CHOOSING A SIRE.

Waipa Post, Volume III, Issue 126, 9 July 1912, Page 4

CHOOSING A SIRE.

THE BLOOD THAT COUNTS. In selecting a sire for the dairy herd, a great many breeders make only one demand —that the sire be purebred or registered. One should go further than this, and demand that the ancestors of the animal in question be beasts of merit, large producers, and typical of the breed.

A great many of the bulls in use to-day as herd headers arc no better than scrubs. For the best results we should demand that the female ancestors be large producers of milk and butter-fat instead of being satisfied . with knowing that the sire or dam or some other animal in the pedigree carried off the ring prise at a certain show. The dairyman is primarily interested in how much milk and butter-fat he can obtain from his herd. This is the basis of income and profit. The immediate ancestors of the herd bull are the ones that should concern us most. It is more important that his clam and grandams be high producers than for him to be related to some great and wonderful cow that appears in his pedigree five or six generations back. Too much attention is paid to individual animals or families that may be represented or appear in the pedigree. In selecting the herd bull there are two courses open to the breeder. The one is to, select a young bull, and the other is to select an old bull that has been tried and proved to be a prepotent animal. The advantage in selecting a young bull for the herd is (says an American writer) that it is cheaper, and less risk is attended toward getting a mean and ugly bull as well as bringing disease into the herd. In selecting a young bull one runs greater risk in getting one that will transmit the characteristics desired than in selecting an old bull that has been tried. The performance and records in the ancestry are about the only guide that can be used in this selection, When one selects an old bull that has been tried he has some certainty that this animal will raise the production of his herd. When this can be clone it is probably the best method to use, but where one knows the value of a bull the price asked for him is oftentimes prohibitive.