DEVELOPMENT AND IMPROVEMENT OF BREEDS. 637 



X. Altering the Character by Crossing. 



When it becomes necessary to alter the form, do so through some animal 

 of the same breed. Never go out of the breed for improvement even in 

 constitutional vigor. If you do,you will always rue it. The K3doe cross, 

 made in the Short-Horns, nearly a hundred years ago, still crops out in 

 certain families, in the sloughing of the horns, or in defective horns. 

 Thirty years ago the outcrop of tliis peculiarity was quite common. If 

 the character of your cattle needs altering, select for the purpose a bull 

 possessing the characteristics desired, or as near thereto as may be possi- 

 ble. Once the effect is produced, return again to the practice of breed- 

 ing in line, never neglecting careful selection. So also in breeding up 

 common stock, by means of superior males, when once you have decided 

 what breed is best for your particular use, stick to it. If the result is 

 unsatisfactory, try another breed on certain cows, but not on those of 

 your best improved stock. If you are breeding pure or thoroughbred 

 stock, quit the business rather than take an out-cross upon some other 

 distinct breed. Once the blood is in your herd, you cannot breed it out 

 in your life time, nor can your successor l)reed it out in his life time. 



XI. Influence of Shelter and Feeding. 



In the breeding of all farm stock too many persons suppose that ani- 

 mals, especially cattle, ni;iy be ex[)osed to the storms of winter without 

 ,'^3rious detriment, and that if tliey get very thin in winter, they will 

 lir'uperate in the succeding summer. No mistake could be more fatal 

 vi he stock raiser than this. An animal that barely survives the winter, 

 seldom more than regains the flesh lost, during the next summer. Those 

 that have to be "tailed up" in the spring never are good for much there- 

 after. The only profit there is in stock of any kind, is made by keeping 

 them steadily growing, until they reach maturity. This is especially true 

 in the case of improved stock of whiitever breed. They must have suf- 

 ficient warmth and feeding, for if disability arise from neglect, the loss 

 is serious by comparison with the loss from similar injury to ordinary, 

 cheap stock. It may be taken as an axiom, that no money was ever 

 •Tiade by neglecting or starving farm stock ; and no farmer ever will 

 make money from cattle if he lets them take the "warm side of a straw 

 stack" for food and shelter in winter. 



XII. Heredity in Cattle. 



We have already spoken of the hereditary influence of ancestors. In 



cattle this is often plainly shown. The thirteenth axiom of Stonehege, and 



one undoubtedly correct, is : The purer and less mixed the breed, the more 



Vikely it is to be transmitted unaltered to the offspring. Hence, which- 



