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The Inheritance of Milk Yield and Some of Its Practical Applications

University of Maine

Abstract

Our knowledge of theoritical genetics has gone far beyond that of practical breeding. It seems rather crude and common-place to return to first principles and begin at the very bottom by asking the question, Is milk yield and butterfat percentage inherited? Yet it is here that one has to begin if progress is to be made. Easy as the question may look the answer to it is by no means easily obtained. Many complications arise in a form like cattle, where the character milk-yield depends on so many variables and where the expression of it appears only in one sex. In fact, in this brief abstract one can not hope to adequately treat of so extensive and intricate a proof as would be necessary to fully establish the fact that milk yield is inherited. An attempt will rather be made to answer the following questions which bear on the main subject: 1. Is the milk yield of a cow determined by her sire either in whole or in part? 2. Is the milk yield of a cow determined by her dam either in whole or in part? 3. Do the grandparents or ancestors further removed have any marked influence on the milk yields of their grand-daughters?