Great News for Dexters

The "break" I posted about in June ended up being much longer than I intended.  I'll catch up soon, but it seems appropriate to "break the break" with some wonderful breaking news in the Dexter world.

Here's the background:  Saltaire Platinum is an imported, polled Dexter bull that appears in many of the pedigrees of today's Dexters.  In fact, he figures in our own herd.  He appears twice in Siobhan's pedigree and twice in Royal's.  He does not appear in Ebony's five generation pedigree online, but if you look at her sire's pedigree, he appears six times in his fifth generation.

In certain circles, Platinum has been denigrated as an outcrossed, upgraded, impure bull.  Some so-called "purists" go so far as to say that Saltaire Platinum is not a "real Dexter."  Why?  Because his grand-dam was the first polled Dexter of record.  When Platinum was imported for use in American herds, he became a target of those who claim that polled Dexters are not "real Dexters."  They were unwilling to accept that a genetic mutation might have occurred and instead have claimed that what took place was outcrossing to another breed, fraudulently covered up by the breeder.

Now for the breaking news:

First, let me state that I have permission from the owner of this report, Patti Adams, to use it without any constraints or conditions.  (Thank you, Patti!)  However, I did blur Patti's address on the report for privacy reasons.  I printed the report from the link, scanned it as a JPEG, blurred Patti's address, cropped the excess scanner screen below the report, and posted it.  I did not edit the report itself in any way.  You can find a link to the report here.

With "housekeeping" details out of the way, where did this report come from and what does it actually mean?

Of course, when Platinum was born in 1990, genetic testing for parentage verification did not exist.  However, during his lifetime, Saltaire Platinum was collected for AI (artificial insemination), and so his DNA has been preserved in his semen.  Someone who owned Saltaire Platinum's semen submitted it, and this is what was tested by the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory (VGL) at the University of California at Davis (UCD).

What the test means is that here is scientific proof from one of the world's premier genetic laboratories that Saltaire Platinum is a REAL Dexter.

The last sentence of the report sums it up:

"Breed analyses provide no evidence of a genetic background other than Dexter.  If there is influence from other breeds, the crossbreeding event is too far removed in the ancestry of this bull and no longer detectable."

This is great news for the Dexter breed! This news is not just gold--it's platinum!