COMING OF LINCOLN REDS.

Waipa Post, Volume II, Issue 77, 16 January 1912, Page 4

COMING OF LINCOLN REDS.

A NEW DAIRY COW. At the recent Waikato spring show Mr Wm. Taylor, of " Green Hill," Te Awamutu, sprung a surprise on farmers with a breed of cows new to the Dominion. Mr Taylor is one of the foremost breeders of dairy Shorthorns in the Waikato, and, writes ' G.F.C in an exchange, it was perhaps natural that he should herald into local public knowledge a breed closely related to his beloved Shorthorns, for the Lincoln Reds are, properly speaking, Lincolnshire Red Shorthorns. Lincolnshire is, as is well known, the leading agricultural county of Great Britain. In tracing the origin of this breed, which, he considers, will probably be much heard of in Australia and New Zealand in the future, the writer says : Away back in 55 8.C., Julius Caesar found that the original cattle of Britain, Bros Lonpiforous, were in great numbers. At a later period these were crossed with a type of cattle resembling in some degree the Shorthorn of to-day, though much coarser, and possessing only a short period of lactation. This breed was the Bros Urus, imported by the farmers °f Jutland (now Denmark), Holstein, and Friesland, between 440 A.D and 650 A.D., on the occasion of one of their famous raids in Britain. Coming in the guise of soldiers, these Norsemen brought also their families and all the nece saries for setting up their new homes in a strange country. An improved system of farming followed their advent, with the emergence of cattle considerably larger than the original rather stumpy breed of the .Britons. From this first cross, and from the Bos Urus, are decended the British cattle breeds of the present day. The counties of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire began, even at this early period, to be the home of good breeds of cattle. An early writer, Gervaise Markham, described the Lincolnshire cattle in 1695 as being generally " pyde, with more white than the other colours,; theirhorns little and crooked, of bodies exceeding tail, long and large, lean and thin-thighed, .strong-hoVed, not apt to sorbate, and are indeed fitted to labour and draught." In many places Shorthorns are called " Dutch cows," from the fact that a .number of importations on a small scale were made from Holland about the year 1785; but these were only additions to the original Shorthorn stock of Lincolnshire. These importations, however, caused a considerable improvement in type and in cattle breeding generally. Cully, in his observations of live stock, written at this time says: " In Lincolnshire, which is the furtherest south that one meets with any number of this breed of cattle, they are , in general more subject to Iyer, or black flesh than those bred further north; and in that part of Yorkshire called Holderness, they are much the same as those of which we have been speaking." At a later date, in 1792, this writer mentions his pleasure in finding that Lincolnshire farmers had improved the breed of their Shorthorns considerably by the judicious use of good bulls and heifers from York and from Durham. These counties at that time held the palm tor the best types of cattle. While the Dutch people must be credited with the improvement of the Shorthorn breed, the origin of the Shorthorn came probably from a cross between the original Bos Longiforous of Britain and those cattle introduced by the conquering ■ Norsemen. To the Dutch, however, is due to a large extent the increase in the productivity of the Shorthorn as a milker. A real improvement in Lincolnshire cattle began about 1775. Then great unwieldly animals, slow to fatten, they came under the influence of famous breeders named Colling and Turnell. The deep cherry-red colour of this breed was acquired by Mr Turnell. His object, however, appears not to have been the increase of the milking qualities, but to make for quicker powers of fattening and a better quality joint of meat. The very large size of the animals was also somewhat reduced. A notable touch of the great Colling strain was brought into Lincolnshire when Mr Grant, of Wyham. gave 210 guineas for the cow Laura, by favourite, out of Lady Maynard, which was the real stem of the Shorthorn type as it is to-day. The crossing of the Turnell and Colling cattle continued, and 140 guineas was pUld for a bull named Favourite, said to have been the best bull in his day—about 1818. From a pedigree sale at Chilton, in Durham, further bunches of stock were transported into Lincolnshire, one bull, Childers, costing 225 guineas. The famous Torr herd at'Avlesbury, in North Lincolnshire, averaged in 1875 the amazing price of £5lO 19s per head for a herd of 84. - As a contemporary writer puts it, " This stands as a. landmark in Shorthorn history. The Lincolnshire Reds passed I through further generations of I famous breeders, and thus, i.t |

must be admitted, they have a very fine pedigree to their credit. The type and colour of the breed were gradually within the county of Lincoln. Coates's Herd Book, started at this time, was almost entirely avoided by breeders; but by an occasional use of the animals registered in this with red bulls, they brought into being an out-cross, which became a distinct breed of Red Shorthorns. This sub-breed, or out-cross, was, they claimed, possessed of greater hardiness and thriftiness, and of capacities for eai'lier maturity and quick fattening, with better milking qualities than the parent breed. So popular did the new breed become, that of the cattle bred in Lincolnshire at the present time 98 per cent, are Red Shorthorns. Some of these are unregistered, but many are entered in the Herd Book of the Lincolnshire Red Shorthorn Society. The breed are claimed to be the ideal cattle for the small farmer. In their native county the extreme rigour of the winters they have had to face has played Nature's inexorable law in weeding out all but the very fittest and strongest, Not stalled, like most cattle at Home, they have had to spend their winters in the yards of folds, with hut scanty protection: living on barley straw an a few turnips, and exposed to the coldest of winds and the wettest of weather, They are turned out about the middle of April, to get their own living, with the result that the weaklings inevitr ably go under. In summer they must get much of their drinking water from stagnant ponds'' For over a hunbred years the Red Lincolns have been undergoing the ordeal of such conditions, and they have emerged hard as nails, strong as bullocks, and copious milk yielders. They flesh a little, but do not fatten during the milking season. At 7}/z years old (in England) grassfed steers of this breed may be relied upon to yield from 8 to 10 cwt. of prime beef; and stall-fed cattle up to 24 cwt. Wise selection and right handling will assist in a further development of the great milking qualities of this breed; a fact proven by the remarkable success of Mr John Evens in the leading milking trials of'England and Ireland, where he beat all other breeds with his Lincoln Reds. It is therefore claimed on good auinority that the reputation of this breed as dual-purpose cattle is well-established; for its steers excel in beef production, and its cows in milk and butterfat.

The spread of the Lilco'n Red has been very marked. Besides being practically the only breed used in its native country, there are registered herds in fifteen other counties of, England, and in County Down, Ireland. All the principal butter-making counties of Europe have been importing these animals for years, and each year more and more of them are being sent to South Africa and Brazil. In 1907 a Lilcoln Red bull won the championship against all comers at the Bloemfontein Show. In 1908 H. D. Livingstone, of Mullumbimby, showed his Lincoln Red bull at the New South Wales Show (The Sydney Royal). It carried off first prize for bull shown with three of its progeny; first for best bull to get stock for dairy purposes; champion Durham bull, and Grand Championship for the best bull of any breed, on the show ground. Case after case could be cited where Lincoln Reds have won prizes of great merit, and have been sold at very high figures indeed. In 1895, for instance, the Lincolnshire red Shorthorn Association sold 2630 bulls for £66,470 18s, or an average of £25 5s Bd. In 1909, 238 bulls were sold at an average of £2B 6s 6d; one of these, Dunsby Red 111, realising 165 guineas. Another bull, Scamton Goldreef, was bought by Mr Cockbain, in 1906, for no less than 305 guineas The highest price paid for a Lincoln Red bull to date is £IOOO.