1. Переведите следующие предложения на английский язык, используя лексику урока:

1. В некоторых случаях очень просто провести проверку на экономическую ценность животного. 2. В случае с мясными породами животных нельзя получить определённой информации об экономической ценности животного до его убоя. 3. Высокопродуктивное животное должно превращать большое количество питательных веществ в молоко или мясо. 4. Если на ранней стадии откармливания свиней ограничить питание, мясная прослойка замедлит рост. 5. Минералы способствуют формированию костей, а протеины – мяса.

2. Переведите следующие предложения на русский язык, используя лексику урока:

1. To build up a certain combination of valuable hereditary characters is the business of the breeder. 2. An ideal animal should convert its food into meat or wool, milk, or work with a maximum efficiency. 3. Because no final judgement can be reached until the end of animal working life its useful of a work is difficult to assess. 4. There is an increasing tendency to apply direct tests wherever possible. 5. The efficiency of converting food into meat can be expressed as a ratio between its weight increment and food consumption. 6. Lowland animals may be quite unsuited to a poor upland farm. 7. The provision of appropriate living conditions influence on animal’s hereditary merits. 8. Such a process has never been carried out to the point of complete or final success.

3. Составьте план пересказа текста “Livestock Improvement” и перескажите текст.

Text 8. “Mass And Pedigree Selection”

The simplest form of selection is what is termed mass or phenotypic selection – the choice of breeding-stock on the simple basis of individual merits. The application of this process has given very different results according to the kind of characters to which it has been applied. Obviously the degree of success attained will depend on the accuracy with which the genetic make up is reflected in the visible or measurable characters. Thus if we wished to obtain a race of single-combed fowls from a mixed population, a system of mass selection would give immediate and completely successful results. For various reasons, however, the visible characters of the animal may be unsatisfactory, or even misleading, as a guide to the qualities that it is capable of transmitting. Characters like egg-production in fowls or milk-production in cattle are determined in part only by heredity, being influenced to a very marked extent by the conditions of nurture.

Pedigree, when rationally used, forms a valuable aid to the breeder in his work of selection. Pedigree must never be regarded as an end in itself; individual merit must always be considered first – but the two taken in conjunction are undoubtedly a far better guide than either considered alone. The essential questions that a breeder should ask himself in attempting to evaluate a particular pedigree are: 1) What was the average merit of the animal’s immediate ancestors? 2) What evidence is there that their good qualities were regularly transmitted from generation to generation? If we have a good individual, the progeny of good and true-breeding parents, it is probably that it will transmit its good qualities. The commonest error in the interpretation of pedigrees is that of attaching undue importance to far-back ancestors, and in particular to descent in the direct female line from particular foundation females. It is quite certain that the average influence of any single animal in even the third of fourth ancestral generation is very slight indeed, and it is doubtful whether in practice there is much to be gained by looking back beyond three generations.

Лексические упражнения.