SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII. 471 



THE PKINCIPLES AND PRACTICE 

 OF HORSa-BREEDING. 



A. S. ALEXANDEB. 



In charge Department of Horse Breeding, University of Wisconsin. 



Wisconsin Experiment Station Bulletin, No. 127. 



UNIFORMITY AXD PERSISTEiS'CY IX BREEDING. 



There has been general lack of these principles in our breeding opera- 

 tions, where imported animals have been employed. Farmers have 

 attempted to improve their horses by grading-up, by which . is meant, 

 mating with pure-bred stallions until the blood of these sires shall have 

 predominated over that of the native stock and stamped the characteristics 

 of the pure breed upon the resultant progeny. Every step taken in this 

 direction has been well intended and the results would have been highly 

 satisfactory Tiad the breeders continued to breed on and up by successive 

 top-ci-ossing with sires of the same breed. Five or more of such top-crosses 

 are required to obliterate the native blood in the combination and, in fact, 

 constitute practical purity of blood, according to the requirements of 

 some of the stud books. But breeders here, as elsewhere, have followed 

 no concerted plan in their grading-up operations. They have commenced 

 right, but gone wrong shortly, by mating the female progeny with horses 

 of another pure breed — one different from the first one used, yet • 

 possibly of as good type and character. All sorts of crosses have been 

 made in this way, the result being that most of our horses are of mixed 

 breeding and many of tnem mere mongrels and misfits. Out of this heter- 

 ogeneous collection of nonentities a few phenomenally good individuals 

 have been found and they have at once atti'acted the eye of the buyer and 

 realized an appreciative price. While fine individual animals are some- 

 times produced by mixed breeding or cross-breeding, there is nothing 

 definite about such mating methods and the progeny is much more apt to 

 be nondescript than above average. The only certain method of raising 

 the general average of our horses as regards type, quality, character, 

 action and specific utility must come from persistent breeding to sires of 

 the same breed until the blood of that breed has wholly obliterated the 

 impure, or native blood derived from the mares originally used. Where 

 this is done the resultant progeny will be pure in blood, to all intents and 

 purposes and, to the same extent, true in every character and quality of 

 the pure breed employed. Naturally, then, we should find among these 

 animals, graded up to practical purity of blood, general excellence of form, 

 quality, action and utility, such as characterize the breed used in the work 

 of improvement, and such is the case, as a general result, wherever this 

 course has been pursued. 



To make our argument more clear let it be said that if the ownei* 

 of a brood mare, or number of mares, of selected type but of native or 



