Journal of Animal Science

Shrode, Robert, R.

doi: 10.1093/ansci/1973.Symposium.iiipmid: N/A

Abstract The word idea is familiar and frequently used but seldom defined, yet nearly everyone has an “idea” as to what it means. Certain philosophers have contended that reality or existence of anything, including an idea, is dependent on its being perceived. Pragmatic considerations, however, force one to say that an idea, even though real, has little or no value if it “exists” in only one person's mind. Ideas acquire value only when they are transmitted from mind to mind by the processes which constitute what we call communication. We are assembled today in an effort to honor a great communicator or “transmitter” of ideas in the area of animal breeding and genetics by “taking inventory” in order to assess the present status of knowledge in this area of scientific endeavor. There is no doubt that this status is far more advanced than it would have been without the contributions of the man we are honoring. We can think of communication of ideas as a process of “intellectual inheritance”. Ideas are somewhat like living organisms. If they are of any consequence, they are alive; and they do evolve. Such evolution will be displayed by the papers presented today. Everyone attending this symposium is a “student” of Jay L. Lush, since his work has been studied with interest by many persons other than the large number of us here who were privileged to be his students in the formal sense, having pursued our graduate studies in association with him and This content is only available as a PDF. 1973 by American Society of Animal Science

Freeman, A., E.

doi: 10.1093/ansci/1973.Symposium.1pmid: N/A

Introduction My purpose in this Symposium honoring Dr. J. L. Lush is to review his work and, though it is hardly needed, to make clear the contribution he has made in applying genetic statistics to animal breeding. I prefer to approach the subject by looking at how he originally combined knowledge from husbandry or management practices, genetics and statistics, in approximately this order, to formulate the foundation of the modern science of animal breeding. As problems arose and could be defined in a mathematical or statistical sense, he and his students found answers to them in a way useful to improving domestic animals. The emphasis on breeding plans did not preclude interest and work on problems of a more theoretical nature. He clearly contributed to problems of almost purely theoretical interest, at least at the time; but, it is safe to say that most of this work was started by seeing an actual problem arise that generated the germ of the idea for the theoretical work. Early History and Status of Animal Breeding Knowledge It seems necessary to try to give some idea of the status of animal breeding knowledge about the time Dr. Lush received his formal training. He earned the B.S. degree in Animal Husbandry from Kansas State College in 1916, an M.S. degree from the same school in 1918 and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1922. Dr. Lush's first academic position was in research at Texas A&M College, where he remained from 1921 This content is only available as a PDF. 1973 by American Society of Animal Science

Henderson, C., R.

doi: 10.1093/ansci/1973.Symposium.10pmid: N/A

Introduction Sire evaluation can logically be formulated as a process of prediction of future progeny of a sire produced by matings with specified females and making their records in some specified environment. Sewall Wright (1931) over 40 years ago suggested three types of prediction that might be of interest: (1) progeny of a particular mating, (2) future daughters in the same herd but out of a new sample of dams, (3) daughters out of a random sample of dams of the breed. Dr. Lush as early as 1931 had elucidated the principles of sire evaluation, Lush (1931 Lush (1933). As was pointed out by Lehman (1961), two types of selection problems have been studied by statisticians. These are Model I and Model II selection, analagous to the corresponding models of analysis of variance. In Model I the candidates for selection are fixed, for example, choices are to be made among treatments, a random sample of observations having been taken on each fixed treatment. No really unified theory has been developed for this type of selection. In contrast, Model II selection involves candidates that are regarded as a random sample from some specified population. Model II represents the classical selection problem in animal breeding and had essentially been solved by Wright and Lush early in the 1930's. Smith's (1936) application to plant breeding and, in particular, Hazel's (1943) application to animal breeding formalized the techniques. A third type of selection that has apparently been overlooked by both statisticians and animal breeders might This content is only available as a PDF. 1973 by American Society of Animal Science

Chapman, A., B.

doi: 10.1093/ansci/1973.Symposium.42pmid: N/A

Abstract Forty-two years ago this fall, when Dr. Lush and I were both young men, he gave me his point of view on: “How selection changes the genetic composition of a population”; “How selection changes a population — the outward results.” I also heard for the first time about what came to be known later as: “Aids to selection” i.e., “The use of lifetime averages,” “Pedigree estimates” and “Progeny tests.” I heard a good deal about Dr. Lush's basic thinking on topics which he later developed and which formed the substance of the now classical titles such as: “The number of daughters necessary to prove a sire” (Lush, 1931a); “Genetic aspects of the record of performance work with swine” (Lush, 1931b); “Linebreeding” (Lush, 1933a); “The bull index in the light of modern genetics” (Lush, 1933b); “Progeny test and individual performance as indicators of an animal's breeding value” (Lush, 1935); “Intra-sire correlations or regressions on dam as a method of estimating heritability of characteristics” (Lush, 1940); “The optimum emphasis on dams' records when proving dairy sires” (Lush, 1944); “Family merit and individual merit as bases for selection” (Lush, 1947); “Heritability of quantitative characters in farm animals” (Lush, 1949) and many more titles which most of us know by heart. These papers formed the core of an entirely different way of thinking about animal breeding at that time and out of these contributions come much of our guidance today in thinking about problems in animal breeding and out of them also come those apposite This content is only available as a PDF. 1973 by American Society of Animal Science

