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AFRICANDER
ALBÈRES
ALENTEJANA
AMERICAN
AMRICAN WHITE PARK
AMERIFAX
AMRIT MAHAL
ANATOLIAN BLACK
ANDALUSIAN BLACK
ANDALUSIAN GREY
ANGELN
ANGUS
ANKOLE
ANKOLE-WATUSI
ARGENTINE CRIOLLO
ASTURIAN MOUNTAIN
ASTURIAN VALLEY
AUBRAC
AULIE-ATA
AUS. BRAFORD
AUS. FRIESIAN SAHIWAL
AUS. LOWLINE
AUS. MILKING ZEBU
AYRSHIRE
BACHAUR
BALADI
BALTATA ROMANEASCA
BARKA
BARZONA
BAZADAIS
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ANGUS
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In the northeastern
part of Scotland
lie the four counties of Aberdeen, Banff, Kincardine,
and Angus.
These counties
touch the North Sea and all extend inland and have some
high or mountainous country.
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They have been favored through the ages
with a temperate climate and good crops, although the topography
of the country is rough. Pastures do well in the area because
of well-distributed rainfall.
Plenty of grass, plus a nearly ideal
temperature for cattle production, has made the area very suitable
for some of the greatest improvement that has been made in our
purebred breeds of cattle.
The county of Angus was early noted for
its production of potatoes, grain crops, and feed. This shire
contains a fine expanse of highly cultivated land known as Strathmore,
which is one of the very fine valleys in that part of Scotland
and which has become famous in the history of the Aberdeen-Angus
breed.
The county of Aberdeen is the most productive
agricultural region in Scotland and depends largely upon crops
and livestock for income. The fishing industry, however, is
stressed along the coastline. The tiny counties of Banff and
Kincardine have long been known as livestock centers.
Northern Scotland, although
in a more northern latitude than the United
States, has a more uniform temperature throughout the year.
The Gulf Steam tempers the climate in the winter, and the summers
remain cooler than weather commonly experienced in the United
States.
There are three distinct
and well-defined breeds of polled cattle in the United Kingdom.
These breeds are the Aberdeen-Angus, the Galloway,
and the red polled Norfolk and Suffolk breed that is found in
England.
Polled cattle apparently existed in Scotland
before recorded history because the likeness of such cattle
is found in prehistoric carvings of Aberdeen and Angus. Historians
state that there were hornless cattle in Siberia
centuries earlier.
A hornless race of cattle was depicted
in Egypt
by sculptors and painters of that ancient civilization. Some
historians feel that the Aberdeen-Angus breed and the other
Scottish breeds sprang from the aboriginal cattle of the country
and that the breeds as we find them today are indigenous to
the districts in which they are still found.
Early Scottish Cattle.
Although little is known about the early origin of the cattle
that later became known as the Aberdeen-Angus breed, it is thought
that the improvement of the original stock found in the area
began in the last half of the 18th century.
The cattle found in northern Scotland
were not of uniform color, and many of the cattle of the early
days had varied color markings or broken color patterns. Many
of the cattle were polled, but some few had horns. The characteristics
we commonly call polled was often referred to in the old Scottish
writings by the terms of "humble," "doddies," "humlies," or
"homyl."
Two strains were used in the formation
of what later became known s the Aberdeen-Angus breed of cattle.
In the county of Angus, cattle had existed for some time that
were known as Angus doddies.
MacDonald and Sinclair quote the Rev.
James Playfair as having written in 1797, "There are 1129 horned
cattle of all ages and sexes in the parish. I have no other
name to them; but many of them are dodded, wanting horns."
This seems to be the first authentic
reference to polled cattle in the county of Angus, apart from
ancient sculptures. In the area of Aberdeenshire, other polled
cattle were found and were called Buchan "humlies," Buchan being
the principal agricultural district in Aberdeenshire.
These cattle were apparently early valued
as work oxen, as were most of the other strains of cattle that
later acquired various breed names. MacDonald and Sinclair believed
that polled cattle were found in Aberdeen in the 16th
century, and stated: 2
The presence of polled cattle in
Aberdeenshire 400 years ago is proved beyond the shadow of
a doubt, and it may generally be taked for granted that they
were co-existent in various parts of northeastern Scotland,
their purity being contingent on the degree of care exercised
in breeding.
Improvement in Scottish Agriculture.
