LIVESTOCK FARMINCi 4/ 



"What manner of man should the breeder be? What instincts, \vhat 

 (juahties of mind, what temperament sliould he i)ossess in order to 

 SLiceecd in the breeder's art? What arc the ideals and what the capacities 

 of the born breeder of livestock whereby he achieves constructive results? 

 Such is the question and what shall the answer be? 



"Anybody can buy and sell livestock. Anybody can speculate in 

 values. Anybody can traffic in pedigrees and show-ring records. 

 Anybody can raise livestock so far as increasing numbers are concerned, 

 but only the master breeder can so compound the subtle qualities of 

 animal life and so foster and finish the product as really to contribute 

 something new to the animal art of his time. It is perhaps worth the 

 attempt to analyze and to define, as best we may, the qualities that 

 characterize the master breeder as distinct from the one who merely 

 traffics in what others have accomplished. 



"First of all and fundamental to constructive results, in the herd and 

 to the highest satisfaction of the mind, the breeder must belong to the 

 rather rare class that may be called lovers of animal life. The landscape 

 artist is passionately fond of the out-of-doors; the musician is as sensitive 

 to sound as the artist is to sight; the breeder's response is to life in animal 

 form. 



"I do not now refer to that intellectual appreciation of the economic 

 value of good livestock, admitted without argument even by the census 

 taker and the statistician and accorded by thinking men everywhere. 

 I do not have in mind that voluble enthusiasm for conventional type or 

 pedigree that characterizes many a professional dealer, but I mean that 

 instinctive love for living things that amounts almost to a passion with the 

 few who possess it; which the man feels and the animal understands, 

 but that we may not define. 



"This love of life expresses itself in a thousand subtle ways — in tone of 

 voice, in accent, in manner, and in everj^ movement. This is what keeps 

 the stockman with his creatures on stormy days, even after nothing for 

 their comfort remains to be done. He 'just likes to be with them,' 

 and they with him. No man quite knows why, but so it is and that is 

 enough. Only the man who feels this thing can ever realize the highest 

 satisfaction and the most substantial success as a breeder. Be he ever 

 so successful in reproducing numbers and in buying and selling he will 

 never be a constructive breeder unless he has that in his make-up which 

 responds to animal association. 



"This man must also be an artist, with the artist's eye to detect 

 details of form and structure and with the artist's ability to create 

 mental pictures out of the best that he has seen in all animals. Thus is 

 his ideal type built up. If he cannot do this he is working in the dark, a 

 ship without a compass, an architect without a vision, a builder without 

 blueprints or specifications. With this vision he has an ever-present 

 guide to progress, a yardstick with which to measure both success and 

 failure, an absolute standard for achievement. And yet he must look 

 beyond his type into the characters that compose it. As the artist must 

 note details of rock and tree, of stream and sky, so the breeder must fix 



