Live Stock Breeders' Association. 169 



their methods of breeding and handling, and in this respect pedi- 

 gree does undoubtedly add greatly to the value of an animal. 



When we refer to the men who have done most to improve and 

 establish a certain fixed type in the production of animal form, 

 we should note that in most instances he is a man who has made a 

 success of breeding by not giving special attention to pedigree. Re- 

 ferring to Amos Cruikshank, how was he in position to produce a 

 strain of cattle with a type so fixed and qualities so excellent and 

 make them stand today as they were in his own time? He was one 

 of the greatest breeders who ever lived. It was sim.ply because 

 he paid no attention to pedigree, and selected his sires because of 

 individual excellence alone. It is the only principle a man can 

 safely follow, because the truest law we have in all nature is that 

 "Like produces like ;" by the use of good animals is the only way we 

 can expect good offspring, and pedigree will have very little ma^ 

 terial influence. 



And I will cite you to some cases where men have paid a great 

 deal of attention to pedigree, and have become, in fact, what might 

 be called pedigree cranks. I know of a number of cases where the 

 result has been a dispersion. These men, who have followed pedi- 

 gree too closely and have bred paper — in other words, looked more 

 to the ancestry than the individual, have invariably come to finan- 

 cial disaster. The one door for all of them is failure at the 

 finish, and their cattle, Vv^hen sold, have some of them not even 

 brought what they were worth for beef because of weak consti- 

 tutions, tuberculous, and in such condition that a farmer would not 

 want them among his cattle. 



Fashions come and go in the breeding of live stock in pedigrees, 

 the same as they come in dress and other things, but not quite so 

 often; and the moment a man distinguishes himself as a producer 

 of a peculiar type of animal, a type with some peculiar excellence, 

 that man receives a reputation, and breeders fall over each other 

 to buy his animals. And finally some other man, who has taken up 

 this particular strain, turns to the breeding of cattle from this one 

 herd as being favorable, and he no doubt in many cases is not a 

 practical breeder and takes these animals from the standpoint of 

 pedigree only, without regard whatever to the individual merit of 

 the animal represented. Such men, ignoring absolutely this great 

 law of nature, that "Like produces like," are the men who are doing 

 the greatest damage to breeding interests today and who are form- 

 ing the fashions. They are the men who tend to put questions into 

 the heads of some prospective breeders as to what is pedigree and 