Apparently little attention was given to the breeding of cattle
before the middle of the 18th century, but in the
last half of that century, great progress was made in Scottish
agriculture.
It is not strange that, as farming practices
were improved, men likewise sought to improve the livestock
on their farms. It was only natural that breeders, in improving
their cattle, would but cattle of similar kinds from adjacent
areas, and as a result, the cattle of the Angus doddie strain
and the Buchan humlie strain were crossed.
Crossing and recrossing these strains
of cattle eventually led to a distinct breed that was not far
different from either type, since the two strains were originally
of rather similar type and color pattern.
The Early Herds.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the polled
cattle of the Buchan district had attained considerable favor
as market cattle for the production of carcass beef. Among the
polled herds of Aberdeenshire that were famous for such production
in the early 1800s were those of Messrs.
Williamson of St. John’s Wells and Robert
Walker of Wester Fintray. The Williamson herd later supplied
the herd of Tillyfour and, through it, the Ballindalloch herd
with some of their humlies.
In Angus, the herds of William Fullerton,
Lord Panmure, Lord Southesk, and Alexander Bowie contributed
many of the Angus doddies that later became prominent in the
breed. Robert Walker of Portlethen seems to have been the principal
cattle breeder in Kincardineshire.
The Contribution of Hugh Watson.
If any one person can be singled out as the founder of a breed
of livestock, Hugh Watson of Keillor, who lived in the vale
of Strathmore in Angus, is worthy of that distinction.
If not the first real improver of Aberdeen-Angus
cattle, he was certainly the most systematic and successful.
Both his father and grandfather had been buyers and breeders
of the Angus doddies.
The family is known to have owned cattle
as early as 1735. Hugh Watson was born in 1789 and, in 1808,
at the time he was 19 years of age, he became a tenant at Keillor.
When Hugh Watson started his farming
activities at Keillor, he received from his father’s herd six
of the best and blackest cows, as well as a bull.
That same summer, he visited some of
the leading Scottish cattle markets and purchased the 10 best
heifers and the best bull that he could find that showed characteristics
of the Angus cattle that he was striving to breed.
The females were of various colors, but
the bull was black; Watson decided that the color of his herd
should be black and he started selecting in that direction.
Mr. Watson’s favorite bull was Old Jock
126 (1), 3 who was awarded the number "1" in the
Herd Book at the time it was founded.
The bull was bred by Watson in 1842 and
was sired by Grey-Breasted Jock 113 (2). The bull apparently
was used very heavily in the herd from 1843 until 1852 and was
awarded the sweepstakes for bulls at the Highland Society Show
at Perth in 1852, when he was 11 years old.
A very famous cow
also made considerable history in the herd at Keillor. This
cow was Old Granny 125 (1), who was calved in 1824 and was killed
by lightning when past 35 years of age.
She is reported to have produced a total
of 29 calves, 11 of which were registered in the Herd Book.
A very large percentage of our living Aberdeen-Angus cattle
trace to either Old Granny or Old Jock, or both of these very
famous foundation animals, and most would trace many times if
their pedigrees were extended to the foundation of the breed.
Hugh Watson practiced
the fitting and showing of his cattle more than was common by
other breeders of his day. He made his first exhibition at the
Highland Agricultural Society Show at Perth in 1829.
During his long show career, he is said
to have won over 500 prizes with his cattle and did a great
deal to increase the popularity of the black polled cattle over
the British Isles.
Other Early Contributors.
Lord Panmure established a herd of polled cattle in 1835, and
not only operated a private herd but also encouraged his tenants
to breed good doddies.
William Fullerton, who was born in 1810,
began to breed cattle in 1833. His most important early purchase
was that of another Aberdeen cow named Black Meg. Black Meg
43 (766) is sometimes referred to as the founder of the breed,
since more cattle trace to her than to any other female used
in the origin of the breed. 4
She is the only cow to surpass Old Granny
in this respect. Robert Walker of Porlethen founded his herd
in 1818 and continued to breed cattle successfully until his
death in 1874.
Shorthorn
Breed Threatens the Aberdeen-Angus.
In 1810, the Colling brothers of England sold the famous Shorthorn
bull Comet at $5,000. The publicity resulting from this sale
naturally spread throughout Scotland, and many breeders looked
with favor upon the use of Shorthorn blood in improving the
native cattle.
