INFLUENCE OF DAM.

Otago Witness, Issue 3336, 20 February 1918, Page 12

INFLUENCE OF DAM.

Tlig Live Stock Journal (England) states that if the great performers oi to-day were traced back it would bo found that they owed their origin to a limited number of dams.. As a rule the sire is quoted, but it claims that more attention should be given to what is known as tail female descent. There is no doubt that numbers of breeders who _have given big prices for stock fail to meet with success because they are ignorant of tho principle of following tail female descent. If the unsuccessful will take the trouble to trace back tho descent of their male and female stock in tail female, and will then do the same with regard to tneir successful opponents', the secret of their non-success will probably be revealed. So many people are led away into giving big prices for animals with a striking pedigree in tail male only, and aro eventually disappointed with their purchase, that we feel sure too much stress cannot be laid upon the matter. Every breed has its few successful female lines, and only indifferent success will follow the possession of any others. In starting a show stud of any species of animal, then, the obvious course, before spending money on stock, is to buy stud books and give them the closest study. It will not need very deep research to discover a common female ancestor of all the best of both sexes of the day. Once this information is obtained it is only a matter of money and patience to secure females of tho successful family and to put them to males of the same descent in tail female. It must be admitted that females of a winning family seldom come into the market, and that when they do their value is- usually appreciated by the leading breeders. That is not an occasion upon which price should be considered, however, because even a somewhat unprepossessing member of the family is more valuable as the nucleus of a prize, stud than half a dozen handsomer animals whose lineage in tail female cannot be traced back to a desirable source. The main point is 'to secure females of a certain family ox descent in tail female. If their sire is also of the same family, then their value is enhanced; but we should not be inclined to attach much value to females if they fail to themselves traco direct to tho desired source in tail female, even if they do so in all their other lines. Mr Bruce Lowe, who studied line breeding as it apolied to racehorses, maintained that winners were frequently descended in tail female from obscure families, but that if this was so they would invariably be found to be very much bred-in to winning families in the three first removes of their pedigree. There is no doubt truth in this; but we feel sure that to lay tho foundations of a breeding stud the breeder should be content with nothing less than females which actually belong themselves to winning families. It is hot easy at first sight to see why the progeny of only a few original females should monopolise all the winners of a breed. In racehorses, out of 100 original mares which constituted the foundation of the English thoroughbred, only 50 are said to be represented to-day. Out of these 50 not more than about 20 play an important part in modern pedigrees, and only about nine or 10 appear .to be indispensable ill a first-class pedigree. There must be a reason why the descendants of certain families eclipse all others by possessing in more marked degree the speed, vitality, or points of conformation which are desired in live stock, and it would be of value and interest to find out what it is. ■ Perhaps, after all, the reason is a very simple one. Those original females whose descendants stand pre-eminent at the present day were themselves better specimens—'that is, were naturally of better shape or were speedier in the matter of racing, or were, in other words, of higher class than the majority whose names appear in first volumes of stud book. • There is always more rigid selection of males at all times in a breed than of females. About equal numbers of both sexes are born, but of these every female in the early days of a breed is wanted and is kept, but only one or two of the choicest males to a hundred of tho other sex. Hence, even in the beginning the males of a breed will be of high quality; but the females will most likely be of all sorts. The few good females will naturally be mated with good males, and the result of this course will be that they will become the parents of uniformly high-class progeny—offspring far in advance of those bred from the same males, but from indifferent females. Hence, as generation succeeds generation, the descendants of the best original females—those females which excelled in points desired in most marked degrees—will always keep ahead of the stock bred on an unequal factor system, and we hold that the sucoess of a limited number of female lines is one more demonstration of the fact that only when both parents are of high quality and excel in the same good- points can they be expected to produce - equally valuable progeny. There is no more mischievous fallacy than that which lays it down as an axiom that one parent can and should always supply the deficiencies of tho other. A number of characters can seldom be permanently and rapidly grafted on at will in the way this view would lead us to suppose. They are only certainly inherited when both parents possess them. It is extremely probable that the • most important cause of tho non-success in breeding to a definite type lies, as previously stated, in the fact that less rigid selection is invariably practised among tho females than among the males. It is natural that it should be so, as so comparatively few males are required in a stud: but it is none the less a potent cause of failure.