Technology Adaptation: Agricultural Revolution in 17th–19th-Century Britain 279Although his farm was 180 hectares in size and supported 400 sheep, 150 cattle
and 60 horses, it was too small to obtain verifiable results for his breeding. He
therefore adopted a system of hiring out the best quality males for a season to other
farmers, thus transferring genetic material to another herd. To begin with he was
ridiculed, and the first ram commanded fees of only 16 shillings in 1760. But the
demand for his animals grew as word spread of their attributes, and by 1784 his
best rams were fetching a fee of £105 per season. Bakewell could now study the
performance of the progeny of these males in herds and flocks of different genetic
mixes. But to ensure that the replications were comparable he set strict conditions
on each lease to ensure that feeding was natural and not forced. The effect of this
system was to spread and extend new stock, whilst allowing him to conduct and
monitor experiments on a nationwide scale.
But not all breeders were concerned solely with increased meat output. Sheep
flock managers on the Wessex downs wanted economic feeding, mobile sheep that
were good ‘manure carriers’ (Bowie, 1990). In this Hampshire Custom system of
Source: Arthur Biddell. Work Book No. 2. 1812–1816. ESCRO HA2/B2/1B
Figure 12.2 Experimental layout to ascertain whether wheat yields are better when
‘holes thick and seeds thin’ or vice versa. Part of Stock Hill Field, farm of Arthur
Biddell at Playford, Suffolk, 1813. Previous crop was clover ley. Reproduced from
Work Book No. 2.