The Principles of Breeding | Page 3

the reputation of his stock, until in 1784, they brought him 100 guineas each! Five years later his lettings for one season amounted to $30,000!
With all his skill and success he seemed afraid lest others might profit by the knowledge he had so laboriously acquired. He put no pen to paper and at death left not even the slightest memorandum throwing light upon his operations, and it is chiefly through his cotemporaries, who gathered somewhat from verbal communications, that we know anything regarding them. From these we learn that he formed an ideal standard in his own mind and then endeavored, first by a wide selection and a judicious and discriminating coupling, to obtain the type desired, and then by close breeding, connected with rigorous weeding out, to perpetuate and fix it.
After him came a host of others, not all of whom concealed their light beneath a bushel. By long continued and extensive observation, resulting in the collection of numerous facts, and by the collation of these facts of nature, by scientific research and practical experiments, certain physiological laws have been discovered, and principles of breeding have been deduced and established. It is true that some of these laws are as yet hidden from us, and much regarding them is but imperfectly understood. What we do not know is a deal more than what we do know, but to ignore so much as has been discovered, and is well established, and can be learned by any who care to do so, and to go on regardless of it, would indicate a degree of wisdom in the breeder on a par with that of a builder who should fasten together wood and iron just as the pieces happened to come to his hand, regardless of the laws of architecture, and expect a convenient house or a fast sailing ship to be the result of his labors.
Is not the usual course of procedure among many farmers too nearly parallel to the case supposed? Let the ill-favored, chance-bred, mongrel beasts in their barn yards testify. The truth is, and it is of no use to deny or disguise the fact, the improvement of domestic animals is one of the most important and to a large extent, one of the most neglected branches of rural economy. The fault is not that farmers do not keep stock enough, much oftener they keep more than they can feed to the most profitable point, and when a short crop of hay comes, there is serious difficulty in supporting them, or in selling them at a paying price; but the great majority neither bestow proper care upon the selection of animals for breeding, nor do they appreciate the dollars and cents difference between such as are profitable and such as are profitless. How many will hesitate or refuse to pay a dollar for the services of a good bull when some sort of a calf can be begotten for a "quarter?" and this too when one by the good male would be worth a dollar more for veal and ten or twenty dollars more when grown to a cow or an ox? How few will hesitate or refuse to allow to a butcher the cull of his calves and lambs for a few extra shillings, and this when the butcher's difference in shillings would soon, were the best kept and the worst sold, grow into as many dollars and more? How many there are who esteem size to be of more consequence than symmetry, or adaptation to the use for which they are kept? How many ever sit down to calculate the difference in money value between an animal which barely pays for keeping, or perhaps not that, and one which pays a profit?
Let us reckon a little. Suppose a man wishes to buy a cow. Two are offered him, both four years old, and which might probably be serviceable for ten years to come. With the same food and attendance the first will yield for ten months in the year, an average of five quarts per day,--and the other for the same term will yield seven quarts and of equal quality. What is the comparative value of each? The difference in yield is six hundred quarts per annum. For the purpose of this calculation we will suppose it worth three cents per quart--amounting to eighteen dollars. Is not the second cow, while she holds out to give it, as good as the first, and three hundred dollars at interest besides? If the first just pays for her food and attendance, the second, yielding two-fifths more, pays forty per cent. profit annually; and yet how many farmers having two such cows for sale would make more than ten, or twenty, or at most, thirty dollars difference in the