The Principles of Breeding: or, Glimpses at the Physiological Laws involved in the Reproduction and Improvement of Domestic AnimalsGoodale, S. L. (Stephen Lincoln)
Science
The Principles of Breeding: or, Glimpses at the Physiological Laws involved in the Reproduction and Improvement of Domestic Animals
Goodale, S. L. (Stephen Lincoln)
Breeding; Livestock
When we look about us however, we find, if we except the Morgan
horses, nothing which deserves the name of indigenous breeds or races.
The cattle and sheep known as "natives" are of mixed foreign origin,
and have been bred with no care in selection, but crossed in every
possible way. They possess no fixed hereditary traits, and although
among them are many of very respectable qualities, and which possess
desirable characteristics, they cannot be relied upon _as breeders, to
produce progeny of like excellence_. Instead of constancy, there is
continual variation, and frequent "breeding back," exhibiting the
undesirable traits of inferior ancestors. That a breed might be
established from them, by careful selection continued during repeated
generations, aided perhaps by judicious crossing with more recent
importations, fully as good as any now existing, is not to be doubted.
Very probably, a breed for dairy purposes might be thus created which
should excel any now existing in Europe, for some of our so called
native cows, carelessly as they have been bred, are not surpassed by
any of foreign origin upon which great care has been expended. To
accomplish this is an object worthy the ambition of those who possess
the skill, enthusiasm, ample means and indomitable perseverance
requisite to success. But except the single attempt of Col. Jaques, of
the Ten Hills Farm, to establish the Creampot breed,[24] of which, as
little has been heard since his death, it is fair to presume that it
has dropped into the level of common grade cattle, no systematic and
continued effort has come to our knowledge. Consequently such as may
be deemed absolutely the best is a thing of the future; they do not
yet exist--and there is no probability that the desideratum will soon
be attained. We Yankees are an impatient people; we dislike to wait,
for any thing, or to invest where five, ten, twenty or fifty years may
be expected to elapse before satisfactory dividends may be safely
anticipated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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