56 



BEGINNINGS IN ANIMAL HUSBANDRY 



northeast Scotland. This section is about a thousand miles 

 north of the latitude of Chicago. The winter climate of 

 this region is rather severe, and the soil is not the best, though 

 the grazing is good. Some think these animals are descended 

 from the Wild White Cattle. It is a hornless breed. They 

 first became celebrated through Hugh Watson, a tenant 

 farmer at Keillor. He loved his cattle and studied carefully 

 the improvement of his herd. As a result he produced more 

 early maturing, heavier fleshed, and more compact cattle 



than had before been 

 known in Scotland. He 

 had a cow named "Old 

 Grannie" that lived to be 

 36 years old, and was the 

 mother of 25 calves, a 

 wonderful record for a cow 

 of any breed. William 

 McCombie was another 

 famous breeder of Aber- 

 deen Angus cattle. He 



Foxy, 2ndjmzeAberdeen Angus improved On the WOrk of 



Watson, and his cattle 

 became celebrated for the 

 prizes they won in the shows of Scotland and France. Sir 

 George McPherson Grant, who died in 1907, was the most 

 noted breeder of recent days, and from his herd came some 

 of the greatest cattle of the breed. 



The first Aberdeen Angus cattle were imported to Amer- 

 ica in 1873, by George Grant, of Kansas. Later in the 

 seventies a few head were taken to Canada, New York, 

 Illinois and other states of the central West. It is only in 

 rather recent years that these cattle have become popular 

 in America. Aberdeen Angus are black in color, though 



Fig. 31. 



steer at International Live Stock Exposition. 

 Shown by Ohio State University. Photo- 

 graph by author. 