Subsequently good herds of Shorthorn
cattle were established in Scotland, and the cattle were used
in the improvement of native stock. The use of the Shorthorn
cattle on the black native cows was a very common practice of
the period for the raising of commercial stock. This practice
of crossbreeding threatened the Aberdeen-Angus breed with extinction.
It is often suggested that
some Shorthorn blood found its way into the Aberdeen-Angus breed
prior to the time the Herd Book was closed. Alexander Keith, secretary
of the Aberdeen-Angus Cattle Society from 1944 to 1955, takes
exception to this opinion by writing:
The statement has been frequently
made that shorthorn blood was introduced into the Aberdeen-Angus
breed at an early stage of its existence.
There is no foundation whatever
for such a statement. The tribes from which the Aberdeen-Angus
breed were drawn were supplying England with beef cattle for
generations before what became the beef Shorthorn was taken
across the Border into Scotland and improved into what is
known as the Scotch Shorthorn.
Of the Aberdeen-Angus pioneers,
Hugh Watson had a certain number of Shorthorn cattle, but
it is quite evident from his won remarks and his insistence
upon the blackness of his Aberdeen-Angus cattle that he would
never have permitted mixing them.
And McCombie: when one or
two farmers introduced the Teeswater or Shorthorn breed into
his neighborhood he drove them out by completely dominating
the local shows with his Aberdeen-Angus black polls.
The feeling of the early
improvers of Aberdeen-Angus cattle may be gathered from the
fact that my own grandfather, who was one of McCombie’s friends
and associates, would not allow anything but a black beast
on his farm and in his old age when I was a young boy he would
insist that if I ever became a farmer and wished to be a successful
feeder of cattle I must stick rigidly to the Blacks.
Improvement
and Expansion of the Aberdeen-Angus
The Great Preserver.
William McCombie of Tillyfour is regarded as the preserver and
great improver of the Aberdeen-Angus breed. Fullerton and others
had started the blending of the two types of cattle, which later
became known as the Aberdeen-Angus, but this success was enlarged
at Tillyfour.
The master of Tillyfour was born in 1805
and died in the spring of 1880. Like his father before him,
he had been a successful dealer in cattle before he began his
operations in 1829 as a tenant farmer.
Mr. McCombie is distinguished in the
history of the Aberdeen-Angus breed because of his great foresight
in planning matings, his careful management, his unparalleled
success in the show ring, and in publicizing his famous cattle.
Probably his crowning success in the
show ring was at the great International Exposition held at
Paris in 1878. There he won the first prize of $500 as an exhibitor
of cattle from a foreign country and also the grand prize of
$500 for the best group of beef-producing animals bred by any
exhibitor.
Not only did Mr. McCombie show in breeding
classes but he also exhibited in steer classes at the market
shows. Probably the most famous steer that her produced was
the famous show animal Black prince, who won at the Birmingham
and Smithfield Shows in 1867 when he was four years of age.
From the latter show, he was taken to
Windsor Castle for the personal inspection of Queen Victoria,
and later her Majesty accepted some Christmas beef from the
carcass of the steer.
The English Crown has long been interested
in livestock improvement, and Queen Victoria paid a personal
visit to Tillyfour a year or two after the visit of the famous
Black prince to the castle.
Such a tribute to an outstanding breeder
naturally attracted great attention to the already famous herd.
McCombie had the further distinction of being the first tenant
farmer in Scotland to be elected to the House of Commons.
According
to the historian Sanders:
Aberdeen-Angus
history may fairly be divided into two periods; the first,
before William McCombie’s time; the second, since. That is
as good as any other way of saying that the Master of Tillyfour-recognized
cattle king of his day and generation in Aberdeen-Angusshire
and of all Scotland-stands a very colossus upon any canvas
which accurately portrays the original arrival of black cattle
as a factor of world importance in the field of prime beef
production.
William McCombie always
had utility in mind in producing his cattle, and his ideal beast
seems to have been one with size, symmetry, and balance, yet with
strength of constitution and disposition to accumulate flesh.
Important Developments at Tillyfour.
Although his original stock was gathered from many sources and
his purchases were many, Mr. McCombie’s outstanding acquisition
was probably the good yearling heifer Queen Mother 41 (348) at
the Ardestie Sale.
Mr. McCombie purchased the bull
Hanton 80 (228), calved in 1853, from the breeder Alexander
Bowie. This bull was a grandson of Old Jock 126 (1) and was
said to have weighed a ton at maturity. Despite the fact that
he had scurs, he was a great show bull and was exhibited widely
by Me. McCombie.
