^ CHAPTER VI 



FASHIONS IN MARKET CATTLE 



England and America, and other countries inhabited by Enghsh- 

 speaking people, lead in meat consumption, especially in beef consump- 

 tion. "The roast beef of old England" is well known as characteristic 

 of the Englishman's culinary tastes, but Youatt records that in the 

 time of Henry VIII the English people were "strangers to beef and 

 mutton." The consumption of beef was confined principally to the 

 summer months, and it sold at a very low price, so that there was no 

 encouragement toward the production of beef cattle or beef. Instead, 

 cattle were valued for milking purposes and most of all for field labor, 

 and not until they had served a number of years as draft animals were 

 they fattened for the butcher. Six-year-old oxen were sold from the 

 plow to be fattened and then brought $50 to $75. There is record of 

 an ox that was worked until fifteen years old and then fattened fairly 

 well. Those most certainly were not days when men talked of baby 

 beef. Size, usefulness for field labor, and for dairy purposes were the 

 qualities chiefly sought. 



Prior to the close of the eighteenth century, there was little exer- 

 cise of care in the breeding of cattle, and feeding was an unknown art. 

 But conditions gradually became better; England became more pros- 

 perous and wealthy, and there arose a demand for more and better 

 beef, for which higher prices were paid. This impetus gave rise to the 

 formation of the breeds of beef cattle, all of which originated in England 

 and Scotland, unless we consider the Polled Shorthorn and Polled 

 Hereford real American breed creations, which, of course, they are not, 

 being the result of slight modifications of English breeds. 



Size and type of early beef cattle. — When beef production was 

 begun in earnest, more attention was given to size and quantity than 

 to quality. Judging from the records of weights of early cattle, and 

 from drawings made at that time, cattle were ponderous, roup-l". slow- 

 maturing beasts, and very patchy with great lumps ' "'^^vvKi'f^. The 

 ideals of those days were exemplified by such fan* o animals as the 

 Durham Ox, weighing 3,024 pounds at five years of age, and The 

 White Heifer That Traveled, weighing 2,300 pounds.^ These were 

 early Shorthorns. Among early Hereford cattle, a bull. The General, 

 weighed 3,640 pounds at six years. Another bull, Wellington, weighed 



lAlvin H. Sanders: Shorthorn Cattle, 1900, pp. 39, 42. 



9fi 



