38 FEEDING FARM ANIMALS 



than milk producing properties would make high class 

 dairy performance impossible, and prepotency in trans- 

 mitting a weak type of stamina would soon result in ret- 

 rogression, alarming in character. It is all important, 

 therefore, that animals shall be chosen for breeding with 

 the most careful reference to desirable. prepotency. 



Desirable prepotency, in other words desirable trans- 

 mission, may be defined as prepotency in consonance 

 with the principal objects sought by the breeder. In 

 breeding horses it will mean transmission relating pri- 

 marily to labor or speed requisites as the case may be; in 

 breeding beef cattle to desirable form and milk elabora- 

 tion ; in dual cattle to desirable equilibrium in form, milk 

 production and meat production ; in sheep, to desirable 

 form for profitable mutton production and wool pro- 

 duction of the kind wanted; in swine, to desirable 

 form for making heavy hams and shoulders or a large 

 amount of bacon. Such prepotency relates to the pos- 

 session of many additional requisites in each instance, but 

 these are stated with more or less of precision in the 

 chapter on type or form (see p. 133). 



Bearing on digestion. It will be evident from what has 

 been said, that transmission has an important bearing on 

 the character of the digestion, and vigorous digestion has 

 an important bearing on the generation of the requisite 

 force or speed wanted in horses, meat or milk elabora- 

 tion or both in cattle; mutton or wool production in 

 sheep, and fat or leaner meat in pork. It would naturally 

 follow, therefore, that in prepotent animals, all digestion 

 will have, so to speak, a natural bias in the direction of 

 production for which animals of the breed or grade 

 are primarily kept, that is to say, it will be bias in the 

 direction of producing force, speed, flesh, milk, mutton, 

 wool, fat or lean. It is also self evident that this bias 

 will not be markedly interchangeable* that is to say, if 

 acting strongly in one direction, as in meat making, its 

 action will be propor mately lessened in the opposite 



