The successful craftsman today is the man who first of all knows what 
he is attempting to build, even going so far in many cases as to have a plan 
or drawing in black and white. Further, he is a critical judge of the crude 
materials from which he turns out his produce of finished beauty and he 
selects carefully that his labor may be rewarded to the full measure that 
it deserves. Thirdly, he is a master in the handling of the tools of his 
trade. 
The breeder, while he cannot be as intimately. associated with his 
product in the actual molding and shaping of it as other craftsmen yet he 
must give just as careful attention to these three points if for nothing 
else than the very reason that his judgment and skill can effect his finished 
product so seldom in its development and mistakes take much longer to 
rectify. 
The first point for the breeder is a plan or picture in his mind at least 
of the ideal type of rabbit. If it is a fancy rabbit it may be different from 
the utility but at least it will be an ideal toward which he is working. ‘Con- 
siderable space might be devoted to a discussion of methods of determining 
what the ideal is. The breeder should study show room standards and take 
every opportunity to acquaint himelf with the qualities which make for a 
fancy animal or for desirable fur, or if he is raising rabbits for meat alone, 
those which make for the highest dressing percentage of high quality meat. 
He then should seek ever toward that end in his breeding operations. 
Secondly, the breeder will do well to select carefully his foundation 
stock to make sure that it has in it the potential qualities of his ideal. 
Not only should health, fertility and external characteristics be considered 
but the past history and future possibilities of the stock cannot be estimated 
too carefuly. If the breeder is not in a position to judge these himself he 
will do well to deal with a realiable breeder of long standing and con- 
siderable reputation. 
The third point and the one with which we are most concerned here 
seems the most difficult. The tools or methods which may be and are, 
often unconsciously, employed by the breeder are many and varied. Out- 
breeding, inbreeding, linebreeding, crossbreeding, pedigree breeding and 
selection are all methods which have certain uses and have at one time or 
another all been used in the development of our present breeds of livestock. 
Under the right conditions each has given measurable success. 
Few breeders have realized that their profession really has anything 
to work with except pure chance and that intuitive instinct for matings that 
nick which seems to have characterized some successful breeders in the 
past. As a matter of fact, while the old breeders who played such an im- 
portant part in the foundation of such breeds as the Shorthorn cattle or 
Southern sheep may have seemed to make purely intuitive matings, studies 
have shown in many cases that their success was due to certain more or 
less well defined methods or combinations of methods and more or less is 
known just what was accomplished by these methods. Pure chance has 
to a very large degree been robbed of its pureness by the statistician and 
biometrician and thanks to Gregor Mendel and many of his followers we 
now realize that certain laws of heredity are in operation. With many 
characteristics and particularly coat color with which all breeders of fur 
bearing animals are vitally interested we now recognize certain more or 
less well defined methods or combinations of methods and more or less its 
influence on just what the color of any animal will be. Knowing the 
herditary composition of our animals as we know the composition of chemi- 
cal compounds we can predict with a fair degree of accuracy the kinds and 
percentages of offspring which will result from given matings. 
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