Beauty or statistics : practice and science in Dutch livestock breeding, 1900-2000 / Bert Theunissen ; with the collaboration of Steven van der Laan, Jesper Oldenburger, and Liesbeth van der Waaij
Published
Toronto ; Buffalo ; London : University of Toronto Press, [2020]
Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. Breeding for Nobility or for Production? Friesian Dairy Cattle -- The Breeders Get Organized -- Type and Tuberculosis -- The Moral Economy of Breeding -- Bloodlines and Purity -- Scientific Breeding -- Nobility or Production? -- Entrepreneurship -- Indexes -- Holsteinization -- Market and Moral Economy -- 2. The Most Efficient Chickens in the World -- From Side Business to Mainstay -- Hybrid Breeding -- Hy-Line and Hendrix Genetics
From Purebreds to First-Generation Crossbreds -- Industrialization -- Developments in Breeding -- Chickens Are Not Peas -- 3. Breeding a Pig for All Parties -- Testing for Productive Traits -- Minkema's Breeding Plan -- AI in Pigs -- Hybrid Pig Breeding -- The Breeder's Eye -- Pigs Are Not Chickens -- 4. Just Not Like Any Other Sheep Breed: The Texel -- Creating the Texel -- The Swifter -- Breeding By Numbers or By Eye -- AI in Texel Sheep -- What's in a Breed? -- 5. From Farm Horse to Riding Horse: The Dutch Warmbloods -- Gelderlanders and Groningers -- Introducing "Hot Blood."
Finding the Right Mix -- The Government Intervenes -- Scientific Breeding -- Balancing Practical and Scientific Methods -- Conclusions -- Notes -- Sources -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary
"This book is a valuable and innovative piece of scholarship. It advances the broadening field of studies devoted to understanding how animal breeding has evolved after the advent of the science of genetics. Animal breeding is an ancient human occupation, but it has undergone profound changes which have stressed and modified old ways over the past 120 years. This book looks at the interface between science and practice in the breeding of farm animals with a special focus on Dutch livestock breeding. It argues that it is too simplistic to see the infiltration of genetics into practice as merely modernization."-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes
Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on April 15, 2020)
