Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1894-01-05
TRADITION IN BREEDING.

TRADITION IN BREEDING.
As your scribe was down town the
other day he dropped into a well known
horseman's office and found several of
the boys trotting around the stove. A
couple of them were trying to explain
the respective merits of their particular
stations, their breeding, their progeni-
tive powers, etc, and your scribe was
called upon to decide which in his judy
ment was the best of tho two from
breeders standpoint, but refused to
answer until some future, but will try to
give through the columns of your val
liable paper my idea of what is we'll
bred horse. In the first place, what is
a pedigree? A pedigree is the genealogy
as usually understood. 1t consists of
the name of ancestors for number of
generations. As has been clearly shown
i'll the columns of your paper time and
again and it is a we'll settled fact in
breeding, that as rule the longer the
line of descent in unbroken succession
though ancestors uniformly disting-
uished for universal excellence, the
greater is the probability that excellence
will be transmitted hence 1t will be seen
that the true test of the value OF pedi-
gree is not so much in its length as In
the merits of the individuals that com
pose it. Three or four top crosses with
| n nf 1ixiH nIya
a pedigree of much greater value to the
practical breeder than ten or twenty of
animals of no special excellence.
AS each immediate parent contributes
one-half of the blood Inheritance, while
each grandam or sire contributes one
eight only, the farther the remove
the more unimportant does any factor
become for good or evil IN pedigree. If
our own animals are good and the top
crosses have been uniformly of the same
character, we may reasonably expect
the progeny to be satisfactory; or ,on the
other hand, if we have no special merit
IN the sire or dam or their immediate
! ancestors, we may show as many lines
as we like to some great ancestor six or
seven generations back and we could not
reasonably expect good results.
There are those who tell us we must
infuse more of the blood of the thor
oughbred in our trottng strains because
that blood is the foundation of all mod
ern excellence in the horse; yet as
! breed no one will claim that thorough
breds are fast trotters, and, moreover, II
one will claim that a single thorough
bred ever exceled at that gait. Judged
by our standard of speed, what then can
j be gained by stronger influence of
the thoroughbred - certainly not more
speed at the trotting gait. Because it IS
not and cannot come from that source :;
true we may and doubtless have in some
cases got more courage and greater power
of endurance from this quarter, but be-
yond these two qualities | cannot CON
ceiye of single point on which the
trotting horse could be improved by a
stronger infusion of this blood.
/ | would say: no pedigree can be a
good one that does not usually produce
good animals, and no pedigree should be
priced above other pedigrees unless it
produces better animals. If tried by
this test and found wanting, no matter
how much it has been idOlized, its value
is fictitious. The only true aristocracy
of blood is the one that brings SUI
perlOr merits; without this it Is a delu-
sion and snare; no matter what it may
have been five or six generations ago, if,
from wrong system of breeding or
any other cause, any particular strain
has ceased to be uniformly superior
In itself, it has lost its patent of nobility.
Let all young breeders, and old ones,
too, for that matter, try pedigrees, fam
lilies and strains by this test, without be-
ing dazed by some imaginary halo that
attaches to name handed down from
misty tradition of the past, and 1t will
be better for them, no matter what par
ticular line of breeding they may be en-
gagged in.-[Michigan Horse News.