Yet to admire our successes as if they had no past, would make a caricature of knowledge.    Bronowski (1973)

From Diamonds to Diversity, Introduction
From Caves to Cultivation, 2 mil years ago
From Hornbooks to Herdbooks, 1200-1600
From Land to Laws, 1700-1850
From Commonwealth to College, 1855-1900
From Exposition to Education, 1900-1920
From Depression to Discipline, 1920-1940
From Research to Report, 1940-1960
From Theory to Technology, 1960-1980
From Chops to Cholesterol , 1980s

From Diamonds to Diversity

Grasp our jubilee diamond between the forefinger and oppossing thumb. Watch as bursts of rainbow colors shower when a facet is struck by sunlight. As scientists, this prism effect is predictable. As artists, the color array is beautiful when by chance it cascades over a nearby object. Both responses are natural; our humanity demands it!

By sharing our rich, multifaceted heritage with students, we become prisms that analyze the colorful episodes and recombine them into an integral picture that surrounds humans and the animals chosen to be domestics. Our heritage joins the art and science of husbandry to the totality of human experience. A university education should prepare one to live life abundantly, not simply be a retrainable technician of the time. Brilliant insights into creating the future come from those prepared to learn from the distilled wisdom of the ages.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ramifications of our contributions first as husbandmen and then as scientists to the livestock world. We as scientists came lately, relative to our extensive heritage, but the impact has been "highly significant," to use our common jargon of statistics! The paper attempts to relive our transition as a single imaginative experience through much time and space. The task appeared so small, before the rewarding research began. The paper deals with the interactions among the factors that influenced the building of our profession. The chronology is disjointed, and it was. Human ages can be unequally divided into hunter, agriculturist, industrialist and informationist. Our interest centers on the latter two ages.

From Caves to Cultivation

Some two million years ago, man became omniverous. Meat may be the single most important contribution of animals to the rapid cultural evolution of man. Meat eating allowed time for social interaction and tool development (Bronowski, 1973). Both aided humans in the transition to settled agriculture. But it was the ox that, when yoked to the scratch plow, gained for man the surplus food necessary to create civilizations.

From Hornbooks to Herdbooks

Greek and Roman hornbooks, written by elder statesmen on their villas, recorded the art of husbandry (Harrison, 1917). These were later used by the Cistercian order of monks who extended their knowledge of sheep husbandry to Europe and became the first extension agents (Willham, 1984)`. Edward III, the royal wool merchant, laid the foundation for the "Empire of Wool" in England, which gave the English the experience to rpecipitate the agricultural and then the industrial revolution of later times (Ryder, 1983). The country gentlemen of Britain developed the pedigree breeding system and formed breeds of livestock complete with herdbooks in response to the markets of the industrial revolution (Pawson, 1957). But already much had transpired in the colonization of America, both by the Spanish and British.

From Land to Laws

Land ownership in Europe was the impossible dream (Cooke, 1975). This was one reason to venture the Atlantic as a colonist. By 1800, the people of a new nation were spilling over the Cumberland Gap. Cotton plantations moved west, and institution builders were on the heels of the stump-corn-hog pioneer of the old northwest. Before Ohio was surveyed on the square mile, Jefferson surprised Congress with the purchase of Louisiana. The abundant land was the decisive factor in the development of American agriculture until the end of the frontier in the west (Cochrane, 1979).

Agricultural supply was linked to demand by the building of a transportation network during the first half of the 19th century. Roads and bridges were followed by the building of the Erie Canal in 1825, which linked the old northwest with New York. After 1830, the steel rails of empire began to lace together the United States (Willham, 1985). Cincinnati became the "porkopolis", but it was William Ogden, a hustler, who saw Chicago as the hub of American agriculture (Cooke, 1975). And the first harvest of the Corn Belt made it so (Gates, 1969; Fite, 1974).

European travelers in America were shocked by the inefficiency of our pioneer agriculture (Thompson, 1942). In Britain, before the Industrial Revolution, there had been an agricultural revolution, the work of country gentlemen for whom it was fashionable to improve their livestock. A thoroughly self-conscious movement toward livestock improvement dates from Robert Bakewell, manager of the Dishley estate from 1760 to 1795 (Wright, 1920). He was mysterious to his contemporaries and so perpetuated the mystique of the master breeder. One statement attributed to him was that, if they (the stock) will not speak for themselves, then nothing can be said for them that will do it! After gathering stock from extensive trips on horseback, he welded them into a breed through intense inbreeding. He established the Dishley Society to protect the purity of the breeds (Pawson, 1957). His imitators developed the British breeds of livestock and established the pedigree breeding system, the most successful system ever devised! Stock breeders will subscribe to the principle that pedigree allied to the use of eye judgment for securing adherence to formalized breed type is the basis of successful breeding (Lerner and Donald, 1966). This formalistic approach is not that of population genetics. The United States imported that system and the herdsmen along with the stock.

