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Only The Activities Of Breeders: In addition to selecting outstanding breeding stock cattle breeders use several systems of mating: outbreeding, inbreeding, line-breeding, and crossbreeding. Most cattlemen use outbreeding, that is, they mate the best animals but make sure they are unrelated, but some breeders do mate related animals in a system called inbreeding. Inbreeding is difficult to carry out successfully with cattle, and only the activities of breeders a few breeders have produced outstanding herds with it. Linebreeding, a form of inbreeding where matings are made between descendants of an outstanding ancestor, is often practiced; however, the extent to which real improvement can be made by linebreeding as compared to outbreeding is a matter of debate among cattle breeders.
In order to accomplish this, the breeder must keep accurate records of births and weights at various ages. With these records he can then sort out his best cattle, save them for breeding stock, and send the rest to market. The keeping of these records of performance is not presently a general practice among beef cattle breeders, but the more progressive breeders either keep their own records or belong to an organization which does it for them.
REVERSION, re-vur'shun, or ATAV in biology, the reappearance of an ancestral in plants or animals derived from parent; grandparents which do not themselves exhibi trait. Plant and animal breeders have occasic observed a line of domesticated organisms to rise suddenly in one generation to indivi possessing some characteristic like that of re ancestors but not known in the intervening ge tions. Breeders formerly attributed this reve to the ancestral type to various mysterious fo The scientific explanation depends on hered mechanisms discovered by Gregor Johann Me (1822-1884) and later geneticists. |
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