Returning the compliment

Press, 5 August 1977, Page 17

Returning the compliment

By

Phyllis Kerr

Reports last week in both “The Press” and “Timaru Herald” tell of a New Zealand Angus bull being sold to Scotland — the first time ever that such a transaction has been made.

An Indian legend says that “the ox was the first animal created by the three kinds of gods who were directed by the Supreme Lord to furnish the earth with animated beings.” At any rate those progenitors of all our domestic cattle — the wild urus of prehistory — do seem to have been ' concentrated in Central Asia, possibly India. They spread west, so archaeologists tell, during an inter-glacial period and appeared in Central Europe. Drawings on rocks and on ancient pottery indicate that man and his cattle were in close contact in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein about 4000 BC. From Europe the British Isles received subspecies; and in the nineteeth century, with emigration not confined to people, cattle spread even to New Zealand.

Angus first came in 1863, imported from Scotland by the Australia and New Zealand Land Company for the purpose of upgrading for beef the cattle, mostly Shorthorns, already here. The breed was not chosen at random, but because of its great ability to thrive well in harsh winters and hot summers, and to assist in the breaking in of rough country. The sale of that Angus bull from South Canterbury to the Scottish Milk Marketing Board proves that New Zealand breeders over many years have

brought the breed up to a standard as high as any in the world, for it was chosen by the chairman of the board in his search for the best he could buy for use in the renowned cattle breeding centre in South Barr in Ayrshire.

I wonder if many New Zealand breeders of latter years in this highly competitive business give a thought to the origin of the breed in its ancestral home, or to those men who first practised crossbreeding for a particular purpose. In England around 1780 Robert Bakewell was the first great cross-breeder in cattle as he was in sheep, and men everywhere (and in this particular case Scotland) profited by his methods of progeny testing, of selection and of gentle handling. Polled cattle have been found sculptured on ancient stones in the north-east of Scotland, and black hornless beasts are recorded as living there in the middle of the ninth century. Be that as it may, there seemed to be more polled and black animals in the cattle of the lowland than of the highland districts, and the mingling of those local types into a new and fixed breed was motivated by two splendid cattlemen.

Hugh Watson, of Keillor in Angus, and William McCombie, of Tillyfour in Aberdeenshire, evolved the breed recognised by the Highland Society in 1835,

Watson became the tenant of Keillor Farm when he was only 19, bringing with him six cows and a bull, all of which were black and polled. Buying 10 more he developed a herd of black polled animals which brought him distinction as

a breeder, and over 500 prizes at livestock shows. He first called his cattle the Doddies; and Old Jock I, regarded as the grandfather of the breed, came from the very old "Keillor Doddies,” and he took first prize in the 1884 Highland Show. About the same time as Watson was winning prizes — mid nineteenth century — McCombie took his similarly developed stock to the Paris Agricultural Exhibitions, gaining further honours and publicity for the new breed. It was mainly from these two breeders that the first black polled cattle came to New Zealand in 1863.

The cows bred by McCombie showed on their registration papers such exciting names as “Minerva” and "Sunbeam,” but the bulls were unimaginatively “69” and "70.” A second shipment was better, for the bull was called “Blackleg” and the cows were "Sweet Grapes” and “Tillyfour Lass.”

New Zealand cattlemen, over a century, have practised the methods of those early Scottish men; and with modem ways of selection, insemination, and testing have continually improved Angus cattle. Now they can be justly proud that Scottish cattlemen of some consequence know they can come to faraway New Zealand, and there buy a bull equal to the best in the world.

Who knows how many pastures progeny of that Angus bull will grace, for his semen will be available world-wide. The smiling ghosts of Watson and McCombie could roam whereever those Black Polls graze, and to them in respect all cattlemen should doff their hats.