Livestock diets were just as mysterious, but science was beginning to be applied to problems in Europe. Lavoisier, the chemist, concluded, after experimentation, that nutrition was, in fact, chemistry before losing his head to the guillotine of the French Revolution. One of the first animal feeding trials was conducted by F. Magendie in 1816. In 1827, W. Pront classified the essential organic nutrients as protein, carbohydrate and fat. Justus von Leibig was the agricultural chemist destined to keep Germany from starvation in the 1840s and wrote a much-used book (Maynard et al., 1979). Nutrition work at Rothamstead began in 1859 by Gilbert and J. B. Lawes, the year Darwin published "...Origin of Species..." and set the pulpits howling. Mendel published in 1866. Pasteur developed his germ theory, and Appert introduced canning of food in France. Clearly, Europe had seen science help solve some pressing problems. The American Association for the Advancement of Science was founded in 1846 in the United States.

Education in the United States was an important issue. From 1830 to 1862, there was an effort in Congress to promote the idea of public support for higher education (Ross, 1942). In 1862, the Morrill Act passed, the USDA was formed, and the Homestead Act was passed (Smith, 1979). But sectionalism was deep and even with the many compromises made, the Civil War broke out as a picnic and ended as total economic warfare. Reconstruction caused the beginning of our sage to come from the upper Midwest (Schlebecker, 1975). In 1865, the Union Stock Yard of Chicago opened for business (Grand, 1896).

From Commonwealth to College

The Michigan Agricultural College opened in 1855. Agriculture was an art resting on traditions; there was no science save chemistry. "What a basis this, on which to found a college to predicate success in agricultural education" (Davenport, 1924). Farmers were still pioneers. "Times were not propitious for serious study of a problem about a matter that seemed so simple that any food could farm" (Davenport, 1924) The prophets, again, were born ahead of their time!

There were no agricultural teachers; agriculture was not an academic discipline. After clearing the land, the attempt was made to lug in British agriculture bodily. Turnips failed, but the pedigree breeding system came to stay! The professors of agriculture who succeeded were Stockbridge of Massachusetts, Roberts of Cornell, Miles of Michigan, Townshend of Ohio, Morrow of Illinois and Knapp of Iowa (Plumb, 1923). "Perforce they made professors out of strange material in those days" (Davenport, 1924). Michigan was the most vigorous and able exponent of science west of Harvard. With no standing in respectable institutions save Harvard, science needed a home and found it in the "new education" based on the facts of nature rather than the dicta of man's creations.

During the 19th century, state fairs became a regular part of agriculture. Livestock markets became centralized to meet the needs of industrialization in the east (Fowler, 1952). For the first time in the world, meat for the millions would be realized (Tannahill, 1973). This was the era of the longhorn trail drives, cattle barons, and the American folk legend, the cowboy (Towne and Wentworth, 1955). It started with Joseph McCoy in 1868, who bragged before leaving Chicago that he would bring 200,000 head in 10 years and actually brought two million head in 4 years. The phrase, "It's the real McCoy" was coined as a result (Cooke, 1975). It is hard to comprehend that agricultural education was under way before the saga of the Old West began (True, 1929). This was the empire period both out west in cattle ranching and, back east, in oil, steel, railroading, and finance. "How to Feed Crops" was printed in 1870, and Pasteur conquered anthrax. In 1873, refrigerated rail cards, made by the packers, moved chilled meat east. The opposition to this by butchers was repeated again with boxed beef of a century later.

The great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, formed in 1875, was the beginning of chain retail grocery stores. Back east, the same year, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station began innovative research into agricultural problems (True, 1937).

The United States celebrated its first 100 years with optimism, and the first modern graduate school was formed at Johns Hopkins University. A year later, Custer made his last stand way out west. In 1878, the telephone, invented by a sheep enthusiast named A. G. Bell, was employed in commercial use. Kuhne defined enzymes, and the compound microscope made its debut.

