144 CATTLE BELTED AND WHITE WELSH 



Black Welsh cattle are improving rapidly with the 

 greater care devoted to their selection, breeding, and feed- 

 ing. They have begun to be appreciated in America, and, 

 on account of their great wealth of constitution, will no doubt 

 grow in favour. American ranchers have been taught a 

 severe lesson by the death of immense numbers of their 

 cattle, and have been shown the absurdity of breeding on 

 the exposed prairies of the Far West stock that is too fine 

 and too soft. Had they been fortunate enough to select 

 Herefords (which they have in the end largely adopted), 

 Welsh, Galloway, or Highland cattle, and been contented to 

 manufacture beef at a slower but surer rate, they might 

 have saved themselves the serious consequences of early 

 disaster. 



White Belted or sheeted Welsh cattle on the common 

 black or the equally characteristic red of the cattle of the 

 Principality appear in certain districts of North Wales. 

 Little is known of their origin, but it is believed that about 

 the beginning of the nineteenth century Sir Robert Vaughan 

 of Vannan, Merionethshire, imported some cattle, probably 

 Holsteins, with a view to the improvement of the native 

 stock. There is also a tradition that about the seventies of 

 last century two belted cows were brought over to Anglesey 

 from France. During the last decade of the century, Wm. 

 Lester Smith, acting for Lord Penrhyn, collected a number of 

 the best black and white specimens of the variety, formed the 

 Herd now (1906) numbering upwards of 100 head at the 

 Home Farm, Penrhyn Castle, Bangor. At first "a few of the 

 calves came wholly black, a few without a complete belt, and 

 a few with the white extending over almost the whole body," 

 but only those properly marked were kept for breeding. 

 The herd is purely Welsh, showing the typical characteristics 

 of the Northern family or original Anglesey variety, but of 

 the larger, rougher, and more lanky sorts. They are poor 

 milkers, and at an early age poor feeders, but in time they 

 grow to enormous weights. The white markings exclude 

 them from the Herd Book. The bulls are usually of a savage 

 disposition. 



A white belted herd, believed to be Dutch, existed for 

 many years at Broadlands, Hants, but when the importation 



