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.

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"This book offers a magnificent panorama on animal husbandry, featuring concrete discussions on dairy cattle, chickens, pigs, sheep, and horses."

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"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."

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"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."