BULLETIN 272 



INHERITANCE STUDIES OF CERTAIN COLOR AND 

 HORN CHARACTERISTICS IN FIRST GENERA- 

 TION CROSSES OF DAIRY AND BEEF 

 BREEDS.* 



John W. Gowen. 



SUMMARY 



This constitutes a preliminary paper on the crossbred 

 herd now being brought together by the Maine Agricultural 

 Experiment Station for the purpose of studying some of the 

 outstanding problems of Dairy Husbandry. 



No influence on the vigor of the offspring would be expect- 

 ed from the width of the outcrosses as inbreeding studies 

 showed the inbreeding low in amount. 



Black body color is dominant to the other colors in the first 

 generation. In the second generation there occurred an orange 

 coated bull and a dark Jersey heifer. This is to be explained 

 on the grounds of a recessive dilution factor in the Guernsey 

 breed. This factor is not normally present in the Jersey breed. 



It has been shown that white marking of the body taken 

 as a whole appears as a dominant. Study of the individual 

 white areas, however, indicate that this is due to white in the 

 inguinal region only for this alone appears as such a dominant. 

 The white spots on the face (star, star snip and blaze) neck, 

 shoulders, rump, flanks and legs are, in general, suppressed in 

 the offspring when animals with these markings are mated to 

 solid colored animals. 



As has been suggested but as has never been tested before, 

 the pigmented muzzle is dominant to the unpigmented muzzle. 



*Papers from the Biological Laboratory, Maine Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station No. 122. This is an abstract of paper No. 120 from the 

 Biological Laboratory of the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station 

 published in the Journal of Agricultural Research. Vol. 15. No. 1. 