During the 1880s, Sir Francis Galton invented the regression coefficient to describe the fact that offspring from extreme parents tended to regress back toward the average. In 1880, H. P. Armsby published his manual on cattle feeding, and in 1881, J. H. Sanders of Chicago published the Breeders Gazette, which became the bible for importers and stockmen. In 1882, the first course in animal husbandry was taught, signaling the breaking down of agriculture into disciplines. In 1883, W. H. Henry started the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, Kjeldahl developed his procedure for nitrogen determination, and Tappimer recognized the digestion of cellulose by ruminal microorganisms (see McCollum, 1957). Several newly formed American breed associations made their national offices in the livestock records building near the entrance to the largest stockyards in the world, Chicago. In 1884, T. Smith, a pathologist with the USDA, unravelled the secrets of Texas cattle fever, raising the stature of USDA research (Smith, 1979). Pharmaceutical houses began in 1886.

After years of effort, the colleges got what they so desperately needed to foster a scientific education; the Hatch Act was passed in 1887. Government put science to work for agriculture. "From that day, colleges of agriculture went definitely on a scientific basis, and from that day forward they began to succeed (Davenport, 1924). Farmers began to feel that the college man must know something and had ways of finding out things not possessed by the man in the corn rows or the feedlot. Agriculture is really teachable, but from the standpoint of science involved, not of an art to be practiced by traditional methods."

The year 1890 was red letter. Scientists joined inventors in the research laboratories of industry. The census used Hollorith cards, S. M. Babcock developed the simple butter fat test, and big business was accosted with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, just as the cattle empires had by the winters of 1886 and 1887. Also, J. A. Craig started the first animal husbandry department at Wisconsin. Plumb (1923) notes that the field of animal husbandry was first made attractive by Craig, who introduced laboratory work in judging and was the father of the student judging contests. The first intercollegiate contest was in 1898 at Omaha.

During the 1890s, feed companies originated, usually as a result of a by-product being available for animal feed (Wherry, 1947). Sweetfeeds came as a by-product from the protective lining of Teddy's battleships. Proximate analysis of feedstuffs was perfected by 1895, and the Wolfe-Lehman feed standards were developed by 1897, the same year that cattlemen at Denver founded the American National Cattlemen's Association. In 1898, W. H. Henry, dean at Wisconsin, published "Feeds and Feeding." In 1899, W. O. Atwater of Connecticut published caloric values (see McCollum, 1957). Craft (1962) spoke of the big three research entrepreneurs as being Henry of Wisconsin, Davenport of Illinois and Hilgard of California. By 1900, there was no longer the need to study science in Europe.

From Exposition to Education

The Victorian Age met the dawn of the 20th century with great optimism. Science was busy with the rediscovery of Mendel's paper. But the important event in the livestock industry was the opening in Chicago of the premier livestock exposition of the world. The reasoning for the show as reported by Horine (1913) was, "in other words, farmers must be taught the difference in profit between a scrub and an animal that is thrifty and well-bred, on the one hand, and, on the other, between old and wasteful methods of feeding and new and improved methods of maturing and preparing animals for market..." Leadership was given by the breed association, agricultural colleges, the agricultural press, and the railroads and live stock market interests in Chicago. The Union Stock Yard and Transit Company financed the show, which sprang full-rounded into an astonished existence conjured up from the livestock of a continent. Over 6,000 animals were exhibit competing for $75,000 of premiums.

"Tama Jim" Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, at the 1902 opening said "The most interesting feature of this exhibit to me, gentlemen, is the presence of these college boys...As for the education of farmers and farmer's sons...we have more money at Washington than Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago and Stanford combined. We are trying to help the man everywhere in every part of the United States who raises things out of the ground." It is no wonder that he was Secretary for 16 years under three presidents (Rasmussen, 1966).

The chosen symbol for the International was the bull. The bulls, depicted in several different bronzes, were displayed at the agricultural colleges since they were the coveted judging team trophies.

After 1900, many college men were products of the emerging land-grant system. Many participated in the purebred industry as prominent judges and developed purebred teaching herds, which were prime examples of the breeder's art. Students could work with the best of the newly imported germ plasm and learn from Scotch herdsmen that were imported with the stock to transmit that tradition without flaw. Grand champions and winning judging teams advertised the colleges.

