Bakewell, Robert

Robert Bakewell, (born 1725, Dishley, Leicestershire, England—died October 1, 1795, Dishley), agriculturist who revolutionized sheep and cattle breeding in England by methodical selection, inbreeding, and culling. Bakewell made his farm famous as a model of scientific management, and many of his methods are still commonly practiced today.

As a young man, Bakewell traveled throughout England and Europe to learn agricultural techniques and then returned to his father’s 178-hectare (440-acre) farm at Dishley to serve as his apprentice. Upon his father’s death in 1760, he inherited the family farm and began to innovate breeding techniques. Unlike his contemporaries, he separated his male and female livestock to prevent random breeding. He developed an “in-and-in” method in which desirable traits were exaggerated by inbreeding and individuals with undesireable traits were culled (removed) from the breeding populations. He also pioneered the large-scale use of letting animals for stud.

Bakewell was one of the first farmers to breed both sheep and cattle for meat instead of primarily for wool or work. He developed the Leicestershire longhorn cattle, which were good meat producers but poor suppliers of milk and were later supplanted by the shorthorns bred by his apprentice Charles Colling. Bakewell also developed the Leicester sheep, a barrel-shaped animal that produced long coarse wool and also provided a good yield of high-quality fatty meat, though these sheep eventually lost their popularity because of changes in taste in meat.