FIFTY-SECOND ANNUAL CONVENTION 163 



condition existing with our cows, and if- that condition 

 exists in our sires and they are pre-potent, then regardless 

 to an extent of what kind of cows we mate them with, they 

 will transmit those characteristics through the cows to their 

 daughters. Then, gradually, we will be breeding the kind 

 of cows we desire. 



We need not think that we are going to do it one 

 hundred per cent in one generation, but we must have the 

 patience of the breeders of other countries; we may expect 

 to make large improvement the first generation, improve- 

 ment almost as large as the second, and show a like im- 

 provement the third generation, and thus continue to im- 

 prove. We should remember that our lifetime, although too 

 short to breed the perfect cow, nevertheless is long enough 

 for us to breed as good cattle as can be bred, providing we 

 use the right kind of sires. 



When we think in these terms, let us also call to mind 

 that as long as life is, from the cradle to the grave, it is 

 too short for us to fool it away monkeying around with 

 scrub cows and not properly feeding them, and especially 

 is it too short for us to take the trip accompanied by a 

 scrub or a no-account sire which breeds cows down instead 

 of upward. I think that ninety per cent of the dairymen of 

 this country are using sires which are breeding downward 

 their cows instead of breeding them upward. We know 

 that we want to breed them upward, and whether we do or 

 not depends absolutely on the kind of sires that we use. 



And then in selecting sires we wish that they be long 

 and straight from the hip bone back to the pinbone. When 

 we drop a plumb bob down in front of the cow's hip it falls 

 just in front of the udder, and a line dropped down from 

 the pinbone drops just behind the udder of the fresh cow 

 when it is full. A cow that drops from hip bone to pin- 

 bone has an udder which cuts up in front, and whenever 

 we cut away any portion of a cow's udder we reduce the 

 capacity. Now if we use prepotent sires that are long from 

 the hip to the pinbone, and straight, they will transmit 

 through the cows we are milking today to the cows which 

 we will be milking in the future, this characteristic of 



