Dallas Herald

Hints about Breeding.

There can be no doubt but that the attention of farmers and others who have a taste for fine animals is a good deal awakened to the importance of breeding from the best kind of animals. This feeling is now calling forth the careful attention of farmers to the blood of animals from which they breed, as well as to the form and qualities which belong to the race from which they have been derived. While a great improvement may be reasonably expected from these causes, there is an error which is not unfrequently committed by those commencing to breed fine stock, which ought to be amended.

Many persons think, if they have a fine colt, or calf of superior blood, that the more food it gets the better it will be. But this is a mistake. The young animal requires the milk only of its dam, if that is an average quantity and quality. It is true they will, as they increase in size, take more milk if offered them, and by such means their growth will be very rapid, and they will take on a great deal of fat. A colt or calf pampered in this way has an unnatural growth. They are over fed and the muscles are not well developed as in animals less stimulated with rich food. Nature is the great teacher, and those who neglect her counsels will be very sure to find out their mistake.

A young colt, a calf, a lamb, wants nothing for some months after birth but the milk of the dam and fresh pasturage, with free scope to run and jump at their pleasure, thus stretching to the utmost every muscle, gaining strength, healthy development and symmetry with every effort. Over feeding is not probably as common as under feeding. But it is an error into which good breeders sometimes fall. They have a fine young animal, and want to make it very extra, and high feed will often deceive pretty good judges. Many a common calf has taken the premium, not because it was the best, but because it was the biggest and fattest. By careful enquiry you would perhaps find that it had taken the milk of two or more cows, for a considerable part of the season.

The continuance of high feed for a few generations with little exercise, will destroy the good qualities of a fine race of animals. They lose their symmetry of form, which depends on the proper action of the muscles, and become barren and worthless.--L. in the American Stock Journal.