CHAPTER V 

 IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD SIRE 



It is an old maxim that "a good sire is half the herd." If a 

 poor sire, he is all the herd, and that means failure. Whether 

 this is true or not, it is of great importance that the sire at the head 

 of the herd should be a good one, not only individually, but what 

 is more, he should be bred along blood lines that have proven pre- 

 potent and have made good even though used on promiscuously 

 bred sows; a strongly line-bred boar with an ancestry that is un- 

 questioned in the ability to breed on. 



Often one may breed an animal that has great individual quality, 

 but without good ancestry, and such an animal should not be used 

 as a sire. A prepotent sire never comes by chance. He must trace 

 to good ancestry to be of much value to the breeding herd. There 

 is no breed of swine without a few outstanding sires that have had 

 great influence on the breed. This great value comes from inher- 

 ited excellence through generations of good blood, and is the only 

 reliable method of selecting the desirable sires in any breed. 



In making a selection of a sire for a pure-bred herd, look first 

 to individuality, then to the breeding back through several gener- 

 ations; see that his ancestors are right and what they have done 

 for the breed. If you find all this to be of a high order and the 

 boar suits you, is a high-class individual, showing true character- 

 istics of his breed, rugged, full of vigor, masculine in appearance, 

 and with all the size possible, not sacrificing quality ; conformation 

 as near the standard of excellence of his breed as possible, buy him. 



Among the few great sires that have stamped themselves on the 

 offspring of any breed, one can find their characteristics cropping 

 out even to many generations, and if you will go into almost any 

 prominent herd of the different breeds you will at once notice 

 a few outstanding pigs that show in many ways unusual excellence, 

 and if you take the trouble to look up their breeding you will 

 invariably find that they were either sired by some great sire or 

 by a son or a grandson of his, or from a sow by some great out- 

 standing sire ; plainly showing the ability of such a sire to repro- 

 duce the excellent qualities so much in demand. 



On a recent visit to our farm by an expert in pedigrees, it was 

 found after -we had selected some fifteen head of pigs, as being 

 the tops of the litters, that every one of them traced to sires of 

 great ancestry. 



Once in checking up our card system we found a certain sow 

 had produced a litter of only six pigs; two boars and four sows. 

 The choicest boar was given to the party who had offered us an 

 excellent sow if we would breed her to a certain boar and select 

 him the best boar pig ; we were to have the sow and balance of the 



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