This analysis explores how inheritance and variation shape animal breeding practices, highlighting the significance of crossbreeding and inbreeding.
Animal Breeding: The most important law in breeding is the law of inheritance or as it is sometimes termed the law of similarity. Like begets like; therefore animals resemble their parents and are dependent on their ancestors for their characteris-tics. Then there is what is termed the law of variation. Nature has decreed that no animals shall be born exactly alike. Variation is noticeable when different strains are crossed; it is also affected by environment. Again there is always that tendency to revert i. e.; to throw back to some ancestor. This tendency becomes marked when mongrel and crossbred sires are used. It is to defeat the tendency to variation and reversion that our breeders are continually striving. To do this and to fix certain characteristics inbreeding and linebreeding are sonetimes adopted.
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A 1927 study studied this question.
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