Dickerson, Gordon, E.

doi: 10.1093/ansci/1973.Symposium.54pmid: N/A

Abstract How packed with meaning this subject is for animal breeders! And how greatly our understanding of the potential usefulness of inbreeding and heterosis in animal improvement has expanded during the last four decades as a result of the research, writing and teaching of Dr. Jay Laurence Lush! While Dr. Lush was busy at Texas A&M from 1922 to 1930 publishing studies of inheritance and performance evaluation, he must also have been studying Sewall Wright's interpretations of the U.S.D.A. inbreeding and crossbreeding work with guinea pigs (1921). This seems clear from his 1927 paper clarifying the limitations of “percentage of blood” in describing genetic likeness, particularly among collateral relatives and from the subsequent series with his students and collaborators on the amount and kind of inbreeding occurring during breed development in cattle, sheep and swine (1932 to 1936 to 1946), using the technique of Wright and McPhee (1925) for sampling random lines of ancestry. When Dr. Lush arrived at Iowa State in 1930, earlier experiments with full-sib inbreeding in swine at Iowa and elsewhere had been discontinued due to loss of fertility. However, Wright's theoretical analyses and some results with guinea pigs (1921 (1922) had indicated that selection might be able to offset unfavorable effects of milder inbreeding and that inbreeding was a powerful tool for creating genetic diversity among lines. This led Dr. Lush to initiate an experiment in 1930 comparing intense and mild line breeding in pigs, with concurrent individual and progeny test selection. During this same period (1933), Lush's This content is only available as a PDF. 1973 by American Society of Animal Science

Lush, Jay, L.

doi: 10.1093/ansci/1973.Symposium.78pmid: N/A

Abstract I began teaching in a Kansas high school 56 years ago. What I say here is based on the ensuing half century of experience. I believe these remarks are true although, of course, I wish they could be based more solidly on the results of well-designed experiments with controls. Immediately on completing my Ph.D. degree, I did research for more than 8 years, with almost no interruption for teaching. I am glad it happened that way. If I had taught the same course as much as three times in succession, using the available texts and my graduate notes and all the rest of what I thought I knew, I would surely have come to believe those things myself so firmly that the errors among them could scarcely have been corrected by any likely amount of subsequent experience. As it was, the cattle and sheep and goats talked back to me. Having no papers to grade or class rolls to call, I listened. Usually the animals were saying something like: “Most of the things you think you know may be true in principle but you have many of them out of all proportion to their actual importance. When you recommend a practice or draw a conclusion, you often overlook circumstances which, if you considered them properly, would upset your recommendations badly.” Trying to solve these apparent inconsistencies drove me, whether I wished it or not, in the direction of measuring more accurately the factors in the problems. I was always needing This content is only available as a PDF. 1973 by American Society of Animal Science

Touchberry, R., W.

doi: 10.1093/ansci/1973.Symposium.89pmid: N/A

Introduction One or two of the speakers on the afternoon program intimated that much of their presentation was prepared just prior to the symposium. It may be true that the work of organizing and writing the presentations was done only a few days ago, but it should be pointed out that much of the thought and knowledge that went into the papers this afternoon are products of years of study and thought. Further, the basis of many of these thoughts and much of the knowledge traces to the work of Dr. Lush. Likewise, this paper really began 26 years 10 months and approximately 14 days ago, when I walked into his office in Ames, Iowa, unannounced, directly from Pinewood, South Carolina. It really wasn't quite that abrupt; I just happened to arrive in his office before my application papers arrived. Many have indicated the enormous magnitude of the assignment to speak on the Life and Contributions of Dr. Lush and to do so in approximately 40 minutes. On the other hand, because Dr. Lush has contributed so much to animal breeding, it is relatively easy to find suitable information to include in a presentation such as this; the problem is one of deciding what not to include. In spite of the abundance of material to present, I still feel somewhat like the main character in an old story about the flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which many of you may have heard. This person was one of the few survivors of This content is only available as a PDF. 1973 by American Society of Animal Science