FIRST CENTURY OF DAIRYING IN NEW SOUTH WALES. 



the same. If the result is a female, when oi proper age is mated with 

 her own sire, and if the result is again a female, it is mated in due 

 course to the same sire that was her sire as well as her grandsire. 

 The same course is resorted to in mating the son with his own dam, 

 and so on. This is what is termed in-and-in breeding ; and while the 

 constitution remains sound and robust it is unquestionably very effec- 

 tive. Nevertheless, it is a dangerous system to follow. 



On this question Darwin says: "However little we may be able 

 to explain the cause, the facts under review show that the male and 

 female elements must be differential to a certain degree in order to 

 unite properly, and to give birth to vigorous progeny such differentia- 

 tion of the sexual elements follows from the parents and their ances- 

 tors having lived during some generations under different conditions 

 of life." The theory hclds good with plants as animals. 



If the theory advanced above be correct, then no bad effects will 

 necessarily result from breeding in-and-in, until uniformity of type 

 which implies unity of organism is attained, provided we use on the 

 coast from time to time animals of the same strain reared on the 

 tableland. Where bulls from the same sire by different dams are used 

 for several generations the bad effects, if any, seem to develop but 

 slowly. It is now generally understood that both Bakewell, Bates, 

 and Booth adopted the in-and-in breeding principle of breeding, and 

 their stock, although bred for beef purposes, never wholly lost their 

 milking qualities until it was -fed out of them in or about the fifties. 

 Take, for example, Red Daisy. She came from a strain of milkers 

 in direct descent from Bates. Her dam, it is said, gave sixteen quarts 

 of milk at a meal, and her daughter was not far behind her. This 

 class of cow was of no value to the beef-raisers of America o: Aus- 

 tralia. So in the course of years the British Shorthorn was made for 

 beef only, and their milking qualities discarded. 



One school of writers \\i\\ say, " Begin the habit of long milking 

 with a heifer, and persist in it, and she will keep it up afterwards.'. 1 

 Another will say, "Whatever will increase a cow's comforts will in- 

 crease her productive power." But these ideas remind one of the 

 first instructions in cooking the hare" first catch your hare." The 

 dairyman must first get his cow before commencing experiments. 

 Hence it happened that when the dairy farmers discovered that it was 

 by no means an easy matter to undo the damage wrought by the 

 English and colonial beef-raisers to the dairy quality of the Short- 

 horns, they took the very quickest method at their disposal to get 

 back some of the dairy qualitiy namely, the introduction of Ayrshire 

 and Jersey bulls, with a fair amount of success. 



The majority of the dairymen had long previously learned how to 

 tend and care cows, and how to milk and train heifers in the way 

 they should grow. In these crosses there were many disappointments. 

 Now and then, however, two strains of chiefly Shorthorns and Ayr- 

 shires would be found to possess the desired affinity for each other, 

 and the produce of these would turn out good. 



At the same time, speaking generally, it is not an easy in fact, it 

 is a very difficult matter to get any two strains of an opposite breed 

 to blend just as we desire it. It is a difficult matter to mate two 

 animals of the same breed. We must therefore avoid extremes 

 much as possible. These extremes are often hidden from our view 

 by that great envelope the skin of the animal through which ex- 

 perience only teaches us to read the secret contents by intuition an< 

 the guidance of the eye and the hand. 



Experience, however certain it may be, is a very slow instructor. 

 Hence it is that many of our dairymen have been trying for years to 

 breed a type of dairy cow like the old types of Durham, /Lincoln; 

 and Longhorn mixtures of the forties and fifties by crossing beel 

 Shorthorns with Ayrshire in every shape and form, and failed, iney 



106. 



