Animal breeding / by A.L. Hagedoorn.

  • Hagedoorn, Arend L. (Arend Lourens), 1880-1953.
Date:
[1939]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Animal breeding / by A.L. Hagedoorn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    36/410 (page 10)
    IO Animal Breeding the daily use of these animals comes first, whereas breeding almost always comes in a secondary place. One of the consequences of this concentration of the breeding of agricultural plants in specialist firms and in Governmental and similar breeding-experiment stations has been that trained geneticists have in these institutions devoted their lives to the genetical aspect of this work of selecting and improving of agricultural crops. The decentralization in animal breeding, however, has withdrawn animal breeding from the sphere of influence of the geneticists. A centralization of animal breeding has not been wholly lacking, for breeders of several breeds of agriculturally import¬ ant animals have formed associations, breed societies, herd- books: but in the very nature of these associations there enters a very curious element. The breeders who come together to form these herd-books are not necessarily the general run of farmers, who are the real users of the animals and who would be primarily interested in improving them from an economic standpoint. They form a special group of breeders who are primarily interested in selling breeding stock, and for this reason more interest exists in the selling points of the breed and of outstanding individuals in the breed than in points of real economic value when the two do not happen to coincide. In some instances the standards of excellence used by the herd-books in the real or fancied interest of the members have no relation to real economic value, and where this is realized, a difference of opinion often exists between the users of the animals and the geneticists on one side, striving to set up real economic usefulness as a standard of merit, and the herd-book on the other side, striving to keep going the old system, which makes it possible for the members to sell a good number of young untried bulls and of young stallions with good looks but otherwise only of speculative value. There is one other difference between plant breeding and animal breeding when looked upon from a genetical stand¬ point. We geneticists have often stated that the ideal way in which a practical breeder and a geneticist must co-operate is a system in which the practical man tells his aims and his troubles to the geneticist and the latter helps him to overcome those troubles and to attain those aims. In plant breeding this works very well indeed. We must realize, however, that this is mainly