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Certified Angus, Certified Patriot: Breeding, Bodies, And Pedigree Practices, Scout Calvert

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The pedigree chart is a cornerstone technology for producing bodies and value in livestock pure breeding. It organizes a cluster of processes, technologies, and discourses gathered under the rubric “pedigree practices.” Angus breeders commonly use artificial insemination to import performance “genetics” into their herds, using the “expected progeny differences” predicted by massive pedigree databases that now also contain phenotype data reported by cattle growers. Discourses of biological inheritance, good breeding, and pedigrees arose in the eighteenth century, concomitant with a fascination with races, species, and other biological kinds. A case study from Angus cattle breeding illustrates pedigree practices and the …