What is a gorgeous cow? There is not any scarcity of standards for comparing this high quality: the revel in and revel in of every breeder, development in genetics this is an increasing number of interfering with the day-to-day lifetime of farms and, in fact, the “beauty of cows”, those morphological options that construction the canon of every breed. On the intersection of most of these questions, the query of the wonderful thing about farm animals after all remains to be a supply of unending discussions.
What makes a cow stunning? For a walker lingering at the fringe of a meadow, it may be an indication of the person who will likely be dearest, who will meet him and remind him of the images he noticed in youngsters’s books. For the artist, the cow should have stunning shapes, coat and spots with well-defined colours. However for technicians, veterinarians, and particularly breeders, it’s a lot more than that. They’ll additionally discuss within the plural about “the beauties of cows.” »
The outcome
“Beauties” make up the checklist of animal analysis standards used throughout scoring. This visible evaluation of the animal’s morphology is in accordance with a number of dozen measurements or observations that offer data at the animal’s doable no longer most effective with regards to milk manufacturing but additionally well being. So, for instance, the attitude that the hock makes with the bottom is crucial criterion as a result of a nasty attitude places the cow liable to lameness, which is able to scale back its mobility, which is necessary for animals that graze very often.
Scoring is the process of farm council technicians who cross from farm to farm and lend a hand breeders choose their animals. Due to this fact, the technical and financial apply of settling on the most efficient cows is specialised. However it’s also the apply of the breeders themselves who need to regulate the composition in their herds. Demonstration may be enthusiastically practiced in secondary agricultural colleges the place it’s taught in a methodical means. Scholars, long term breeders, commit themselves to this with excitement and exuberance, particularly as it is a part of skilled excellence.
Divisional finals of the issues pageant for highschool scholars of agriculture from the Atlantic Pyrenees.
There also are contests for younger tips that may decide essentially the most competent. In spite of everything, this scoring apply may be carried out spectacularly at competitions, native agricultural fairs that convey in combination all of the career: judges – famend breeders – award prizes. The featured cows are sparsely groomed to seem their perfect. Prize-winning animals can then proceed their careers thru different occasions, essentially the most prestigious of which is clearly the World Agricultural Display in Paris.
Montbeliardes pageant on the World Agricultural Truthful in Paris 2022.
Those 3 collectives – younger scorekeepers, technicians, pageant judges – and their practices display the varied nature of scoring: an task this is concurrently technical, social and symbolic. Its implementation brings them nearer in combination within the specifics of the farm or throughout public occasions, such a lot of alternatives to switch “talks about work” between colleagues and in a solemn means: “We have to be ahead of the breed, it is our job, our identity” affirms the breeder from Franche-Comté on this regard.
On this area, one breed of cow has been in particular researched: the Montbéliard. Its milk is used within the manufacturing of a number of managed starting place cheeses comparable to Comte. Its historical past is anchored within the Jura massif, the place its silhouette is iconic: a white “pie rouge” get dressed with purple and brown. White head, purple ears, her shapes are soothing and harmonious, “she is a seductress”, guarantee some breeders. The rating then stays a witness to a collective dynamic through which the confusion between skilled abilities, career and enjoyment can’t be resolved. This is a tradition this is enriched and reworked in line with revel in, accrued wisdom to advance the genetic development of a race, to harmonize it with modernity, whilst ultimate devoted to its historical past.
Calf of Montbéliard painted by way of Gustave Courbet in 1873 at Chassance Saint-Denis, in Doux, the dep. of starting place of the artist. Maltaper/Wikimedia, CC BI Variety
In dairy farming, for the reason that the extent of lactation is said to replica, cows are inseminated often, preferably annually and most commonly artificially. Because of this, the herd has a lot of younger animals and no longer they all will have the ability to keep at the farm. If the men promote briefly, the collection of ladies is extra refined. Breeders subsequently kind their animals frequently following complicated choices which might be anchored each within the historical past of human households and within the historical past of animal lineages.
Within the post-war length, with the improvement of quantitative genetics, variety was once in accordance with the buildup of tracking and tracking knowledge on animals with regards to their manufacturing and well being. This made it imaginable to spot excellent breeding inventory, bulls that might result in top efficiency strains. This additionally concerned the analysis of progeny and subsequently the choice of knowledge, which was once the duty of the departmental variety cooperatives that had an area monopoly on breed control.
This panorama modified utterly originally of our century. That is one thing little is understood about, however because the early 2010s, the selection of pets has modified radically. Because of the interpreting of DNA, genomics inherited the achievements of quantitative statistics. It now lets in the collection of younger ladies from delivery, striving to fulfill the expanding selection of demanding situations confronted by way of fashionable breeding. Whilst till now the indexes focused milk manufacturing, useful traits and morphological traits, it’s now imaginable – or quickly would be the case – to signify the absence of horns, milk curdiness, pathologies associated with erections, decrease greenhouse gasoline emissions, warmth resistance, and so forth.