During the early years of the 20th century, many state colleges that had given students a broad liberal education were confronted with problems of definition. Livestock interests in the state wanted more technical agriculture. President Beardshear of Iowa State succinctly stated the intent of the colleges in 1900, "The theory is that young agriculturalists or industrialists must aspire to a liberal education that will make him the peer of any educated or professional man in life." Both attempts to make Dean Curtiss president at Iowa State failed, thanks to the basic science professors. Most colleges developed into science-based institutions rapidly.

In 1903, the Saddle and Sirloin Club was formed in Chicago, with dining facilities on the top floor of the purebred livestock records building. The club was Tudor-appointed, reflecting the British heritage, and over time, developed the greatest collection of portraits of agricultural leaders anywhere in the world. These oils, coupled with the sterling writings of A. H. Sanders about the master breeders, touched animal husbandry students for over 60 years. The gentlemen from the ranks of the agricultural colleges whose portraits were hung had rapport with the industry.

The mechanization of farming required the speed of the horse to turn the ground wheels of the new implements. The railroads linked the nation, but it was still the dray teams that delivered within the cities, as illustrated by the Teamster's Union logo. Draft horses were of major importance. The first two decades of the century were good for agriculture, and on these, the concepts of parity were based.

"The Jungle," by U. Sinclair was published in 1905. The description of the packing industry in Chicago produced the Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the formation of the American Meat Packers' Association. But the most important happening was that the Model T auto came off the assembly line of Henry Ford. This truly changed American livestock agriculture in profound ways. Babcock demonstrated the salt requirement, Einstein published his famous formula, e = mc², and C. S. Plumb published "Types and Breeds of Livestock," which established the teaching of livestock breeding as the history of the master breeders.

In 1906, the American Dairy Science Association was formed and the Poultry Science Association started in 1908. Researchers in animal nutrition, at a meeting called during the 1908 International, formed the American Society of Animal Nutrition (Briggs, 1958; Oltjen, 1983). There were 33 charter members. Armsby gave impetus to the Society, but E. B. Forbes became the savior when he held a protest meeting where papers were presented because in 1913, President Curtiss wanted only a social gathering. In 1915, teaching, breeding and management were included, and the name changed to the American Society of Animal Production (ASAP; Wiley, 1950; Plumb, 1932).

The fruits of science for livestock agriculture became clear as the University of Wisconsin began its synergistic research under Dean Henry and later Dean Russell. By 1911, the purified diet idea had developed from the legendary corn-wheat experiment of Babcock origin. Vitamin A was discovered by McCollum and Davis in 1913 to begin the long line of advances in the application of science by E. B. Hart, G. Bohstedt, C. A. Elvehjem, H. Steenbock and F. H. Morrison. What developed the synergism among departments was the tireless efforts of C. G. Humphery, Head of Animal Husbandry (Bohstedt, 1973).

Beltsville, the USDA research facility, began in 1910, and A. Boss developed the first meat laboratory at Minnesota. F. H. A. Marshall and J. Hammond were making Cambridge in England the focal point for reproductive physiology. T. H. Morgan was putting Mendelian genetics to the test with Drosophila at Columbia, and L. J. Cole, a geneticist, went to Wisconsin from Yale.

In 1913, the American Feed Manufacturers Association was formed helping organize the growing number of feed companies. In 1914 the Smith-Lever Act was passed. It organized the Cooperative Extension Service in the United States (Kammalade, 1958; Zmokel and Foster, 1983). The extension agents were to interpret and take the research results from the Hatch Act directly to the farmers. Researchers had long interacted with farmers, but now there was a structure. The agents lived among the people. It worked, just like the Cistercian monks of old.

The United States entered World War I late, but the American farmer and his sons rose to the occasion and produced food both for their country and Europe. Sir Ronald Fisher published a paper that united population genetics to Mendelian, Armsby published "The Nutrition of Farm Animals", phosphorus was shown to be essential, T. B. Osborn and L. B. Mendel published on the nutritive value of feeds, H. W. Vaughn published his text on "Types and Market Classes of Livestock" and Rutherford opened the field of nuclear physics. In 1919, with help from college men and the Extension Service, the USDA launched a national program called "Better Sires: Better Stock", which promoted the use of purebred sires to improve American livestock (Smith, 1979). The concept stuck!

The year 1920 saw the start of an agricultural depression that continued on through the bad weather of the 1930s. But science had made great strides in the first two decades of the 20th century.

From Depression to Discipline

The national reacted to the realities of a world war. It shattered the optimism of Victorian society that opened the century. The biggest kid on the world block (Europe's finest achievement) was not ready for international leaedership yet.

