662 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS 



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The testing of young females is a difficult business. There 

 is little use in breeding them to unknown sires, whose own breed- 

 ing powers are problematical. To do that is to measure one 

 yardstick with another whose standard of accuracy is unknown. 

 The young females should be bred whenever possible to tested 

 sires, and then the breeder will have an accurate measure of 

 what they should be expected to do under herd conditions. 



Unity of the herd. The old plan of having represented in the 

 same herd all fashionable families in the person of its females is 

 fortunately passing. Such a herd, no matter how excellent or 

 well bred its individuals, was after all but a motley collection 

 of strongly bred differences, on which no sire ever born could 

 be expected to succeed. Such attempts have involved many 

 breeders in a hopeless tangle of Mendelism, for these violent 

 admixtures of family lines amount to little else than crossing, 

 either in theory or in practice. 



The individual breeder succeeds best who attempts to do a 

 distinctive thing, and who preserves one type throughout his 

 collection of females, which is his herd. He will find this diffi. 

 cult enough to accomplish without seeking the multiplication 

 of types ; and he will, if he is wise, discard many females in the 

 testing, because, if working with well-known and tested strains 

 of line-bred stock, one or two tests of a particular combination are 

 as good as a dozen. There is no need that the breeder should 

 waste time and money and live in uncertainty if only he will keep 

 his type distinct, his blood lines pure, and will test every animal 

 that is to have a permanent place in the herd. If he will not do 

 this he will indeed be treading a maze of uncertainty, and will 

 be ready to say at the end of a long life and as the fruit of his 

 experience, "Verily, breeding is a lottery," - an honestly uttered 

 but gross libel on one of the greatest professions on earth. 



Testing sires. A well-established herd has always in service a 

 mature and well-tested sire who has proved his breeding power 

 on some of the best-known females of the herd. 1 Not only that, 

 but the owner of such a herd is always looking for his successor. 



1 Among the many answers to questions touching this point a surprisingly 

 large proportion of breeders confess to testing bulls, not on cows of known breed- 

 ing powers but on heifers. 



