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Show Hybrid Hogs Produee Super Meat i Development of a super meat yielding hybrid hog by the application appli-cation of the same inbreeding methods meth-ods that produced hybrid corn is the goal of farm authorities. Thirteen state experiment stations are cooperating in what is known as the Regional Swine Breeding laboratory, George A. Montgomery main in his herd: 1. Sows must be able to produce large litters of live pigs. 2. A high percentage of pigs born alive must survive to market age. 3. Pigs must gain rapidly from birth to market weight. 4. Feed requirements re-quirements for each unit of gain must be low. 5. Body form must be such as to produce high yields of the most desirable cuts of pork. are inbreeding some of the more popular breeds with the hope of establishing superior types. In this they are following the methods of those who developed inbred parent stock for modern hybrid corn. "The hog men are little further advanced in their program than corn men were 15 or 20 years ago," Mr. Montgomery points out. "They have their inbreds. but the work of ne nas succeeaeu in iixmg me last three characteristics so some of his lines and crosses of these lines excel purebred Polands that have been propagated by ordinary breeding methods. However, inbreeding in-breeding lowers vitality and, to a lesser extent, fertility, and crossing two unrelated inbred lines of the same breed does not produce the hybrid vigor that comes when two breeds are crossed. Winters ex- New type Minnesota hybrid hog. combining them to see which ones nick has hardly started. Minnesota and Iowa, for example, have crossed inbred lines of Poland Chinas, with certain elements in the results highly encouraging; others distinctly disappointing. "At the Minnesota station, Dr. M. L. Winters, working with Poland Chinas, has saved only individuals that best combine five economically economical-ly desirable characteristics. To re- , I I plains that this is because the base j is too narrow. "Work done at the Minnesota i station with ordinary purebred . boars bears out this theory. A cross of a purebred boar of one breed with a purebred sow of an-i an-i other gave pigs that were superior to either parent breed. The crossbred cross-bred gilts, mated to a purebred boar of a third breed were still better bet-ter than a two-breed cross. "If Winters' beliefs are borne out, a farmer of the future may start, for example, with sows obtained by crossing the best line of inbred Polands that come out of Minnesota's Minne-sota's experiments on the fastest line of Hampshires developed at the Illinois Experiment station. These would then be bred to an inbred Duroc boar from the line developed at the Ohio station. Gilts of that line might be mated to an inbred Berkshire, after which the producer might go to a Hampshire boar and continue thereafter the Hampshire-Poland-Duroc-Berkshi re rotation |