Judging Beef Cattle. 



11 



should be present to a marked degree. Good handling qualities are 

 essential, as an excessive covering of fat, showing that the animals 

 have been pampered, is undesirable. Heavy flesh is necessarily a 

 factor of great importance, but breeding cattle should be judged 

 more by their value as breeding stock than by the flesh they carry. 

 Breeding cattle when in show condition have about the same handling 

 qualities and covering of flesh as choice fat cattle. In show cattle 

 proper fitting should be valued highly. Other things being equal, 

 the best-fitted animals should be preferred, but it is often the case 

 that a superabundance of flesh hides defects and the poorer animal 

 wins as a result of the greater fitting. 



In judging breeding cattle great emphasis should be placed upon 

 any indications which tend to show that their characteristics and 



Fig. 8.— Refinement and femininity should be shown to a marked extent in females. 



qualifications for a specific purpose will be transmitted to their 

 offspring. In other words they must be prepotent or have the 

 ability to transmit their usefulness and likeness to their offspring. 

 The prepotency should be so strong and the line of breeding so well 

 defined for a specific purpose that an animal will have a tendency to 

 produce better individuals than itself. This should be particularly 

 true of bulls, because of their greater influence in the herd. 



Prepotency is obtained by consistent breeding toward a definite 

 breed type. Strong prepotency, therefore, is to be expected most 

 frequently among animals true to their breed type, an example of 

 which is seen in figure 7. In addition to the desired beef conforma- 

 tion, this type in beef cattle always includes certain sexual characters 

 and a vigorous constitution. Sexual characters in male and female 

 differ. In the bull masculinity should be pronounced. The head 