The bull’s success, however, was more
pronounced in the breeding pen, and he probably made his greatest
contribution to the breed through his double grandson, Black
Prince of Tillyfour 77 (366), calved in 1860.
Few, if any, cattle of the breed are
living today that do not trace at least a dozen times to Black
Prince of Tillyfour. It is difficult to say how much contribution
Mr. McCombie made to the Aberdeen-
Angus breed through his successes in
the show ring, but he outstripped all of his competition in
England, Scotland, and France. Consequently, the name of Aberdeen-Angus
became known on an international basis.
It was on the farm of William McCombie
that the Aberdeen-Angus breed really took shape, because prior
to his time, people spoke of the cattle as Aberdeen and Angus.
In his herd was found the justification
for leaving out the "and" and replacing it with the hyphen that
has become familiar. At Tillyfour, the master breeder molded
the two original strains into one improved breed superior to
either of its components.
There is no question but that the "preserver"
of the Angus breed left the breed far better than he found it.
The Ballindalloch Herd.
Another very famous Aberdeen-Angus herd in Scotland was that of
Ballindalloch, but the origin of this herd is lost in the mists
of antiquity. It was probably first founded by Sir John MacPherson
Grant, but it was not until the time the farm came into the hands
of Sir George, a son, that systematic breeding was started. Sir
George drew heavily on Tillyfour cattle in establishing his herd.
It was very fortunate for the breed
that the Ballindalloch herd was kept in the family for over
three generations. The main herd was dispersed on August 8,
1934, but it had already left a great imprint on the Aberdeen-Angus
world.
Not only was the Ballindalloch herd the
outstanding herd in Scotland but it mush also be given credit
for having furnished a great deal of very valuable foundation
stock to the herds of the United States and other foreign countries.
The First Angus In America.
When George Grant transported four Angus bulls from Scotland
to the middle of the Kansas prairie in 1873, they were part
of the Scotsman's dream to found a colony of wealthy, stock-raising
Britishers.
Grant died five years later, and many
of the settlers at his Victoria, Kansas colony later returned
to their homeland. However, these four Angus bulls, probably
from the herd of George Brown of Westertown, Fochabers, Scotland,
made a lasting impression on the U.S. cattle industry.
When two of the George Grant bulls were
exhibited in the fall of 1873 at the Kansas City (Missouri)
Livestock Exposition, some considered them "freaks" because
of their polled (naturally hornless) heads and solid black color
(Shorthorns were then the dominant breed.) Grant, a forward
thinker, crossed the bulls with native Texas longhorn cows,
producing a large number of hornless black calves that survived
well on the winter range.
The Angus crosses wintered better and
weighed more the next spring, the first demonstration of the
breed's value in their new homeland.
Early Importers and Breeders.
The first great herds of Angus beef cattle in America were built
up by purchasing stock directly from Scotland. Twelve hundred
cattle alone were imported, mostly to the Midwest, in a period
of explosive growth between 1878 and 1883 .
Over the next quarter of a century these
early owners, in turn, helped start other herds by breeding,
showing, and selling their registered stock.
Angus Breed Associations and Registries
Briggs, H.M. & D.M. Briggs. Modern
Breeds of Livestock. Fourth Edition. Macmillan Publishing
Co. 1980 (reprinted with permission from Dr. Briggs).
American Angus Association, 3201 Frederick
Avenue, St. Joseph, MO 64506 Phone: (816) 383-5100
American Angus Association, 3201 Frederick
Blvd., St. Joseph, MO 64506. Phone: (816) 383-5100
Copyright © 1997,
2002. Oklahoma State University Board of Regents. All rights reserved.
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BÉARNAIS
BEEFALO
BEEFMAKER
BEEFMASTER
BELARUS RED
BELGIAN BLUE
BELGIAN RED
BELMONT ADAPTAUR
BELMONT RED
BELTED GALLOWAY
BENGALI
BERRENDAS
BHAGNARI
BLACK.S. TRONDHEIM
BLACKSIDED NORLAND
BLANCA CACEREÑA
BLANCO OREJINEGRO
BLONDE D'AQUITAINE
BONSMARA
BORAN
BORDELAIS
BRAFORD
BRAHMAN
BRAHMOUSIN
BRANGUS
BRAUNVIEH
BRITISH WHITE
BROWN SWISS
BUSA
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