Breeding Animals. 77 



Maine Experiment Station Dr. Woods is developing 

 hens with 2OO-egg capacity, and from the same breeds 

 another family with an average of only 40 eggs an- 

 nually in part to demonstrate the fact that by system- 

 atic breeding radical changes may be effected. New 

 methods of securing records of values can be devised 

 in animal breeding just as it is being successfully done 

 in plant breeding. New business methods may be a 

 necessity, and the work of herd-book secretaries may 

 need to be reorganized. As the old-time itinerant 

 cobbler gave way to the modern shoe factory, so the 

 pedigree herd-book of mere names may need to give 

 place to a modernized plan of recording, tabulating 

 and using measures of individuality, and also records 

 of transmitting power as secured by averaging the 

 measured individual qualities of a number of the 

 progeny of each valuable parent. As manual dexterity 

 in swinging the cradle has been superceded by skill 

 at running the self -binding reaper, so skill in mere 

 judging by the looks of animals may ere long in larger 

 part be supplanted by training in ferreting out, through 

 systems of tests of parents and progeny, those blood 

 lines which have the highest general value. Shows 

 could as well give prizes to teams of college students 

 or to individual competitors for displaying and compar- 

 ing the values of dairy bulls or trotting sires as for 

 judging several classes of competing animals and writ- 

 ing their reasons for the placing of the animals. 



Considerable time is required to reduce the breeding 

 of any class of animals to a systematic or scientific basis. 

 In both animal and plant breeding the goal is large, 

 and the cost to the whole people can be only a fraction 

 of the benefit they will eventually receive, providing 

 the work is economically and effectively carried out 

 and the possible results reached. The additions of 5 

 or 10 per cent to the net values of our domestic animals 

 over present methods of breeding would add hundreds 

 of millions to the national income. 



These articles were started to arouse discussion 



