Open Herd Books

Another point: All our dairy cattle breed associations operate with closed herd books, and thereby limit the possibilities of improvement of the breed to only the animals that are eligible to registry. But the laws of heredity operate without regard to whether an animal is numbered and entered in a book. Good combinations of germ plasm often are made in coatings of unregistered animals; that plasm is now lost as a source of betterment for the breed. An appendix to the regular herd register would make it possible to bring such hereditary material into use as part of the germ plasm of the registered stock. Necessary precautions could be taken to exclude animals that do not conform to the established color or other characteristics of the breed.

The open herd book would give hope to men who have labored to develop high-producing grade herds by using good registered bulls and already have cows so meritorious that even experts cannot distinguish them from cows in registered herds. Consider the case of a son who, inherits such a grade herd. He wants to breed registered cattle, but to satisfy his ambition his only course is to replace his grade animals with the registered stock he can afford. If the approach to a registered herd were open, through a stud-book appendix, he could work toward his goal immediately. He would also have the benefit of the improvement that had been bred into his herd over the years.

The idea of the open herd book is not new. All registry societies abroad permit the entry of good animals through the appendix, and ultimately to full registry. The proposal to adopt the open herd book was made to the Holstein-Friesian Association of America at their annual meeting in 1929. A similar proposal was considered by the Ayrshire Breeders' Association at their annual meeting in 1942. In both instances the members disapproved the suggestion. Nature works slowly, and we need to take advantage of all her fortunate combinations that come in and out of registry.

THE AUTHOR

M. H. Fohrman is a dairy husbandman in charge of the Division of Dairy Cattle Breeding, Feeding, and Management, Bureau of Dairy Industry. Since joining the Department in 1921 he has carried on breeding work with Holstein and Jersey herds at Beltsville to demonstrate the value of using only outstanding proved sires. Mr. Fohrman is a graduate of the University of Missouri.

ARTIFICIAL BREEDING

NEPA (North Eastern Pennsylvania) Artificial Breeding Cooperative, one of five such organizations in Pennsylvania, is an association of 10 local units, to which belong 2,950 dairymen, (who owned 25,882 cows on Nov. 1, 1946) in nine counties. Headquarters is in the remodeled buildings of the former Wyoming County Fair just outside Tunkhannock. A Wing of one of the buildings and one of two bull pens—about to be enlarged with additional fencing—are shown above. NEPA Owns or leases a total of 27 bulls of four major dairy breeds.

William F. Schaefer, Jr., has been the manager Of the cooperative since it was formed in February 1945. 1n the picture overleaf, his assistant, Frank Horrocks, is shown leading a Holstein bull, Penstate Inka Paul, registry No. 735351, to the breeding rack along a passageway built, like the stalls for the bulls, of heavy planks.

At least part of the success of the cooperative Mr Schaefer attributes to the careful records that are kept of all phases of the work. Each the 10 technicians employed, all of them trained under supervision of workers at Pennsylvania State College, keeps a breeding record for each member, as in A, on the third page.

A similar chart, showing when and how often the cows are bred and the sires, is kept on a cardboard form in the member's barn for ready reference when the inseminator visits the farm. Another important record, not shown here, is the technician's receipt from a service; it is the source of information for the records and is the means whereby members register offspring from artificial breeding.

Another chart, reproduced as B, third page, gives data on each sample of semen drawn: The date drawn, the number of ejaculations, the amount and quality of the semen, the clearing time for the methylene blue test, the degree of dilution with egg yolk-citrate diluter, and the motility of the sperms. Examinations of motility are made about three times each week until the sperms show no life—usually 3 weeks later. The longevity of the sperms, thus ascertained, has a direct bearing on the expected efficiency of the sample. To insure that the technicians do not mistakenly use the wrong semen, all samples are colored with a safe coal-tar color when they are prepared for shipment. Semen from Holstein bulls is colored green; that of Jerseys, red; and Ayrshires, purple. The semen from the Guernsey bulls remains yellow from the egg yolk used in the diluter. Chart B, among