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Beauty or Statistics
Practice and Science in Dutch Livestock Breeding, 1900-2000
Bert Theunissen (Author)
9781487507008
Hardback, published 6 March 2020
288 pages, 24 b&w illustrations
23.5 x 16.5 x 2.3 cm, 0.54 kg
"This book offers a magnificent panorama on animal husbandry, featuring concrete discussions on dairy cattle, chickens, pigs, sheep, and horses." "A work of excellent scholarship that will be recommended reading for scholars interested in twentieth-century agricultural history and in the history of animal breeding and genetics." "This book beautifully straddles the line between the two apparently diverse (and often divisive) attitudes to breeding, because of a deep understanding of both genetic and practical breeding methods."
In the 1970s, scientists claimed that farm animal breeding was finally evolving from an art into a science. In their view, the switch to scientific breeding was as inevitable as the ongoing process of agricultural modernization. However, the art-to-science scenario is too simplistic to do justice to the complex dynamic that characterized the transformation of the field. The livestock breeds that take centre stage in this book – dairy cattle, chickens, pigs, sheep, and horses – were products of the twentieth century. The methods used by breeders to improve their animals, however, were much older. Tracing the history of practical stockbreeding, the role of Mendelism in scientific breeding, and the emergence of quantitative genetics, Beauty or Statistics shows that the story of the scientific modernization of livestock breeding can be more fruitfully analysed from the perspective of changing cultures of breeding, taking practical, commercial, normative, and aesthetic considerations into account.
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Breeding for Nobility or for Production? Friesian Dairy Cattle The Breeders Get Organized 2. "The most efficient chickens in the world" From Side Business to Mainstay 3. Breeding a Pig for all Parties Testing for Productive Traits 4. Just Not Like any other Sheep Breed: The Texel Creating the Texel 5. From Farm Horse to Riding Horse: The Dutch Warmbloods Conclusions List of illustrations
Type and Tuberculosis
The Moral Economy of Breeding
Bloodlines and Purity
Scientific Breeding
Nobility or Production?
Entrepreneurship
Indexes
Holsteinization
Market and Moral Economy
Hybrid Breeding
Hy-Line and Hendrix Genetics
From Purebreds to First-Generation Crossbreds
Industrialization
Developments in Breeding
Chickens are Not Peas
Minkema’s Breeding Plan
AI in Pigs
Hybrid Pig Breeding
The Breeder’s Eye
Pigs are Not Chickens
The Swifter
Breeding by Numbers or By Eye
AI in Texel Sheep
What’s in a Breed?
Gelderlanders and Groningers
Introducing "Hot Blood"
Finding the Right Mix
The Government Intervenes
Scientific Breeding
Balancing Practical and Scientific Methods
Sources
Index