The society meetings were at the Sherman House at International time from 1920 to 1961. Graduate education was achieving success with the codification of separate disciplines with their increasingly diverse jargons. As Burke (1978) said, "The more knowledge, the more esoteric become the languages of the disciplines."

The tractor began to replace the teams of the Corn Belt, black leg was controlled with a bacterin, and in 1921, the Packer and Stockyards Act the passed. S. Wright published on systems of mating and introduced th ein-breeding coefficient that quantified what the pedigree breeder was doing. F. G. Hopkins discovered the amino acid tryptophan as being essential for monogastric nutrition. Both kind and amount of protein became important in poultry and swine diets.

The National Livestock and Meat Board was formed under the leadership of R. C. Pollack. The Purnell Act of 1925 aided meats work by adding funds for livestock products research. Intercollegiate meats judging contests were begun in 1926, as was federal beef grading. Helser, Beard, Bull, Zeigler, Loeffel, McIntosh and Hankins established a discipline.

The Holstein-Friesian Association presented the colleges models of the true type cow and bull in 1923. The 4-H clubs began showing the stock (Wessel and Wessel, 1982). Poultry breeding companies had their origin but did not impact the industry for a time (Hanke, 1974). Wallace set up a hybrid corn company to put the work of East and Jones in practice. Hybrid corn demonstrated the potential to be realized in commercial livestock production. Fisher published "Statistical Methods for Research Workers," H. J. Muller found that X-rays produced mutations, vitamin B was discovered, Sumner purified enzymes and F. F. McKinsey took over the reproductive physiology studies at Missouri. In 1928, A. Flemming discovered penicillin and A. F. Schalk of North Dakota fistulated cattle for use in nutrition studies. Progesterone and testosterone were identified the year that the stock market crashed. In California, H. H. Cole and Hart began investigations with pregnant mare serum. In 1930, J. L. Lush began herdbook studies until research funds were available for animal work at Iowa. The USDA range station in Montana was initiated at Fort Keough. The Warner-Bratzler shear was developed, and H. H. Mitchell reported on the biological value of protein. In 1934, the Chicago stockyards were destroyed by fire and were rebuilt in time for the International Show.

In 1937, the regional swine breeding laboratory was started (Willham, 1962). Under the leadership of W. A. Craft, the yeasty meetings did much for the field of animal breeding. Maynard published "Animal Nutrition"' Snedecor, "Statistical Methods"' and Lush, "Animal Breeding Plant." Also, H. A. Krebs defined the cycle that bears his name. An artificial insemination bull stud was started by L. J. Cole, and M. R. Irwin initiated blood typing at Wisconsin. Sulfonamides were used for animal disease, and 20 amino acids were clearly identified.

On the eve of World War II, meetings at the Sherman House were tradition, as was the portrait hanging of a college man at the Saddle and Sirloin Club. Early on, animal husbandmen went to the International and the American Society of Animal Production meetings, but by the 1940s, the meetings were primary, and the trip to Halsted Street to see the market place, the horse hitches and the classes judged was secondary.

From Research to Report

Many classrooms of the colleges were vacant during the second world war. G. Bohstedt and Hart showed that urea could be substituted for natural protein in ruminant diets. The Journal of Animal Science replaced the Proceedings in 1942; L. N. Hazel and J. L. Lush published on the selection index; and between 1942 and 1944, the National Research Council developed dietary standards for livestock.

World War II ended with the atomic bomb and the dawn of a new age with little recession in agriculture. This, now oil-based, industry initiated the use of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer, which enhanced feed-grain production and grassland farming in the south (Schlebecker, 1975). The Research and Marketing Act of 1946 provided for the development of regional projects (Willham, 1975). Brody published "Bioenergetics and Growth", and Asdell published "Patterns of Mammalian Reproduction" in 1946, and in 1947, the National Association of Animal Breeders, the organization of bull studs, was formed (Herman, 1981). During this period, the use of isotopes became an integral part of animal science research (Campbell and Lasley, 1985). In 1947, K. Folkers discovered vitamin B₁₂, and in 1949, Stockstad and Jukes introduced antibiotics into animal rations (McCoy, 1973). Concepts of linear programming were developed in agricultural economics.

After the war, there was a surge of research effort in the college and university departments with many returning servicemen taking advantage of graduate training under the G. I. Bill. Some administrators failed to fathom the new thrust, and Dickerson (1959) vented his frustration by saying, "Also in the tradition-shackled field of large-animal breeding, there is need for courageous administrators who can and will encourage capable investigators to explore promising new techniques, however novel. A sharp ax is of little use in the hands of a blind woodsman or one not allowed in the woods."

