STOCK BREEDING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20104, 24 March 1928, Page 22 (Supplement)

STOCK BREEDING

SUCCESSFUL SELECTION Following Nature’s Laws and Eliminating Weaklings One hears a great deal nowadays of Nature’s law of “the survival of the fittest.’’ There is another law, the perpetuation or reproduction of the species, through which Nature gives the weaklings of one generation a chance to war rant their continued existence as a species, by early fecundity. This fact will have been noticed by many a farmer who has closely observed the growth and reproduction of any vegetable or animal life.

The weak grass throws up a seed-head early in its career; the weaker the fruit-tree, the earlier it commences to bear; the weedier the dairy heifer, the earlier it comes into season. Such illustrations could be further enumerated, but the foregoing are sufficient to illustrate that weekly parents are reproductive at an earlier age than are sound parents, and that an immense number of “unfits” are therefore yearly produced to swell the number which nature culls by her vigorous methods.

As “unfitness” is frequently the result of unsuitable environment, and not of constitutional weakness, and as evolution provides that from parents in such situations, offspring, more adapted to the unfavourable surroundings, .may survive and thrive, trie reason for the early prolifiic characteristics of ‘unlit’ plants and animals can be seen. In his cultivation of the animal and plant lift over which he has control, however, man takes advantage of this lavishness of reproduction, and by surrounding those forms of life which he wishes to increase in numbers with, unnaturally favourable conditions brings to maturity a number of the species which would otherwise have been culled by nature.

Living under nature's simple laws, animals are remarkably free from discase and deformity, for all those with weaknesses which trend toward disease are mercifully culled before it has time to become established. It is a different matter when man takes a hand in preserving these weaklings by affording them especially favoured treatment. Then wc have active disease which must be fought to preserve the stock to produce more disease-susceptible animals. When diseases do affect animals in their wild state they usually take the form of an epidemic and these occur only to species which have increased so rapidly under favourable conditions as to make their numbers a menace to other forms of life. Thus it is noticeable that when rabbits increase on country to such an extent as to threaten destruction of the grass on which they and other animals are also dependent, an epidemic peculiar to rabbits comes along, which reduces their numbers to a safe basis. Painless Extinction. From observation it would appear that animal deaths from epidemic, are fairly swift and comparatively painless. The animal loses the desire for food, and, as vitality quickly wanes, Joses also the desire to live, dying quietly without an yof the convulsions usually associated with violent or painful death. Nature is therefore merciful in the carrying out of her work of culling. Starting with perfectly healthy par-,

ent stock, nature’s methods appear to cull nearly fifty per cent, of the life created before it reaches maturity, and thus only is the vitality of the species maintained. On the other hand, when man domesticates these animals, he brings to maturity from seventy-five to ninety per cent, of those born, and with this seventy-five to forty per cent, of unfits, all of which contain the possibilities, if not the seeds, of disease, he proceeds to breed other weaklings. Because of the injury—where man’s requirements of stock are concerned—that it would inflict on his animals, the farmer cannot afford to adopt nature’s method of culling by the survival of the fittest, but he is able to detect those animals which nature would cull if left to herself. Duty of tlie Breeder. The first duty of any man who takes up breeding stock, then, is to learn thoroughly the indications of strength of constitution and prepotency in the animals under his charge that he may breed only from those which are the hardiest. His second duty is to ruthlessly cull, while young, all those animals which do not come up to that standard. Favoured treatment can certainly be expected of the weaklings to make them saleable and profitable, but on no account, however they may develop under this treatment, should sheep or cattle once culled be used for breeding. The farmer who strives to found a flock on “unfits,” however attractive the wool, etc., is simply buying trouble. Better, by far, to purchase four or fiveyear ewes and be content with the two or three years’ lambing that can be got from them. These sheep will have been culled as two-tooth, four-tooth and six-tooth, the remaining four-year-olds being those which have passed a test of fitness on all occasions.

Though thorough; deep culling—instituted in the clays when sheep were not so valuable as they now are—is still in vogue on many stations, and a few farmers, there are many o fthc latter where it is absolutely neglected, with

great loss to the farmer and the Dominion. Follow nature’s methods and eliminate all the culls—if possible through the freezing-works.