FARM ANIMALS 50 



pose in growing such animals, excepting the horse, is to make 

 meal, milk, or wool, and to reproduce their kind. 



People who buy the meat from such animals are willing to 

 pay more for the parts that come from the back, sides and 

 rear parts of the animal. Thus the longer the animal is in 

 the body the greater will be the proportion of high-priced meat 

 and the smaller will be the proportion of cheap meat. The 

 front part of the animal from the rear of the shoulder forward 

 is the cheaper part of the carcass. 



Constitution and Capacity. Length of body also has a 

 bearing upon the capacity for consuming feed and, therefore, 

 upon constitution. If the body is long there is plenty of room 

 back of the chest for the organs of the abdomen and these 

 do not crowd the heart and lungs. 



If any animal is to do well it must eat plenty of feed. If it 

 is to eat lots of feed it must have large capacity in its digestive 

 apparatus and this means a long, broad and deep middle 

 piece. The power house or chest cavity containing the vital 

 organs must also be large. 



As to the influence of length of body upon reproductive 

 capacity the following written by the author for the Breeders' 

 Gazette, Feb. 14, 1912, may be of interest: 



"Correlation of Type and Prolificacy in Hogs. The accom- 

 panying Figs. (6, 7, 8) show three Poland China gilts, together 

 with their first litters at the time the gilts were about one year 

 old. While the gilts are pure breds, the pigs were sired by a 

 Chester White boar. These three gilts were litter mates and 

 during the winter of 1910-11 were taken to the judging room 

 and placed in accordance with the breeding-hog scorecard 

 used at the Illinois Experiment Station. They were then given 

 herd places in the way they were placed in the judging room 

 and put into the breeding herd. They were all bred to the 

 same boar and all farrowed within a comparatively short 

 time. 



"The gilt that was placed first or (No. 1), Fig. 6, as will be 

 seen, farrowed a litter of nine pigs. The one that was placed 

 second (No. 2) Fig. 7, farrowed five pigs, while the one that was 

 placed third, Fig. 8, farrowed one pig. This seems to have 

 been a very marked difference in prolificacy, and part of it 



