THE AYRSHIRE COW.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1108, 26 May 1893, Page 6

THE AYRSHIRE COW.

In a lecture by the editor of the Scottish Farmer on the Ayrshire cow some points in the history, of the breed were brought out which are not generally known, but which will be of interest to admiror3 of the breed. William Aiton's ' survey of Ayrshire ' has hitherto been considered the standard authority on the origin of the Ayrshire breed of cattle. In that work it is stated that outside crosses have done little or nothing to improve the breed. He states that it is in great measure the native breed improved in size, shape and quality by judicious selection, crossing and coupling, feeding and treatment, principally carried on by the inhabitants of Cunningham. The breed is first known to history as the Dunlop breed, and the oft quoted ad;ige, Kyle for a man Carrick for a coo, Cunningham for butter and cheese, And Galloway for 'oo. points to the existence of a superior dairy breed in Cunningham at a comparatively early time. It appears that about 1750 the Earl of Marchmount imported into Ayrshire several cows and a bull from Durham or Yorkshire which were of the Teeswater, otherwise Holderness, breed. These were brown and white in colour, the prevailing colour of some of the very best of the breed of the present day. They were therefore improved by the same breed of

cattle which formed the foundation of the modern Shorthorn. In Ayrshire, however, they were developed for milk, in Teeswater for beef. John Dunlop, of Dunlop, took some large cows into the district at the same time, or shortly after, believed to have been Dutch, Teeswater, or Lincoln. About 1769 Mr Orr, of Barrowfield, took from the vicinity of Glasgow some very fine cows of red and white colour, which were ingrafted on the stud at Ayr county. In 1790 Mr Fulton, of Beith, took many of the improved breed into Carrick, and Andrew Lusk took some as far south as Pinmore. Two vears earlier a Mr Ralston had established a herd of them in the parish of Kirkcolm in Wigtonshire, and thus it was that the breed became spread over such a large area as the south-west of Scotland.