156 Sheep-Farming 



blood, because the best sires outside their own flocks 

 were inferior to the ones they had bred themselves. 

 The same is true of some breeding flocks of the 

 present. Because of the exercise of extraordinary 

 care and skill, some breeders who are holding to a 

 special type within a breed are themselves limited 

 to their own flocks in selecting the material to effect 

 further progress. Such are the breeders who breed 

 their own stud rams. Such a course involves some 

 risk of injury to the flock in which it is followed, 

 but when carefully done, it gives the stock an extraor- 

 dinary prepotency that is invaluable to any other 

 flockmaster who aims at the same type. 



It was said that a succession of sires unrelated but 

 of similar type was scarcely so certain of results as 

 the succession of related ones. The success of either 

 plan depends more upon the judgment exercised in 

 selecting those sires than upon the system. The 

 same is true of any other phase of breeding. 



Since the principle of the matter is that the 

 characters of a single animal are perpetuated and 

 held together by close matings, there can be no gain 

 in concentrating the blood of any but the animals 

 of the highest excellence. Whatever apparent or 

 concealed weakness they have will also be made 

 more pronounced, the apparent ones becoming more 

 serious, and those not apparent becoming strong 

 enough to exhibit themselves very markedly. The 

 flocks that have been ruined by the use of their 



