CHAPTER III
THE PURE BRED SIRE
There is one law of breeding that does not seem to be recognized by people generally and in our judgment it is of greatest importance. This law is that the influence of the parent animals are not equal upon the offspring. This has been noticed in human experiences. No child is exactly one-half like his father and one-half like his mother, but is likely to be much like either one or the other. He is likely to be nine-tenths like one parent and one-tenth like the other. It is the same in grading live stock and this trait in breeding is of the greatest advantage to the breeder of grade stock. If the calf takes after the sire and the sire is a pure bred of strong type, the calf may be nearly as strong in producing ability as the pure bred ancestors. On the other hand, even pure bred cattle may breed back at times, and their offspring resemble some distant scrub member in the ancestry. Breeders are well aware of this fact and try very hard to keep all inferior cattle entirely eliminated from their line of breeding. It is important that they should for their line should breed as true as possible, and really poor calves with them are rare.
The pure bred bull of a long established type is more likely to mark his offspring than is the scrub cow. A fairly large per cent, considerably more than half, of the heifers will be good and some of them nearly as good in milk production as the pure breds themselves. Grade cows are very valuable as milk producers, but grade bulls should not be used as sires because they do not have the ability to breed true like the pure bred.
Most farmers have been in the habit of using a bull a couple of years and then selling him to the butcher before his real worth was discovered. A bull’s ability to produce heifers that make good cows can only be definitely told after his heifers have freshened and made records. Some of the best pure bred breeders in the United States will not use a bull on their best cows until one hundred of his daughters are in the Advanced Registry which means that beginning at the age of two years they must produce 250.5 pounds of butter fat annually and must increase the production to 360 pounds of butter fat at the age of five years. In this way the best bulls are ascertained and are used to the best advantage. But there is also a way for the average farmer to receive the benefits of a good tested-out breeding stock at low cost. I refer to the co-operative bull associations and quote from Kimball’s Dairy Farmer concerning them:
“A co-operative bull association is a farmer’s organization whose purpose is the joint ownership, use, and exchange of three or more high-class pure bred bulls. The territory covered by the association is divided into three or more breeding blocks and a bull is stationed in each block for the service of the fifty or sixty cows in the block. Every two years the bulls are interchanged. Thus, at a small cost, a bull for every sixty cows is provided for six or more years. The cost of bull service is greatly reduced, the best bulls obtained, and the bulls of outstanding merit are preserved for their entire period of usefulness.”
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT TO FEED
Chemical Analysis. The chemical analysis of feed does not by any means tell the whole story. Wheat straw, for instance shows up very well in chemical analysis but experiments have shown that it takes more energy to digest it than it produces. Even when we figure only the digestible nutrients, the nutrients which by chemical analysis are found to be digested by animals, we do not by any means have the whole story. For instance, in human food we find that the protein in milk is about four times as valuable as the protein in the bean. In the results of a feeding experiment reported in Dr. McCollum’s “Newer Knowledge of Nutrition” on page 75, it was found that when the source of protein was the bean, four times as much was required for maintaining the body weight of the animal as when the source of protein was milk. We used to figure protein as protein and carbohydrates as carbohydrates but now we discriminate. We must learn to figure them in the results they produce. This is extremely difficult to do scientifically. When an animal must have a variety of feeds who can tell just what proportion of her production is due to certain foods eaten?
We can get at these things in a general way, however, by experience. Feeding has long been known as an art. Some day it may be entirely a science. But that can not be said at the present time. We must vary the feeds used and learn by experience and observation what gets the best results. A chemical analysis of tender grass will not show it to contain more digestive nutrients than the old tough grass that the cows will hardly eat, but it requires much less energy to convert it into milk.
One year I listed some squaw corn about the tenth of July in a wheat stubble. By frost this corn was beginning to come into roasting ears. But most of the ears had not developed kernels. I filled the silo from this field and got, as nearly as I could ascertain, just as much milk from my herd by feeding that silage as by feeding silage made from mature corn containing considerable grain. The same amount of dry grains were fed in both cases. According to analysis this result could not possibly be obtained.
Experiments have been tried in which the whole wheat plant, grain, straw and all, also the oat plant and the corn plant were fed separately to young heifers. The heifers fed the corn plant grew to maturity and bore young normally. The heifers fed wheat and oats did poorly, produced their young prematurely, all but one of which died soon after birth. This does not indicate that oat or wheat feeds are not good for cattle, but in themselves they are not sufficient. I do not think this deficiency can be shown in the chemical analysis but some of the food elements are hard to get. I think if this wheat and oat plant had been young and tender as a growing grass instead of a mature grain the heifers would have done well. Ground oats is one of the best dairy feeds I ever tried.