Page:Care and Management of Rabbits.djvu/178

164 of producing meat animals, it is best to stick as close to the Standard as possible, especially if you start out with registered stock.

Under the chapter on Breeding there is a discussion as to the value of line-breeding and if one starts out with registered stock and practices line-breeding intelligently, there is no reason why the value of the stock should grow less with each generation. But a constant selection of the breeding stock must be kept up in order to make progress all the time.

One can generally get a pretty good idea as to the value of an animal by following these exterior characteristics, but they are by no means a final criterion. It is wise to keep a careful record of the offspring of the respective matings and when you find a doe and buck that seem to produce better offspring than they do when bred to other animals, by all means do not stop breeding them, but get all you can out of the combination. Breeding records as well as intelligent selection of the breeders is necessary to success in picking the breeding stock.