THE BARREN HEIFER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2437, 28 November 1900, Page 6

THE BARREN HEIFER.

Br Myles Campbell. There has been so much said and written on this question that some may think the subject is exhausted, but this is by no means the case. • Occasional disappointment caused by the barrenness of an animal upon which great hopes rested is one of the allo5 T s to tha pleasure of breeding high-class stock. Possibly the pleasure might be less if success were certain and easily obtained, for after all, easy;

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winning does not bring anything like the delight of victory that a hard-fought fight does, whether in recreative games or in graver kinds of strife. Say, you have a favourite cow, from .■which you are particularly anxious to have offspring by a certain sire. # The desired union,' perhaps at a great cost, is eventually effected, and~the offspring, a most excellent heifer, is specially valued for the strains of blood mingled in her veins, as well as for her intrinsic merits. You expect to have from her in due time offspring exactly the type you have been so long and patiently endeavouring to ievelop. She arrives at maturity, and a worthy mate is found, but to your unutterable discouragement she proves as barren as she is beautiful. Such cases are of no uncommon -ccurrence in the choicest herds. In the case of a heifer, barrenness is frequently incurable, being neither more nor less tiian the necessary state of an animal of imperfect organic formation; but it is not always so. The prolific shorthorn tribe of Nell Gwynne (or more properly Nell Gwynne de- - scended from Sii H. Vane Tempest's cow of that name) descends from a heif ci* w.hich never ihad a calf until she war foiir years old. She was considered hopelessly barren, but patience prevailed, helped, probably, by the gentle changes of circumstance, and when she began to breed she continued to do so with remarkable jegularity. •' According to a remark in the summary to Darwin's chapter on Hybridism, eh. viii, "Origin of Species," slight changes in the condition of life seem favourable to vigour and fertility, and this rule applies not to animals only, but to all organic beings. It is worth trying upon the provokingly beautiful cow or, heifer that fails to breed. In the case "of the cow that has already bred the barrenness may be the result of a movable cause, and skilled attention to the case should be secured. In one case a valuable cow some months after calving was condemned and , slaughtered as barren, when, upon post mortsm examination, the remains of a small twin calf, which had been retained when the last calf — a. strong, healthy bull — was born, were found. In another case, which occurred in a herd inspected by a person interested in the case just described, a similar state of affairs was suspected^ and proved to be the case, for on the recommendation of the visitor the owner gave the cow a draught which removed the obstacle, and the cow again became a breeder. Such cases are comparatively rare, yet there are other hindrances which may be overcome by the timely help of veterinary skill. But whilst slight changes are conducive to both fertility «and constitutional vigour, more violent, disturbances of natural or ordinary conditions are found to be often causes of sterility — notably in the case of most wild animals, in which captivity is against the chances of extensive reproduction. The prisoned " eagle will not pair ; and_ besides, any drawbacks from the refusal of captured wild animals tc pair, ' or even where there is not that difficulty, the reproductive system is deranged by the altered condition of life. 'Is it not possible that this last $ause of barrenness, at least, if not also the shyness or antipathy" existing between wild and domesticated 'races, may*- account for the mistakenly supposed impossibility of uniting species such as the bison and the common ox, which, when both domesticated, breed freoly together? Why are so-called free-martins ■usually barren? This question may be' asked without incurring' the burden that such is the case;- for the "barrenness of the majority of free-martins is a fact generally known to breeders- of cattle. For the information of any outsider or recent beginner who may ask what is a "free-martin," Ihe definition a heifer twin -with a bull will suffice. But the true answer to the former question obliges us to qualify the answer -to the latter, insomuch as the non-breeding free-martin proves to be on examination an imperfect female. Muck has been said and written at different times and in divers places about breeding for sex, or the control of sex, and with equal confidence quite opposite directions have been given. - Sometimes we are informed that the younger parent, sometimes that the older parent, controls the sex; sometimes that vigour, irrespective of age, is the decider. Then some teachers maintain that the superior vigour of this or that parent is favourable to the development of male offspring ; others, and not less firmly convinced teachers, declaring that the direct contrary is true. Then, again, we are told most positively that the early part of the period of receptiveness rules for female, the later for male offspring, but this is upset by the next authority, who says that the real rule is early for bulls, later for heifers. Further, there is the notion that in tbe course of nature male and female ova alternate, and that if a cow has brought you a bull calf and you want a heifer, the first, third or any odd-number ovum will give you one, so that by careful observation you may perpetuate your favourite female line, rlns is all very cheering in theory, but how does it 'happen that two bulls or two heifers come in twins? Oh, that is plain enough—there was an ovum of the other sex between, but it came to nothing. Again, you try the experiment upon a cow that has hitherto bred half a dozen bull calves, and you- breed for a heifer. A seventh bull makes his appearance. You reproach your preceptor^ "My dear fellow," he retorts, "the rule is uiiallible. Your chance for a heifer was lost one night when yoti were fast asleep." , Turning from these theories— discovered, exploded, and rediscovered at regular intervals—we look to recognised science for ligot, which she gives just to this extent : that the foetus in its early existence is always hermaphrodite; that the rudiments of the distinguishing organs of both sexes are present, and that up to a certain period the most powerful microscope cannot decide whether it w°uls~w ° ul s~ have" -been eventually male or. female. With this -faint : ray of science-light up on. a subject which necessarily presents, great difficulty to the explorer, and 'which perhaps must'remain.for ever in obscurity to man, we can at- least conceive the possibility of a symmetrical influence ' (symmetry being here understood .as used in-medioal phraseology) _ working at once in the embryo twins, through which influence the development of the female is so 'far affected by the development of the male twin, as either to preserve to some extent the'hermaphrodite character in the other, or at least .prevent the free-martin from possessing the perfect female character. This, however, is mot -always the case. The free-martin is sometimes, although not usually, a perfect female and a breeder. The male twin is never, within the range of cases known to the prosent writer, nor so far as his veterinary reading informs him, affected like the female twin with arrested or false development. lie is, ,ori the average, as fertile as any -other bull. In- by-<*one years some farmers ot the oldfashioned type, who "were inclined to get a prejudice -nto their heads without evidence, • and 'could not get it out with abundant evidence, would refuse to buy a bull that was twin with a heifer. They would say that if one is no- good it stands to reason the ©ther isn't— meaning not .ejtgcfcly what' the

