Animal Breeding - Breeding Stock

Breeding Stock

Breeding stock is a group of animals used for purpose of planned breeding. When individuals are looking to breed animals, they look for certain valuable traits in purebred animals, or may intend to use some type of crossbreeding to produce a new type of stock with different, and presumably superior abilities in a given area of endeavor. For example, when breeding swine the "breeding stock should be sound, fast growing, muscular, lean, and reproductively efficient." The "subjective selection of breeding stock" in horses has led to many horse breeds with particular performance traits.