associations so that we could personally contact and notify as many people/co-owners affected by this situation as possible.

This is not a new genetic disease but instead a very old one re-surfacing. It is being linked to somewhere on the bottom black side on our late great 40X cow, she is just another carrier in a long line of carriers. In turn, it has made a carrier out of many (not all) of her great sons, grandsons and one full brother she has.

Here are the lists we have received:

At Brylor Ranch, we have not had any deaths linked to this disease, nor have there been any reported cases in North America. From the information Dr. Beever has given us, the incidence rate of seeing a case is considerably less than that of OS, AM, and NH. Knowing what we all do about recessive genes we feel this is very manageable and hope you will too. We want you to know that we have been working closely with Dr. Beever at AgriGenomics in Illinois to create as much research and history on this gene making an appearance again.

We have asked ourselves repeatedly as to why this is happening in our herd and with some research have only found the following quote to help us. It is from Dr. Laurence Denholm upon the discovery of a different recessive gene …

“The only reason this particular defect has come to be recognized now is that the identified suspect carrier bull had so many powerful positive carcass performance traits which Angus breeders recognized and wanted to maximize in their own cattle. Breeders all over the world used his semen very heavily indeed, in order to capture those carcass performance benefits, and thereby increased the prevalence of his particular defective gene/s in the population. With this increased semen use, the probability of the bull showing up on both sides of many Angus pedigrees increased to a point where the occurrence, recognition and reporting of the heritable disorder/s that he carries became inevitable.

If this bull had not been recognized as a very good carcass “performance” bull he would not have been used so heavily and we might never have known about the syndrome. But we would have known about syndrome “X” or syndrome “Y” in some other equally desirable bull that rose to similar prominence in the breed in his place. Syndromes are not a sign of breeding failure, they are the unavoidable by-products of breeding success!”
(The identity of this particular bull/syndrome has been removed to respect him & his owners privacy.)

After much consideration we feel it necessary to release this information immediately to breeders to allow them to make their own decisions on the matter, such as the 2010 breeding season choices of sires.

Please check our website at www.brylor.com for further updates or contact Bryan directly if you have any questions … 403-627-8266

Sincerely,
Bryan & Sherry Mackenzie
Brylor Ranch

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