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
The other is of no breed whatever, perhaps it is called a grade or a
cross. The man who bred it had rather confused ideas, so far as he had
any, about breeding, and thought to combine all sorts of good
qualities in one animal, and so he worked in a little grade Durham,
or Hereford to get size, and a little Ayrshire for milk, and a little
Devon for color, and so on, using perhaps dams sired by a bull in the
neighborhood which had also got some "Whitten"[1] or "Peter Waldo"
calves, (though none of these showed it,) at any rate he wanted some
of the "native" element in his stock, because it was tough, and some
folks thought natives were the best after all. Among its ancestors and
kindred were some good and some not good, some large and some small,
some well favored and fat, some ill favored and lean, some profitable
and some profitless. The animal now offered is a great deal better
than the average of them. It looks for aught they can see, about as
well as the one for which five times his price is asked. Perhaps he
served forty cows last year and brought his owner as many quarters,
while the other only served five and brought an income of but five
dollars. The question arises, which is the better bargain? After
pondering the matter, one buys the low-priced and the other the
high-priced one, both being well satisfied in their own minds.
What did results show? The low-priced one served that season perhaps a
hundred cows; more than ought to have done so, came a second
time;--having been overtasked as a yearling, he lacked somewhat of
vigor. The calves came _of all sorts_, some good, some poor, a few
like the sire, more like the dams--all mongrels and showing mongrel
origin more than he did. There seemed in many of them a tendency to
combine the defects of the grades from which he sprung rather than
their good points. In some, the quietness of the Short-horn
degenerated into stupidity, and in others the activity of the Devon
into nervous viciousness. Take them together they perhaps paid for
rearing, or nearly so. After using him another year, he was killed,
having been used long enough.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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