The National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health started in 1950 to fund basic research. With funding already in place, agriculture had difficulty, but good proposals with broad application were funded. Van Soest (1982) noted that, had agriculture become a part of the old universities, as was done in Europe, the entire scientific community could have been more aware of agricultural problems. In 1950, bull semen was frozen at Cambridge and was in use by 1952 (Herman, 1981), Sanger identified the structure of insulin and Salk developed polio vaccine while W. Burroughs demonstrated the growth-promoting effect of feeding defined levels of stilbesterol. The first successful embryo transplant resulted from a cooperative effort between the research arm of American Breeders Service (E. L. Willett) and the University of Wisconsin (L. E. Casida). Huxley and Hansen produced a sliding filament theory of contraction for myofibrillar protein, and in 1953, Watson and Crick published on the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), which opened the floodgates of research in molecular biology that turned biochemists into geneticists forthwith.

The backfat probe for swine in 1953 did what the Babcock test had done for the dairy. Dwarfism hit the beef industry, but, as a result, performance evaluation was initiated (Marlow, 1964; McCann, 1974). By 1955, fast-food chains were a reality, interstate highway construction was the trucking subsidy as the land-grants had been for the railroads and massive decentralization of livestock marketing was under way (Breidenstein and Carpenter, 1983). Jet air transportation became the rule. Land-grant colleges became universities in name as well as function and increased their international dimension (Raun and Turk, 1983).

Then in 1957, Sputnik hurtled across the skies of America. We were behind! Massive interest in all phases of research and science occurred, and animal science benefited especially in the surge of development of scientific instrumentation. Interferons were discovered the same year.

The 50th anniversary of ASAP was celebrated in 1958 with a series of review papers in which disciplines were clearly recognized but the species were paramount. The apologetic paper on livestock judging by Darlow (1958) indicated that a fair number of our community were still concerned with stock shows. As he noted, "Each of these men who walked into the classroom of the arena, for all the world to see, has proven to be a master teacher." They had a profound effect on the purebred industry, and much blame for the "type" during the dwarfism era was laid at the animal husbandry doorstep. Once type was redefined, bigger like performance animals appeared to be, the glory of competition reigned supreme again.

"Techniques and Procedures in Animal Production Research" was published in 1959 by ASAP. Computers were rapidly developing. In 1960, Harvey presented "Least-squares Analyses of Data with Unequal Subclass Numbers" to four regional projects and later developed general programs to analyze such data. After this, much research in animal science became a part of the growing volume of literature in the disciplines.

From Theory to Technology

In 1961, we became the American Society of Animal Science (ASAS; Oltjen, 1983). The 60 years of transition from husbandry to science was clearly at an end. The cover of the 1962 Journal of Animal Science carried a stylized logo for ASAS that reflected the bronze bull from the International Livestock Exposition. It is a fitting logo that echos back across the centuries when the bull was worshipped by ancient herdsmen (Fraser,1972). A person appears to be guiding the bull, suggesting the role of animal science even into the future.

The meetings were moved from the Windy City at Thanksgiving time to university campuses in 1963. For those who never had turkey at home, Ogilvie's poem expresses our Chicago.

The Teams of Packingtown Will H. Ogilvie, Kelso, Scotland (1906) There's a murmur ripples among the crowd, There's a stir at the entrance gate, Where biting the bit-bars, prancing and proud, The Percheron geldings wait; Then, shining harness and lights ablaze, As slow to the rein they swing, With foam on their bits the Armour grays Come champing into the ring. There's a muffled thunder of trampling feet And a roar like the roar of the tides, And someone shouts and the rest repeat "Here come the Morris Clydes!" And the hearts of Scotsmen throb and "lep" As the team no wealth can buy Spruning the dust with their "heather step" In the pride of the north go by. It is far and far to Chicago now And the glitter of yonder teams; I shall never see them again, I trow, Except in the land of my dreams! But oft and oft when all sounds are stilled I can hear the cheers roll down, And see the ring with the splendor filled Of the teams of Packingtown.

Gone forever is the baroque Louis XIV room, the stimulating discussions under the dim wall lamps of the hallways, and the stomping of boots in the austere lobby of the Stock Yards Inn. Here today is the well-appointed university lecture hall, the discussion of research on a campus path and the enjoyment of the unique attributes of a state with friends and their families at the picnic.

