594 



PRACTICAL PROBLEMS 



hoping the craze may pass before the old stock of females shall 

 pass away. If it does not, then at all hazards some remnants 

 at least must be preserved pure and unalloyed as a nucleus 

 against the day when the pendulum will swing back to the 

 normal, or perhaps to the other extreme. 



Breeders 1 fads. The above has reference to requirements 

 imposed by the buyer. But the fact is, breeders themselves 

 have multiplied their natural difficulties enormously and use- 

 lessly by fads of their own invention, the tyranny of which is 

 even worse than that exercised by the alien buyer. Against all 

 this the strongest protest is far too weak. 



Why, for example, should a few curly hairs on the back of a 

 hog disqualify him as a breeder ? Why are cows and bulls 

 selected by the size or shape of the escutcheon ? Why must 

 a Jersey have a black tongue ? Why must the tail bone of a 

 Holstein-Friesian cow reach to the hock ? Why did the Shorthorn 

 breeders twenty-five years ago carefully kill every roan or white 

 calf, and so yield themselves to the color craze that for a decade 

 or more the breed made progress backward ? Why such frantic 

 horror at the " seventeens," 1 requiring that a book be written 

 blacklisting literally thousands of the best animals of the breed ? 



Absurd standards of this character should be resisted to the 

 utmost by every reputable breeder and by every real friend of 

 the breed, whether arising ignorantly or from a malicious desire 

 to narrow the range of possible sales, to discredit the animals 

 of competitors, or to destroy their herds. The writer is well 

 aware that breeders as a class are second to none, either in 

 intelligence or in honor. He is aware, too, that many of these 

 foolish requirements or objections, like the " querl " on the pig, 

 get started no one knows how, and gain strength by repetition ; 

 but the wholesale destruction of reputations, and even of herds 

 and fortunes, by the war on the " seventeens" is convincing proof 

 that individuals, even in this honorable company, are not above 

 the most dastardly methods of reducing competition. Individ- 

 uals of this sort are not bona fide breeders ; they are commercial 

 pirates who use pedigreed live stock as material for speculation. 

 They have added nothing to the excellence of any breed, or to 



1 Reference is here made to the Shorthorn importation of 1817. 



