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Dairy Cattle in Denmark. 



[Nov., 



IMPROVEMENT OF DAIRY CATTLE 

 IN DENMARK. 



Harald Faber, 

 Danish Agricultural Commissioner in London. 



The first part of this article, published in the October issue 

 of the Journal, deals tvith the influence of Milk Recording 

 on the Pyreeding of Dairy Cattle, the method of keeping 

 F amily and Official Herdhooks ; and the Inheritance of Milk 

 Yielding Capacity through the Bull. 



Influence of Bulls on Milk Yield. — When the milk recording 

 societies had worked for a considerable number of years, and 

 something Hke 15,000 herds including 250,000 cows, or about 

 one-fifth of all the cows in the country, were entered in the 

 societies, a very considerable amount of information was avail- 

 able annually as to the jdelds of individual cows and as to their 

 sires and dams. As a result of the measures already described, 

 many good bulls were being used in the country, chiefly in the 

 many Cattle Breeding Societies. These bulls were mated with 

 dams with recorded yields and the yields of the oSspring were 

 also recorded. All that was required, therefore, was a systematic 

 investigation of this vast material of the milk recording societies 

 in order to bring out in figures the influence of the different 

 bulls on the yield of their progeny. The Law of 1912 on Breed- 

 ing of Domestic Animals, therefore, made it a condition for 

 obtaining the Government grant to milk recording societies that 

 the societies should send annually to the Federation of Agricul- 

 tural Societies of their respective Province a report with a list 

 of all the cows controlled by the society. The report must show 

 for each cow the name or number, day of birth, sire and dam, 

 record of yield of milk by quantity and quality, amount of food 

 consumed (by " food units ") and the day of calving, with infor- 

 mation of the marking of the calf and how it has been disposed 

 of. It was further provided that the Provincial Federations shall, 

 as far as possible, tabulate this statistical material and publish 

 such reports based thereon as they consider to be of interest to 

 the cattle breeding industry. These records, properly tabulated, 

 evidently contain the necessary material for judging the influence 

 on the yield of the progeny of the parents and particularly of 

 the sire. - 



These investigations are now carried out to a large extent in 