words express, but that the two are equally useless for breeding purposes, and this "standing to reason" they regarded as standing before the facts. I h.-ve known one of the type stubbornly deny the power of man to foretell the time of an eclipse, though the true-set watch, the almanac, the smoked glass, were all handed to him to explain the darkness of tbe landscape and endeavour to convince him that he only saw a long-expected event happening at the time long since calculated and foretold. He still declared, "There is nae sense in it." If the sexbreeders could show anything like eqxial accuracy of computation, or anything like equal unity of knowledge of fundamental laws, we should trust their reckonings as we trust those of astronomical science. Barren heifer twins with bulls have been submitted to post mortem examination. Youatt gives three cases, and I have known several others. In all those cases the barren heifers proved to be imperfect females, and in all which were examined by competent professional men, -not only was the imperfection of the female discovered, but the presence of male organs, likewise imperfect. The barren animals, in fact, were hermaphrodites.^ If we restrict the use of the term free-martin to the barren female, we substirate for the substantive, hermapluodite recognised" in our dictionaries a technical vocabulary. Youatt himself ha? used it to signify the twiix sister to a bull calf, whether she proves barren or a breeder. In the index to his work on cattle we find free-martin so' spelt, and m two distinct words, and under the head three reference*— "(1) usually ban en; (2) dissections of three ; and (3) a few cases in winch they have bred 1 ' ; and, turning to the page indicated by the last reference, we read that there are several well-authenticated cases of these free-martins having bred. Again, he says tlut an anonymous writer in tne barm era Magazinafor November, 1806, discribes a freemartin belonging to. Mr Buchanan, of Killintringham, that had a calf, but he also states that the same gentleman had another ireemartin which never bred Thus we see that in Youatt s time the term was applied, whether correctly or incorrectly, to the heifer (barren or fruitful) twin witn a bull, and not to the barren heifer alone. The derivation of the term, if it could be shown, might possibly throw light upon its original meaning.