Disciplining cattle reproduction: Veterinary reproductive science, bull infertility, and the mid-twentieth century transformation of Swedish dairy cattle breeding

Abstract

From the 1940s, reproductive physiology and livestock genetics transformed dairy cattle breeding and became, in conjunction with the new reproductive technology of artificial insemination, important drivers of agricultural modernization in most countries with significant dairying. While this is well known, we know less about the longer-term interplay between specifically veterinary interests in reproduction and the institutional development of cattle breeding. In the present paper, I therefore examine the veterinary disciplining of cattle reproduction—its constitution as a veterinary scientific discipline and the extension of veterinary control over it—in mid-twentieth century Sweden. I show how veterinary scientists derived legitimacy for their fledgling discipline by engaging with the problems of practical breeding, and that in doing so they also exercised influence over breeding’s development. By making bulls’ reproductive disturbances visible and framing them as hereditary, they undermined the conservative interests of commercial breeders. The development of veterinary reproductive science thereby played an important role in reshaping the culture, economy, and regulations of cattle breeding in Sweden as it shifted from a prewar regime dominated by elite breeders to a postwar regime that, ostensibly, served all dairy farmers in the country.