PROGENY TEST

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19668, 9 December 1933, Page 15

PROGENY TEST

IMPROVEMENT METHODS. The proven sire based on the progeny test is a useful method of improvement, but it is not the only one, says Mr. A. D Buchanan-Smith in the Dairy Shorthorn Journal. It is a method ill-adapted to the small breeder. In fact, its use is almost confined to the pedigree breeder working on a fairly large scale. How, then, is the average breeder to get hold of his bull? To reply to this question demands another. What information is there for his guidance? There is the pedigree. There are the records of production and there is the appearance of the animal. By themselves alone any one of the three—pedigree, performance or appearance—is not of great value. But the information of the one, studied in relation to the other, can most certainly provide a sound indication for the selection of a bull that stands a likely chance of turning out to be, some five years later, a proven good sire. Pedigree alone may be merely misleading. To say that the grandsire of the animal was by the same bull that sired the champion at the Royal in the year 1922, means practically nothing. Similarly, to say that the bull is out of a two-thousand-gallon cow, without further information, is not terribly helpful. We must read the information on the one point in conjunction with the information on other points, and then we stand a chance of getting somewhere. The man who goes in for breeding livestock must realise that he is, to a certain extent, gambling with chance. But he must also realise that by the use of his intelligence and the proper co-ordination of pedigree with both performance and appearance he can make the odds come out in his favour.