CHARACTERISTICS OF AYRSHIRE CATTLE.*

BY SANFORD HOWARD,

SECRETARY OF THE MICHIGAN STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE.

The leading cattle-breeders of Britain have of late years, for the most part, aimed to establish in their stock some particular property in a high degree-beef or milk, according to circumstances, being the leading object. Hence it has occurred that British cattle have latterly been classed under the heads of "beef breeds" and "milk breeds." Prominent among the latter is the Ayrshire breed, which originated in the county of Ayr, Scotland, and within the last fifty years has been disseminated over every part of that country where dairying is much practiced.

The breed has also been established in the north of Ireland, forming in several counties the leading stock. A great number of the cows are annually taken into various districts of England, while in several countries of continental Europe the breed has been introduced, and is propagated with care.

It has also been introduced into the United States and the British provinces of North America, and, at the present time, is probably more extensively kept as a dairy breed than any other in the world.

Importations of Ayrshire cattle into this country were made upwards of twenty years ago, but the animals were neither numerous nor generally in the hands of persons who took much pains to increase them. It was not, therefore, until a comparatively late day that the Ayrshires were much known here, or that specimens were sufficiently numerous to indicate the permanent establishment of the breed in this country.

*From the Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1863.

A few remarks in regard to the origin of this valuable breed of cattle, in connection with their comparative value for dairy purposes, may not be out of place.

It is evident that the modern Ayrshire breed presents a wide contrast to that which occupied the western portion of Scotland many years ago.

Aiton, in his “Dairy Husbandry," speaks of the cattle which occupied Ayrshire fifty years before the time when he wrote (1806) as follows: "The cows kept in the districts of Kyle and Cunningham (districts of Ayrshire) were of a diminutive size, ill-fed, ill-shaped, and yielded but a scanty return in milk; they were mostly of a black color, with stripes of white along the chine or ridge of their backs, about their flanks, and on their faces; their horns were high and crooked; their pile [hair] was coarse and open, and few of them yielded more than three or four Scotch pints [six to eight wine quarts] of milk a day."

A comparison of these points with those presented by the present breed of Ayrshire cattle renders probable the conclusion of Youatt, that the present stock could not have arisen entirely from the old. It follows, therefore, that the modern breed, like various other valuable breeds of domestic animals, originated in crossing. The question as to the breeds from which it was derived will be briefly considered.

Various accounts represent that the Earl of Marchmont, some time between 1724 and 1740, introduced to his estates in Berwickshire some cattle, conjectured (their history was not positively known) to be of the Holderness or Teeswater breed, and that not long afterwards some of the stock was carried to estates belonging to the same nobleman in that part of Ayrshire called Kyle.

But it is not improbable that the chief nucleus of the improved breed was the "Dunlop stock," so-called, which appears to have been possessed by a distinguished family by the name of Dunlop, in the Cunningham district of Ayrshire, as early as 1780. This stock was derived, at least in part, from animals imported from Holland.