MODERN SHEEP: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 193 



Sex of Lambs. 

 Ages of Ewes. Male. Female. 



Two years 7 3 



Three years 15 14 



Four years 33 14 



Five years and over 25 24 



Total ....80 55 



Should not our experiment stations help us out on such ques- 

 tions as these? Certainly they would be doing more universal 

 good by experimenting along these lines than by fitting and show- 

 ing exhibits in competition with our livestock breeders. The ex- 

 periment station that determines what controls sex (there surely 

 is such a thing) will make undying fame. 



It has been advocated that the sex of possible offspring cha"nges 

 regularly every time the female is in season. A very interesting 

 article on this subject came to the author's notice a short time 

 ago where an Englishman gives his experience with Shorthorn 

 cows which had already produced calves. He states that he did 

 not breed for either sex, but more for the purpose of testing the 

 theory. 



The cows were bred at the usual time after calving, the in- 

 tervening periods being carefully noted. The experimenter pointed 

 out that since cows vary very much in the time elapsing between 

 calving and their first heat, it followed that some were served at 

 their first heat and others at their third or fourth. Some of them 

 "turned" two or three times, but this naturally made no difference 

 to the value of the experiment, except perhaps, as the experimenter 

 said, to add emphasis to the working of the law by increasing the 

 enormous odds against coincidence. In only one case out of nine- 

 teen did the theory fail to justify itself in this test. Those cows 

 which had produced a bull calf and were in calf again at the first, 

 third or fifth period had female calves, and those which produced 

 females and bred again at the odd numbers in the heats all 

 gave bull calves and those which bred at the second, fourth and 

 sixth periods produced calves of the same sex as before. In the 

 case of the nineteenth cow, the promoter of the test remarks, 

 which was the only exception, there was room for considerable 

 doubt as to the correctness of her heat periods, but since she was 

 served several times before taking, her failure to fall into line 

 with the other eighteen seemed to him to form but a weak objec- 

 tion to the truth of the theory. 



Some years after the same experimenter took up the breed- 

 ing of Jerseys, and then, of course, heifer calves became prefer- 

 able. As far as possible the rule by which heifers should be 

 produced was adhered to, but absolute certainty in selecting the 