The 1960s saw technology invade traditional agriculture (Cochrane, 1979). Giant feedlot empires developed in the Southwest; the fortified corn-soybean meal diet for swine became commonplace; USDA sire predicted differences revolutionized genetic change in milk production; breed association computers printed three-generation pedigrees on registration certificates, which ended pedigree worship (Willham, 1982); beef breeds from continental Europe were introduced by way of Canada; the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center was begun; the Beef Improvement Federation was formed (Baker, 1975); and the net energy system for beef was developed. Besides this, the space program put men on the moon in 1969.

The 1970s saw management research put into practice in confinement production of livestock (see Fredeen and Harmon, 1983). The Texas station introduced the concepts of systems analysis (Long et al., 1975), and California developed modeling ideas, which both revealed great gaps in knowledge to be researched. Animal behavior study came into its own (Curtis and Houpt, 1983) while fiber became important in monogastric nutrition. Recombinant DNA techniques were worked out, and Genetech came into being. Improvements in prediction of genetic values (Best Linear Unbiased Predictors) were made at Cornell (Henderson, 1973), and embryo transfer came of age. Microcomputers were used in livestock management and decision making. The academic quadrathalon was begun (Taylor and Kauffman, 1983) and beef sire evaluation came of age (Willham, 1978). The American Society of animal Science affiliated with the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology i n1971. The American Registry of Certified Animal Scientists gave professionalism to consultants in the field in 1973. Leading animal scientists projected research needs for the 21st century (Pond et al., 1980).

In the 1980s, DNA sequencing became a reality and supermouse made headlines in Science (see Barker et al., 1982; Rutledge and Seidel, 1983). The Diamond Jubilee papers reflect the extent of subdiscipline formation within animal science. Diet-health issues are under critical study (Allen, 1983). The extent of scientific instrumentation in animal science reflects its increasing basic nature as hormone control comes under research. Researchers find retraining a part of life, teachers constantly discard old theories as the new replace them, and extension becomes more specialized to serve the shrinking but specialized clientele.

The livestock industry is in transformation to its core. Funds for research are questioned. Agriculture can no longer ask for special position based on traditional ethic. It is forgotten. The need is to consider the total food system, not just livestock production (Urban, 1984). The food system has quietly become the largest high-tech business in America, in part due to our research. We in livestock agriculture must consider what business we are really in (Naisbitt, 1982). We will not remain the traditional livestock industry by lamenting not being able to live our heritage. We must build upon this heritage and create an even more exciting heritage. We must build upon this heritage and create an even more exciting heritage as a significant part of our food system. Evolution is not just change, it is the replacement of the current with a more sophisticated, relevant system.

This portion has the difficulty of not yet being history, which in reality is the record of human activity passed through the filter of time to bring out the relevant issues. Change is now so fast that it is continually taking us by surprise. But one is forced to observe from where one is.

From Chops to Cholesterol

The chunk of meat carved with a flint knife, broiled on a sapling over the coals of a campfire, and eaten with symbolic relish had profound ramifications on the cultural evolution of the human clans. The social interactions and tool making by induced meat eating gave humans the potential to invent agriculture—the domestication of plants and animals. No less in our understanding of cholesterol important to the lighting transition from the industrial to the information age as our new sedentary life style reverberates through our biology, which is still genetically adapted to the opportunities of 20,000 years ago (Stebbins, 1982). Cultural evolution is so much faster than biological.

The transition from animal husbandry to animal science is another saga as multifaceted and colorful as the myriad of others that have given the aura of romance to the livestock industry (Willham, 1985). This transition is also a part of the building of a new and unique social infrastructure, which continues to contribute to the development of American agriculture. It came to be called the land-grant system. The first segment was the founding of publicly supported colleges to educate the masses. The second was support for agricultural experiment stations to generate scientific knowledge applicable to problems confronting American agriculture. And the third was the organization of the Cooperative Extension Service to apply the new knowledge. The formation order is critical to the understanding of the need for transition.

