342 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



to see the things they send us. They will tear down an old bill, 

 which they have had struck off, advertising the animal, or something 

 of that sort, and send it in to us as a pedigree certificate. Now, 

 what value can a certificate of that kind have in registering an ani- 

 mal? It may answer as a memorandum, but there is nothing of 

 the certificate about it. They are merely individual pedigrees that 

 serve for the purpose of keeping in that man's mind the pedigree 

 of the animal. But the official pedigree means something else; it 

 means being vouched for by some one else, and has an official recog- 

 nition, the result of an official organization. Now, in states where 

 breeding has attained any standing whatever, they have organized 

 associations, who regulate these things. Take for instance the 

 Herefords. We all know that they have certain characteristics 

 which distinguish them from anj- other breed, and any bearing these 

 characteristics is naturally stamped as a Hereford. If you have 

 been breeding a certain strain for thirty or forty years, and get 

 a case of reversion so that the animal does not come up to the stan- 

 dard of the Breeders' Association, out he goes; if, on the other hand, 

 you have one that may not be so nearly pure, and he comes up to 

 the standard set by the Breeders' Association, he goes through. 



Now, this official certificate has another important bearing. Every 

 authorized Breeders' Association keeps a record of all the births, 

 breeding, progen^^ and death of a given individual. They make it 

 their business to know when an animal comes into life, keep track 

 of him during life, keep track of his progeny, and finally chronicle 

 his demise. These authorized Associations are recognized by the 

 United States Department of Agriculture; that is what makes them 

 official, and we don't need to go any further back in the matter. 

 They have specified certain requirements to which every Association 

 must conform in order to get their sanction to conduct these regis- 

 tration??. Just to show you how this works — several years ago one 

 of the Bercheron Associations — unfortunately there are three — was 

 giving a pure bred certificate to the progeny of pure bred Percheron 

 sires and French Draught dams. The other two Associations did 

 not do this, and the United States Department of Agriculture on 

 learning this immediately notified this Association to change their 

 ruling, or else lose their right to register horses. Of course, they 

 referiiidcd. It gave us a good deal of trouble last year, because we 

 were getting these pedigrees in, and had a lot of them until the 

 I'nitert States Department of Agriculture issued this order, so that 

 we have a record of pedigree, that may be called unofficial and offi- 

 cial, it becomes official when it has the stamp of the Government 

 on it. 



Now, the advantages of these pedigrees are that it gives you the 

 trai'S of ai;y particular strain. If you are buying a dairy cow, you 

 want a recortl of her sires and dams; you want to know what they 

 have been doing; in some of them you will find a prepotency that 

 you want carried along in your progeny, and when this prepotency 

 exists for several generations along one particular breed, the 

 chances are just so much more in her favor. It is the same thing in 

 horses. If you want speed, you look for the records of a sire that 

 bas a record along the line of his ancestry of 2.10, or better, or any- 

 thing you want to make it. It is the character of the individual that 

 gives tl^e pedigree its value, 



