PEDIGREE BREEDING.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3399, 28 July 1932, Page 2

PEDIGREE BREEDING.

• PROBLEM OF SEX. The breeding of pedigree stock produces a large amount of pleasure to those who are keen students of the art of breeding. Among the disappointments that often arise is the failure of some particular cow to breed a heifer calf when the owner of the herd is extremely anxious to perpetuate a good and perhaps fashionable family or tribe. On the other hand, there are some very good cows from which the owner would like to have a bull-calf with a view to using him in the herd which persistently breeds heifers. Again, some cows are such good bull breeders that the birth of a heifer may make a difference of several hundred pounds in the returns from the herd in a year. What a vast difference it would make if breeders generally could control sex so as to be able td obtain each year just what they wanted from each cow or heifer in the herd. Eminent authorities say that sex can be controlled, and some American breeders seem to have definitely proved that sex follows sex with the first heat after calving and then alternates. Many farmers in this country have held to the belief that mating cows at the third heat brings about the desired change of sex, but those who have tried this experiment nave proved that the theory fails as often as it succeeds. "The theory of sex following sex with the first heat and then alternating is that if, for example, a cow produces a full calf and becomes pregnant to her first heat she will again produce a bull, but if missed and mated satisfactorily at her second heat she will produce a heifer, and so on," states the London Live Stock Journal.