194 THE PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING 



any barbed wire is used, it should be the top strand kept tight. 

 The ideal fence has been described as " hog tight, bull strong, and 

 horse high "^such is the post and rail, four rails high. 



THE STALLIOH 



Selection of the sire is the most important single step pertain- 

 ing to the establishment of a breeding stud. liis is the most 

 potent influence for either good or bad in the operation. Like 

 the bull, he is more than half the herd. On account of his being 

 the parent of so many individual offspring in a given season, his 

 influence is much more extended than that of the mares. It 

 would require the use of as many superior mares as a stallion may 

 beget foals to accomplish the results that might be attained with a 

 single stallion, and then the progeny would be much less uniform. 

 In the case of an individual, his dam may have as much to do with 

 determining his merit as the sire, and it is important that only 

 good mares be bred, but the most practical method of improving 

 the mares of future generations is to gTade up by means of a su- 

 perior sire. But one parent being pure-bred, his or her characters 

 will dominate in the offspring, since purity of breeding is a cause 

 of prepotency. As a rule, the pure-bred parent will be the sire. 

 In selecting a stallion, whether it be to head a select band of pure- 

 bred mares or to patronize with but a single mare, he must be 

 considered from three angles, — as an individual, as representing 

 and transmitting the characters of an ancestry, and as the pro- 

 genitor of a future generation. 



As an individual, he should be just what is desired in his 

 get, i.e.^ of the right type, good conformation and sound, being 

 strongest in those respects in which the mare or mares with 

 which he is to be mated are most deficient (Fig. 122). Further- 

 more, he must be masculine in appearance, possessing that de- 

 velopment of forehand, hardness of feature, and boldness of 

 demeanor which bespeak the impressive sire. 



Testing Stallions — The ancestry is the antecedent of the 

 progeny and should be carefully studied in order to forecast the 

 character of the progeny. Just as the proof of the pudding is in 

 the eating, so the real value of a sire cannot be determined with- 

 out an inspection of his get. They alone are sufficient either to 



