Types and Market Classes of Live Stock 97 



2,912 pounds, had a girth of 11 feet, 3 inches, and measured 11 feet, 

 4 inches, from muzzle to tail-head. Another Hereford bull, Hamlet, 

 weighed 2,800 pounds, and a steer reached 2,912 pounds. At the first 

 Smithfield Fat Stock Show held in London in 1799, a Hereford bullock 

 described as 8 feet, 11 inches, in length, 6 feet, 7 inches, in height, and 

 10 feet, 4 inches, in girth, won first prize and sold for $500. Another 

 ox at the same show measured 7 feet in height, and 12 feet, 4 inches, 

 in girth. ^ 



Continued demand for heavy weights. — In England and America 

 the attainment of large weights continued to be the aim of beef pro- 

 ducers until rather recent times. Early maturity was not given much 



Fig. 23.— Ideal of early beef producers. The noted "White Heifer That 

 Travelled," a Shorthorn, calved about 1806, bred and fed by Robert Colling, of 

 Barmpton, near Darlington, in the county of Durham, England. A free-martin 

 heifer, a non-breeder, fed to a weight of 2,300 pounds, completely finished, and 

 publicly exhibited through the principal agricultural counties of England to advertise 

 the beef-making qualities of the Shorthorn breed, particularly the herds of Charles 

 and Robert Colling, first noted improvers of the breed. From an engraving made 

 when she w^o seven years old. The artist has undoubtedly refined the head, horns, 

 and bone to a considerable degree, yet the picture typifies in the size, massiveness, 

 extreme fatness, and small bone of this animal the ideal of early beef producers. 



attention. It was simply a matter of making each animal as large as 

 possible before consigning it to the butcher. Cattle were grown and 

 fattened cheaply in those days, and the advantages of young, quick- 

 maturing, highly-finished cattle were not so marked, nor was a good 

 price offered for any except matured beeves. Stockmen at Albany, 



Macdonald and Sinclair: History of Hereford Cattle, London, 1907. 



