CHAPTER XV 

 PEDIGREES AND THEIR VALUE 



The pedigree of an animal shows the consecutive rela- 

 tionship of an animal to its ancestors. Of some animals we 

 say that they are pure-breds, while others are known as 

 scrubs or mongrels. The pure-bred has a known pedigree, 

 while the scrub has not. Men have developed herds of 

 animals of similar character and ancestry from which they 

 uniformly reproduce the parent type, and have kept 

 careful records of the breeding. Such animals form a 

 breed. To be pure bred, an animal must show in its pedi- 

 gree that it traces back wholly within the blood lines 

 from which the stock originated. If an animal is not pure 

 bred, it may combine in its pedigree widely differing blood 

 lines that are more or less out of harmony with one another. 



A cross-bred animal has a pedigree that on the sire's side 

 is of one breed, and of another on the dam's side. As a rule, 

 cross breeding is very undesirable, and should be carried only 

 one generation, and then for the production of feeding-stock 

 only. 



A grade animal, in the large majority of cases, has a pure- 

 bred sire, but is out of a dam that is not pure-bred. One 

 often hears the expression high grade, which means that the 

 animal referred to is by a pure-bred sire, and out of a dam 

 that contains much pure blood stock. A high grade herd of 

 Herefords would consist of a collection of animals that 

 started with just common or scrub breeding stock, but in 

 which for some generations none but pure-bred males were 

 used as sires. Thus a systematic improvement of the herd 



