Hybrid Udders

George Bernard Shaw once made (or is supposed to have made) a classic retort to Isadora Duncan's eugenic proposal: "Madam, what if our child should have your brain and my body?" Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace has spent much of his working life investigating the implications of G.B.S.'s rude rejoinder.

He started by crossbreeding corn (using methods developed by earlier U.S. botanists) and launched a hybrid corn boom which has added an estimated 30% to the U.S. maize yield. By suppressing undesirable recessive characteristics in the crossed plants, hybridization produces hardier, more vigorous offspring. Crossbreeding has been extended to other plants, poultry, hogs, steers. Last week spectacular results were reported from another Wallace-sponsored experiment. Subject: cows. Object: more milk.

Seven years ago the Department of Agriculture's Beltsville, Md. Research Center, at Wallace's suggestion, began crossbreeding Holsteins, Jerseys, Red Danes and Guernseys. Using only high-grade stock, continuously enriched by new genes from well-pedigreed sires, they produced 32 two-breed hybrid cows which averaged 12,842 pounds of milk and 592 pounds of butterfat a year, well above their mothers' production, and five three-breed crosses which did even better: 14,837 pounds of milk and 645 pounds of butterfat. (U.S. average for good non-hybrids: 8,500 pounds of milk; 350 pounds of fat.)

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