42 WILD WHITE CATTLE 



is kept to guarantee no lack of sires, he is sometimes four 

 years old before being put to breed. Fights of a savage 

 character take place from time to time among the spare bulls, 

 which are kept apart from the other cattle. Two animals 

 died of injuries received in one of those melees which occurred 

 in January 1904. Some old bulls have a good covering of 

 curly or wavy hair on the forehead, the neck, and the front 

 of the shoulders, like the Chillingham bull shot by His present 

 Majesty when he was Prince of Wales, and the white Welsh 

 bull in. Plate XLIII. Blackleg is a scourge of the Cadzow 

 Park herd four one-year-olds having died in 1900. The wet 

 spots that form when the roofs of old mine-workings under- 

 neath fall in cannot fail to be a source of undesirable germ 

 and parasitic infection to the cattle. The application in 1897 

 of 130 tons of lime to a few acres of high dry land has, it is 

 thought, tended to increase the strength of bone in the herd 

 and make them healthier. The draining of the land and the 

 destruction of the rabbits have also been beneficial. 



Chillingham and Vaynol Crosses. For the purpose of 

 infusing new blood, a Chillingham bull was introduced at 

 Hamilton in 1886, and put to a selected number of cows. 

 The products of the cross showed points of great interest to 

 breeders of stock. Of six calves, the first product of this con- 

 nection, four were almost pure white. In place of the black 

 or the red markings of their parents, they had extremely 

 small fringes of coloured hairs, not more than a quarter of 

 an inch broad on the tips of the ears. These four animals 

 were in consequence destroyed as unsatisfactory. 1 One of 

 the two remaining had black points, and the other red 

 points like the sire. In the following year, 1888, two 

 well-marked bull calves were produced, and they immedi- 

 ately exercised a salutary influence on the herd. So 

 successful was the result that in 1891 all the cows, nine- 

 teen in number, were put to a half-bred Chillingham bull. 

 Fifteen calves were born of this union, but only six possessed 

 the characteristic markings of the Hamilton breed. Of the 

 remainder, eight were white, or nearly so, and one was all 



1 The defective udders (blind quarters), not uncommon in the herd, 

 are due to inflammation resulting from "stocking" of the udders, as 

 badly-marked calves are shot early in the season, when their mothers are 

 in full milk. 



