NOTES OF THE WEEK.

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3183, 28 May 1932, Page 8

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

THE BREEDING PROBLEM.

There is a very big difference between , in-breeding- and line-breeding. It is necessary to refer to this matter as even men who are regarded as authorities are apt to confuse the terms, some, asserting that they are much the same thing and others explaining that line-breeding is merely a modified term for in-breeding. The latter statement is nearer the truth, but still it is a loose way of stating the position. In the absence of any acknowledged definition of either term it is safer to regard in-breeding as the mating of very close relatives and line-breeding as the mating of distantly-related animals in order to bring in again to an animal’s blood lines the blood of some famous ancestor. If this famous ancestor (a great producing animal), is only a generation or two removed then introduce his or her blood where it has been, even for several generations, with unrelated blood. To continually introduce strange, unrelated, blood to a herd is the surest means of introducing variation and disappointment, but it is a decidedly dangerous thing to closely in-breed unless the animals treated have great constitution and unless one is prepared—and who is?—to drastically cull. The safest course is to bring in a relative carrying in addition to some unrelated blood the best blood line in the pedigree, of the animals being mated; and even then the new sire, for instance should have undoubted constitution.