168 STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



Michigan on that date at 9,187 head, valued at $319,553.00, averaging 

 134.78 per head. Breeders of Michigan, stop and think what this 

 means, 27,880 bulls one year and over in this state July 1, 1904, with 

 an average value of |28.90 ! Bulls worth less per head than three-year 

 old steers by |o.S8 per head. There are many other states in exactly 

 this same position regarding the relative values of bulls and three-year 

 old steers, but none of them are justified in it. 



LIVE STOCK i:mprovement not difficult. 



Questions of breeding are generally regarded as being obscure, in- 

 tricate and extremely difficult, except to those skilled in the art through 

 long years of training. It is true that we are obliged to look back upon 

 the achievements of the "master breeders" of history with feelings akin 

 to reverence, for their tasks of type founding, breed forming and breed 

 improvement were diflScult, requiring a whole lifetime in some instances 

 to gain the mastery, and in others two whole generations to attain the 

 highest success. But the initial step in live stock breeding for im- 

 provement confronting us today, is an exceedingly simple one; we do 

 not need to undertake the establishment of new types or breeds, 

 as there are plenty now in existence to choose from, which, judiciously 

 chosen will respond favorably to the conditions to which they are 

 adapted. The first step in the line of live stock improvement must come 

 from the cessation of the practice of admixing the blood of the various 

 breeds, and of using grade and scrub sires. 



PLAN FOR LIVE STOCK IMPROVEMENT. 



Before introducing the plan of live stock improvement, known as 

 up-grading, we wish to state that it should be the ambition of every 

 man owning live stock to eventually get into some line of pure-bred 

 live stock breeding. The plan we have to suggest and discuss for the 

 improvement of the common stocks of the country, is that known as 

 up-grading, which consists in ingrafting the characteristics of a supe- 

 rior bred upon animals of common, or mixed breding for the purpose 

 of improving them. This improvement is due to the superior quality 

 of the males used, and chiefly their prepotency, or power of transmitting 

 accurately these qualities ta their offspring. This plan differs from 

 cross breeding, in that pure blood is used on the sire's side, and fe- 

 males of mixed blood, or no blood, on the dam's side. Thus we have 

 the prepotency concentrated in the bull, and the very opposite in the 

 females, as the more mixed the breeding, the less stable are the in- 

 herent characteristics of the individual, and therefore the less resistant 

 to improvement. It Avould be absolutely impractical to advise all own- 

 ers of common cattle to send their stocks to the block and purchase 

 pure bred foundation stocks; only a few could do this for the following 

 reasons: First, if the great majority now possessed of common stocks 

 were to simultaneously seek to purchase pure bred foundation stocks, 

 they could not get them, they are not in existence, for only about one 

 per cent of the cattle in the United States are possessed of pedigrees. 

 Second, the finances of a great many holders of common stock are not 

 such as to allow them to make extensive purchases of pedigreed animals, 



