Show 5 AGRICULTURAL MORE STUD OF THE PKLKCIPLXS OF S BREEDING NEEDED Although stock raising in the United States is of immense importance im-portance and the business increasing rapidly it does not receive the careful care-ful study requisite to the most profitable results and in no branch is this more apparent than in horse breeding Fabulous sums have been expended during the past fifteen fif-teen years in the importation and patronage of blooded stallions and yet comparatively little progress has been made in a general improvement improve-ment outside the trotting class and even in that class quite as much is due to skill in training as inbreeding inbreed-ing This slow progress results from several causes prominent among them is the inexcusable ignorance ig-norance of breeders in regard to the characteristics of the different soc led pure breeds to which they are looking for improvement also the general principles of breeding breed-ing and consequently fall an easy prey to unscrupulous impostors or owners of stallions i Another cause is the little attention atten-tion given to the selection of mares Any old used up unsaleable mare is by many considered good enough to turn out and breed and the good ones are allowed to go away to the cities because the buyer offered a good round price Injudicious crossing is very common com-mon and often results in the loss of service of a valuable mare Both these mistakes result from igorance of the principles of breeding The owner of a small l light brood mare wishing to raise larger stock goes in search of the largest stallion to be had supposing ho can gain the ilesired weierht and nrouortions as certainly 18lle can a particular shade of paint by mixing black and white The weight being the main point considered other requisites receive little or no attention and thus the most serious faults in the stallion are overlooked or easily argued away by the glibetongued owner Again very few breeders hare any system of breeding They are continually con-tinually changing from one stallion or breed to another with no definite reason unless it be to save a few dollars in service or a few miles travel I No one interested in this subject can travel through the west to any extent and not be surprised and disgusted dis-gusted by the large per cent of unsound and worthless horses that have resulted from breeding small native mares to highpriced imported im-ported stallions shockingly deficient in every requisite except weight The first consideration of the breeder should be a good mare if for breeding draft or general purpose horses The mare should be broad and roomy not too close ribbed strong in bone muscle and sinew and not high on legs She should be free from blemishes un less the result of accident of great courage and strong constitution Bringing two extremes of weight together will almost invariably produce pro-duce unsound and illproportioned colts especially if the sire is the heavier This style breeding has been extensively practiced in the west of late years and has resulted in many farmers losing faith in blood simply because they have not studied the matter far enough In choosing stallions to increase the size of stock be particular to select only those having a development develop-ment of bone and sinew in proportion pro-portion to their weight and to insure in-sure proper proportions in the foal there must not be too great disparity in weight between sire and dam Suitable brood mares once secured horse raising may be made very profitable in the west Without them the cry theres no money in horses will continue A tempting price should never allow good mare to leave the farm for the city if circumstances compel com-pel the sale of one it is the owners duty to find some farmer for a buyer and thus retain her services ABC MILK AND FLESH There is a notion prevalent among many of those who having escaped or freed themselves from the trammels tram-mels of breeding for pedigree and turned their attention to the personal per-sonal properties of the animal that it is impossible to permanently combine milk and flesh They admit ad-mit that occasionally you will find a raziers cow of the first class filling the diaijmaus pail or a prime dairy cow becoming the dam of prime steers but they say with much truth that great production of milk as a rule is found in connection con-nection with a narrow wedgelike fore end a high and thin chine and light thighs and that as you increase the width of chest and the development develop-ment of flesh in crops and rounds you lose the milk They have in their favor the experience of everyone every-one who is a judge of a dairy cow and against such ii weight of incon testible evidence it is difficult to reply nor do we attempt to dispute their position so far The rule must be granted but the art of breeding is to win from nature new rules out of happy exeptions and this is to be done by working upon the principle of selection We have seen in the same cow in many instances all that dairyman grazier or butcher could desire We have seenalso in many instances such a cow producing her liKe and if this occurs in excep tional cases which are not rare we may surely hope that by a careful exercise of mans judgment it may be made to occur still oftener and to become eventually under continued con-tinued careful breeding as powerful power-ful a law as that which separates dairy and grazing cattle into different dif-ferent classes In this respect we i fear we must own the movement of shorthorn breeders upon the whole has been retrograding within the last fifty years We have lost much of what the early breeders gained Suppose we try to recover it If so we must go back t their practice relentlessly weeding out alike all bad milkers all narrow chested brutes and all bad thrivers and aim to make each succeeding generation better than the lat It is worth while to inquire why milk ers are usually wedgy and shelly and why broadbuilt wealthy cows are usually no milkers and i ther any necessary connection connec-tion between the wedge form and milk the parallelogram and inability to milk The true answer an-swer we believe must remind us that where the milking tendencies have been encouraged milk alone none not beef having been the object of the breeder the frame to carry beef has been utterly neglected uttrly neglecte moreover more-over excessive milking mikng through several generations draining the animals system may impair the vial organs and cause the frame to frame to fit itself to their reduced size On the other hand where beef has been the main desideratum all al the breeders skill has been concen rated in an effort to produce it and milk treated as of secondary mik tete a con ideration or of no consideration at all has decreased and almost disappeared disap-peared The early shorthorn dip ers made the strongest effort of which we are aware in the history of stock breeding in any country to produce a combined milking and beefgrowing animal and they attained at-tained to a measure of success which wn in these days if we were sufficiently t suffi-ciently skillful and sufficiently careful care-ful building upon their work might I even Eng surpass BeWs Messenger j S |