Animal breeding / by A.L. Hagedoorn.

  • Arend Lourens Hagedoorn
Date:
1950
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.

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    Introduction 9 in Germany, in the Dutch Indies—I have always made it a point to study animal-breeding methods and the attempts of my colleagues to introduce similar rational methods such as we have been able to introduce in plant breeding. I have learned quite a lot about animal breeding and especially about the stumbling-blocks that strew the path of the progressive breeder. In animal breeding there is just now starting the same revo¬ lution in methods that was in full activity about 1910 in plant breeding. We are fighting conservatism and ignorance, especi¬ ally among the men who have been looked up to as authorities in these matters. We have to help the breeders to discard some of the same wasteful and stupid methods that the old school of plant breeding used. One of the greatest difficulties in the career of a geneticist who wants to co-operate with animal breeders is to learn to hew to the line, let the chips fall where they may. No useful purpose is served in trying to save the faces of well-known authorities, when the methods they advise are fundamentally and patently wrong and wasteful. It is much better to have the respect of the honest breeders, striving to improve the quality of their livestock for the benefit of agriculture, even if this means going over the heads of the authorities to reach the farmers. In meditating upon the necessity of writing a book on animal breeding I have hesitated between a book destined to teach a sufficiency of genetics to animal-breeding authorities. Govern¬ ment men, teachers and herd-book officials, or a book destined for the breeders themselves. Most recent books on animal breed¬ ing have been of the former kind. This is true of Crew's book, and also of the excellent book of J. Lush, Animal Breeding Plans. For several reasons I have chosen to write the second kind of book. I am not so optimistic as to believe in the possibility of convincing the conservative, older authorities on animal breed¬ ing of the error of their ways, where I think they are funda¬ mentally wrong. In this I am in full agreement with Boutfiour, who has repeatedly argued that some of these men are unteach- able, because they take the attitude that the old ways will last their time. If we can reach the younger generation and stop them from taking the old wisdom for granted, if we can make them think for themselves, we will certainly get results. After all, the authorities only hold the opinion they have dis¬ tilled from the experiences of the breeders, so that if we can
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