No professors existed for the new agricultural colleges, but some men placed in the positions were successful, not because they had special education, but because they were headed toward the application of science to agriculture. Initially, the attempt was made to do two things of importance for the agricultural interests of the commonwealths. The first was to introduce British agriculture bodily to the unique situations of the states (Grigg, 1974). Turnips failed, but the pedigree breeding system took deep root and flourished. This is understandable because the livestock industry of the time was importing and embracing purebreeding. The second thing done a bit later was the incorporation of European agricultural chemistry and the relevant animal nutrition into the research efforts of the Connecticut, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania experiment stations. This was spurred on by the Hatch Act of 1887 in which government put science to work for agriculture. Thus, the agricultural colleges got what was so desperately needed to foster a scientific education (Davenport, 1924).

With the formation of the first animal husbandry department at Wisconsin in 1890, the judging of livestock as a laboratory exercise in animal husbandry quickly became the focus of interest for students because it prepared them to participate in the rapidly expanding purebred segment of the livestock industry. Also, the purebred teaching herds demonstrated physically the British solution for industrial livestock agriculture. The agricultural colleges promoted their expertise by winning judging contests and grand championships at the major expositions. It is ironic that, at Wisconsin, both the art of judging and science as applied to livestock first appeared!

The generation of men trained in practical agriculture before 1900 was a diverse group. Several became research entrepreneurs while others developed into prominent judges. Both developed rapport with the livestock world. The promotion of the purebred concept as a means of livestock improvement came from high sources, science-based institutions of higher learning.

After the turn of the present century, the second generation of animal husbandry professors made their debut.. Many were the product of graduate education by researchers of the experiment stations. These scientists by the 1920s were the new breed that would, in the end, define what animal agriculture higher education was all about. They made the disciplines, did the creative research and trained the future generations as animal scientists.

After the traumas of the great depression and WWII, animal husbandry departments were as ready to change their name, to reflect their activity, as the colleges were to become universities. Research funds were forthcoming, and livestock producers were ready to adopt new technology.

The whole transition occurred while maintaining a degree of rapport with the livestock industry. The transition was highly opportunistic, branching and diversifying in unique ways to create a wonderland of departments, each serving the perceived needs of their state. The transition was highly people-time dependent. Many big men were at the right place at the right time. To those scientists who saw correctly the true situation, however dimly, and to those administrators who nurtured the expertise of their scientific staff, we owe a great debt.

One of the unifying concepts of the transition was "My attitude toward my work...was that I admired greatly what the breeders of farm animals had already done, but I had an unshaken faith that they could still do more—if they could use the possibilities that must be in the new and intriguing science of genetics," Lush (1974). Mutual respect coupled with genuine love for science and a genuine desire to create scientific knowledge of benefit to livestock agriculture, in the vast number of animal scientists over this time period, made things happen.

The transition was not easy; old skills die hard, and frustration among the young is expected. Arguments over research results and theories synthesized from them were frequent, but contributed measurably to understanding in the end. Most participants took great pride in belonging to the romantic livestock industry.

There are at least 10 interdependent factors that provided the network in which the transition from husbandry to science occurred. They are the explosion of science, the development of American agriculture, the participation in our national experience, the establishment of experiment stations, the organization of graduate education, the generation of educated producers, the means to communicate, the founding of a society and journal and the innovation of industry organizations. The chronological presentation shows the interdependency.

This saga of adventure into the unknown, both the current and the past, needs to be a part of each educated animal scientist or professional. Being a current technician of the age, without the perspective of the past to create the future, is simply not enough. The thesis has been that understanding, even our recent heritage, may facet our diamond to opportunities of a rainbow dimension not yet comprehended as possible!

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¹Journal Paper No. J-11954 of the Iowa Agr. And Home Econ. Exp. Sta., Ames. Project No. 2000. Keynote address at 77th Annu. Meet. of the Amer. Soc. of Ani. Sci., Univ. of Georgia, Athens (1985).
²The author appreciates the reviews given this paper by the Section Editors. They were L. L. Anderson, Physiology and Endocrinology; R. M. Koch, Breeding and Genetics; B. B. Marsh, Meat Science; T. S. Fumsey, Ruminant Nutrition; and R. C. Wahlstrom, Nonruminant Nutrition. The author thanks C. B. Bailey, Editor-in-Chief, for his interest and for sending the paper to reviwers in our disciplines. All the errors and omissions still belong to the author who appreciates the opportunity to express his love for animal science in a style not really appropriate for our journal. Appreciation goes to I. T. Omtvedt, Past-President, for the opportunity.
³Anim. Sci. Dept.

Received July 17, 1985.
Accepted September 23, 1985.

©J. Anim. Sci. 1986. 62:1742-1758.

©Department of Animal Science, Iowa State University. All rights reserved.

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