STOCK BREEDING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 25 January 1939, Page 9

STOCK BREEDING

FIXATION OF TYPE BAKEWELL’S SUCCESS WITH SHEEP A noted research worker, Robert Bakewell, who farmed at Dishley, in

Leicestershire, in the latter half of the 17th century, is credited with being the first English stockbreeder to employ close inbreeding for the development and fixation of favourable characteristics in the Longhorn cattle and Dishley Leicesters —later known as the English Leicester sheep. Choosing for his foundation animals those with roubst and vigorous health, he mated together those having similar desirable features, irrespective of their close relationship, and mercilessly rejected any which showed signs of constitutional weakness. Employing remarkable insight and j observation, he developed, in the Leicester sheep particularly, those characteristics which favoured rapid j growth and early fattening, and made | these dominant by close in-breeding, j j SOUNDNESS OF METHODS j So successful was he with his methods, 'now recognised as being scientifically sound, that in 1785, .he “let” or hired his rams to other breeders for one season for 6200. guineas, and soon almost every English breed of sheep had a strain of "the Leicester in their make-up. Bakewell’s experiments in breeding were the incentive to form the “Dishley Society,” which was, in effect, the first sheep breeding society established. Subsequently, breeders emulating Bakewell failed to pay the same close attention to avoiding weakness of constitution and other hereditary faults, in their in-breeding, with the result that ! weaknesses became intensified with disastrous results. In-breeding then fell into disfavour, and is only now being employed by the foremost livestock breeders of the world to produce outstandingly good animals.