It’s the Pitts: Don’t Bet on the Blood
By: Lee Pitts
I continue to be amazed by the differences in people and animals who are closely related.
For example, at one time, one of my good friends was one of the top Hereford breeders in America, and over his fireplace is a row of grand championship trophies he won at the National Western Stock Show (NWSS) in Denver.
I’ll never forget the day I was at his place when two bulls my friend had purchased at the Cooper-Holden sale, which in those days was a combined event, were delivered. The bulls were Line Ones and were both very closely related, yet they could not have been more different.
I don’t think my friend would take offense when I call one of the bulls downright ugly. If he’d have been a scarecrow, he’d have kept the crows out of a quarter section of corn.
The bull looked like he’d been put together by a committee of sheepherders. He was long, tall and moderately muscled, and in all of the years I was acquainted with the bull, I never did get a decent photograph of him.
Clearly, the bull had a superior intellect and enjoyed toying with me.
If the American Hereford Association wanted a bull to represent the breed, they couldn’t have found a better specimen than the other bull. He was heavily muscled, structurally correct, easy on the eyes and phenotypically perfect.
So, guess which bull went on to sire sons and grandsons winning numerous NWSS championships? You’d probably say the second bull right?
WRONG! Which just goes to show, one can’t tell by looking.
In 2006, the Food and Drug Administration declared meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring was safe, and I thought there’d be a rush to clone livestock but it didn’t happen – probably due to the cost associated with cloning but also because even though the animals had exactly the same genotype, in most cases they never lived up to the animal that was cloned. Plus, the clones turned out different.
One wet day in college judging class, our coach had us judge a class of four bulls by looking at still photos from the rear and side. It was an easy class to judge, and there was a lot of differences to talk about in our reasons. Only afterwards did he tell us they were clones.
Quite often at bull sales we see full brothers sell, and one of them will bring $50,000, while its identical sibling will fetch $5,000 for EXACTLY the same genes.
I’ve seen firsthand how genetics continues to toy with us. Take my brother – please. Though we supposedly have the same genetic makeup, we could not be more different.
My brother is logical, a genius at math, fastidious about his appearance, would rather golf than do hard physical labor, retired at age 55, wears shorts all the time, graduated number three in his class at West Point, went on to get his Master of Business Administration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and places a lot of emphasis on good breeding.
While I think that’s fun too, I hate math, am an extremely hard worker, don’t golf or own a single pair of shorts and I’ve always been more entrepreneurial and will never retire.
My brother likes liver, lima beans, corned beef and cabbage and moved to the East Coast as soon as he could, while I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Westerner and one would have to tie me down and force feed me liver, lima beans, corned beef and cabbage.
From the first time he met me, my niece’s husband just looked at me, shook his head and said, “You simply CAN’T be the brother of John Pitts.”
I don’t know if he meant it as a compliment or a criticism.
I was talking about genetics with a cattleman buddy of mine who has three siblings – two sisters and one brother. Like me and my brother, he and his brother could not be more different.
My friend is quiet, extremely hard working and if he says something, a person can take it to the bank. His brother is exactly the opposite.
His father used to say of him, “If BS was music, he’d be a brass band.”
All of this reminds me of the words of Novelist Barbara Kingsolver, “We are baked in the same oven. Why does one cake rise and the other fall?”
