Proper coupling, or rather the coupling of proper animals, has received
little attention, and is now confined generally if not exclusively to
professional breeders. But it is a subject to which the dairymen can
as well as not pay attention with good results. By coupling proper
animals, we mean having regard to individual points and qualities,
never coupling those having the same defects, either in form or
quality. For instance, to illustrate, a cow high on the rump may be
safely bred to a bull low on the rump, or _vice versa_, the result, in
all probability, being an offspring with a level rump. This is breeding
together opposite extremes, depending on the one to correct the other.
But if we breed two sloped rumps together, or two humped rumps,
the result would be to exaggerate and intensify or strengthen this
deformity in the offspring. So of quality or disposition. A nervous cow
bred to a nervous or irritable bull, would be pretty sure to drop a
calf that would be more nervous than either sire or dam. But if one of
the parents is dull and sluggish and the other irritable and sensitive,
the offspring might be an improvement on both. Again, a cow lacking in
the quality of richness of milk, though giving a large flow, should
not be coupled with a bull descended from a family having the same
peculiarity of large flow lacking in richness. But if there is richness
on one side and abundance on the other, the coupling of the two might
reasonably be expected to result in improvement in the offspring,
which might inherit both the large flow and the rich quality. Bad
points and qualities are inherited as well as good ones. Hence, the
constant aim and care must be to avoid developing what is objectionable
as well as to develop what is desired. It must be constantly borne
in mind that like begets like. All the trouble attending inbreeding,
crossing or grading comes from not properly regarding this fact. Where
inbreeding is followed, the only disadvantage arises from the fact
that all the animals are likely to have the same defects of form,
quality and constitution. But where these are all right, the advantage
is that inbreeding fixes the features and qualities and secures the
establishment of them in a type or breed. But crossing or grading
animals having the same failing will prove just as disastrous as
would inbreeding. But crossing may be done in a way to develop good
qualities, and these may afterward be fixed by careful selection and
inbreeding of offspring. This subject of breeding is one of great
importance, and yet little understood. Many things pertaining to it are
yet to be settled, though great progress has been made during the last
few years, and public attention is being drawn to it as it never was
before. It will be found that man can become master of the situation,
and may, by observing certain fundamental conditions and varying only
the details, breed domestic animals of almost any form, disposition,
and quality, that he may desire.