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VI. AGRICULTURE AND CATTLE-BREEDING OF SWEDEN.
Some time after 1830, Alexis Noring returned to Sweden after having speut
many years in England in the study of farming and the breeding of domestic
animals. He described English conditions with all the warmth of youth, and he
succeeded in interesting several landed proprietors of Southern Sweden in an
improved system of breeding domestic animals. A pretty large number of animals,
and amongst them several breeds of cattle, were purchased by Noring from abroad,
chiefly for estates in Skåne.
In general, the opinion was held that Swedish cattle, in order to get larger
and more milk-giving, should be crossed with foreign breeds, and several fine
stocks (»estate-breeds») were produced both in Southern and in Central Sweden, as
the result of the importations during the preceding century, and of carefully
directed breeding. Interest in the matter was still kept up by private farmers,
and material for improvement of their breeds was sought for in England and
along the coasts of the North Sea, from Jutland to Holland.
Cow of the red-and-white Swedish race.
It was not until 1844 that the Government powerfully intervened in order to
improve Swedish cattle-breeding, when the Riksdag voted 105,000 kronor for the
purchase of breeders, which were to be stationed on suitable estates and form
stock-breeding farms, from which breeders should be sold to private farmers. In
accordance with the then prevalent taste for foreign animals, eight stock-herds were bought,
viz., four of the Ayrshire, two of the Pembroke, one of the Voigtland, and one of
the Algau breed, each herd consisting of 20 cows and 2 bulls, which were placed each
in its special district. Curiously enongh, no stock-breeding farm of Swedish animals
was established. From 1859/67, the Government gave a further grant of about 100,000
kronor for the purchase of good breeders and for the establishment of such
stock-farms, but, in spite of that, these farms began to decrease, so that the last were
broken up and the animals sold, in 1871. The breeds imported had shown
themselves, with the exception of the Ayrshires, unsuitable to Swedish conditions, and
sickness bad appeared, too, amongst animals of the breed just mentioned. In 1861,
a breeding-stock of short-liorns was established at Alnarp, which is still existing.
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