All spaces of farming appear to be suffering from those advances: animal well being and welfare, their adaptation to much less managed and extra various environments, lowering environmental affect, bettering the well being high quality of meals merchandise, and so forth. Now it might be imaginable to spot, from delivery, the possibility of an animal and subsequently point out to the breeder which animals to introduce into the herd.
At the side of this technical alternate, the French interpretation of Eu regulation on loose pageant ended in the dissolution of breeding cooperatives in prefer of personal corporations that now promote sperm doses, but additionally genotyping knowledge. As a result of with the intention to signify the animals, they want as a lot knowledge as imaginable from the farms. Breeders thus turn out to be each customers of semen estimates and doses, but additionally suppliers of knowledge. The visible analysis of the animal – the scoring – not stays related as a judgment in regards to the animal to be decided on, however because the manufacturing of knowledge in a obscure classification procedure by way of personal corporations.
To practice this innovation, a long-term college investigation started in 2014 at the control of the Montbéliard breed within the Jura massif. However whilst the investigation was once meant to concentrate on the primary technical-scientific achievements of variety with the assistance of markers (SAM), it was once seen that breeders and technicians continuously combine, in obvious dysfunction, calculations, reflections, recollections, impacts, and so forth.
Choice of the cow
All of those dimensions are visual as breeders input the barn, step out into the meadow to realize the animals of their presence, or connect to agricultural giant knowledge and the a couple of data they make available thru displays. Are breeders aligning with the suggestions of those virtual equipment? The technical guide’s query means that the solution to this query has no longer but been written:
“What makes you happy, your decisions… It shouldn’t be an algorithm that makes your decisions, that makes you keep a cow or not… But we’re not far from that, aren’t we? And I don’t agree with that… An algorithm can help you… But if it’s this cow that you like… Because she’s the one who takes the herd… and she gives you the herd without any problem. You milk her and you just like her… Ah, so you keep her…”
As a result of variety stays basically a person topic performed by way of every breeder with the intention to stay the cow “in good condition”. Searching for that “very good” or “very beautiful” one, they stubbornly seek for the pictures of cows of their heads.
As a result of breeding is a career on the middle of which there are a number of tactics to paintings and stand in and out every herd there are other profiles of animals that may be liked or no longer. There’s in fact a pacesetter, unbiased or pleasant. There are the ones whose lineages are identified and “who are part of the human and animal family.” Those that aren’t mentioned, who stroll properly to the meadow and are in a position to evolve to the to be had sources, the vagaries of grass enlargement. The stony meadows of the Haut-Jure require sturdy legs and a large muzzle for grazing. In fact, there are the ones whose coat and form correspond to the perfect of the breed.
Throughout the variety performed by way of the breeders, the useful (excellent cow) and the classy (stunning cow) can’t be separated, they’re on the center of the emotion that the animal supplies for paintings: “Well, there are some who always come close to the “montbeljarde” standard, good udder, good body, etc. they are not like that. But then, they don’t have flaws… well…”, assesses one breeder.
They’re then the entire extra stunning as a result of they’ve extra qualities that some distance exceed the scoring standards, as a result of they know that they’ve been selected and will thus specific their company. This time period, denoting the facility to behave, does no longer observe solely to people. Company may be no longer a person high quality, disbursed a priori, it’s woven into eventualities and relationships. Within the Jura massif, there are breeders who “feel like breeders” and cows who “know they are cows”. They paintings in combination improvisationally in addition to over the years. “Staying in touch with the animal, this connection with each of our cows, because they are all different, which means that every day is different and tells our story,” underlines the breeder on Fb within the Montbéliard Lovers team.
Which cow for the next day to come?
Genomics permits variety from delivery: greater than higher high quality, it’s an extra acceleration. That is in accordance with a virtual device that itself is dependent upon considerable knowledge assortment from growers. All this confirms that the race is a commonplace excellent: it exists and is progressed most effective throughout the participation of all. However its control is now privatized. Growers as of late are customers and are not actors of collective control.
As for the choice itself, the concrete alternatives of the breeders to construct and repair their herds, does it no longer generally tend to exchange their very own judgments which we see are based totally no longer most effective at the reasoning of potency but additionally on a symbolic, emotional, relational good judgment that interprets into the aesthetics of the cow, the nice and the pretty?
Let’s transfer on, Elevating Montbéliard… Between Interest and Animal Manufacturing, Katarin Mouzeneau, foreword by way of Bernard Iber and drawings by way of Gilles Gaillard, Cardere Editur, September 2025.
