The Trade in Pedigree Livestock I85O-I9IO
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The Trade in Pedigree Livestock I85O-I9IO B 7 EDITH H. WHETHAM EORGECOATES published the first volume century by migrants from Europe, including of his herd book for Shorthorn cattle in farm families from Britain and Ireland. Barclay, G i 82z, but it was fifty years old before the historian of the Aberdeen-Angus cattle, the Shorthorn breeders formed a society to take estimated that about 2,ooo of that breed were responsibility for later issues. The first volume exported from Scotland to North America of the Hereford herd book was published in between z88o and I883.1 The editor of the I846, the second in x85z, though the Hereford Hereford Herd Book wrote in z88z: 2 Herd Book Society was not formed until I876. In Table t the breeds of cattle and sheep are Now that there is a very extensive demand classed by the decade in which the first herd or sprung up for purebred Hereford cattle for flock book was published, with the date at which exportation to America, their being entered the relevant society was formed in brackets if it in the English Herd book is made a sine qua differs substantially: non. Those who have hitherto ridiculed the TABLE I HERD AND FLOCK BOOKS BEGUN IN BRITAIN BY DECADES Cattle Sheep I82o-9 Shorthorn (1875) I84O-9 Hereford (I876) x850-9 Devon (I884), Sussex (I879) I860- 9 Aberdeen-Angus (1879) 1870-9 Ayrshire, Galloway,Jersey, Red Poll (1888), N. and S. Welsh Black (combined 19o4) 1880- 9 Guernsey, Highland,Longhorn Oxford Down, Shropshire, Suffolk I890-9 Lincoln Red Shorthorn, South Devon Border-Leicester, Cheviot Cotswold, Dorset Horn, Hampshire, Kent (Romney), Kerry Hill, Leicester, Lincoln, Southdown, Wensleydale 19oo-1o British Holstein (Friesian), Dairy Blackfaced, Derbyshire Gritstone, Shorthorn Devon Longwool, Dorset Down, Exmoor, Lonk, Ryeland,Welsh Mountain The functions of the breed societies were to idea of entering their herds, and who have publish the pedigrees hitherto kept by the live- not paid proper attention to keeping private stock breeders; to register new entries, and to herd books, anxiously send in such pedigrees confirm that they qualified under the rules of as they can make out. each society; and to publicize the merits of the relevant breed. t j. R. Barclay, 'Aberdeen-Angus Cattle', Scot. ~Ynl The stimulus to the formation of these breed Agr., II, z919, p. 459; R. Wallace, Farm Livestock of societies seems to have come from the comltries Great Britain, 5th edn, I923. 2 T. Duckham, 'What is a Hereford?', LivestockJnl, io being settled in the last half of the nineteenth Nov. I88z, p. 43 I. 47 ii iiii! 48 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW Among cattle the Guernsey and Jerseys, and the 188o's and z89o's, after a rise had occurred among sheep the Hampshire Downs, Oxford in the 187o's in average export values (Table i'i: ~ ~ Downs, Shropshires, and Southdowns, ac- n). ha these decades, the westward expansion of quired breed societies in the United States be- the railways across North America opened up fore they appeared in Britain, where their begin- tile prairies for cattle ranching, and created a ning was sometimes in response to pressure huge demand for livestock, at first for Short- from America. 3 The annual report on the trade horns, and then for Herefords and Aberdeen- in Shorthorns published by the LivestockJournal Angus. Between 187o and 189o, the number of commented in 19o6 on the higher prices ob- cattle in the United States about doubled, from tained at British sales for those animals whose thirty million to sixtT million. By this last date pedigrees met the requirements of the Ameri- there were also more tllan twenty million cattle call and Argentine herd books. 4 Shorthorns in the Argentine, mostly bred ['i'onl Shorthorn, were the dominant breed among the exports of Hereford, or Aberdeen-Angus bulls, and cattle since it was tlxe dominant breed in Britain breeders in Soutll America became the main and Ireland until tlle Second World War. Out buyers of British pedigree cattle in the new of a total of nearly seven million cattle recorded century. G in Britain in 1908 , about 4½ million were then Overseas countries periodically banned im- classed as Shorthorns, including both the ports of live animals from Britain whenever Lincoln tked Shorthorns and the "Irish" cattle. there was an epidemic here of foot-and-mouth In contrast, the Devons, Ayrshires, and Here- disease. Such action was reasonable enough in fords had fewer than half a million each, and North America, where this disease was hardly other breeds still smaller munbers# known, but it was endemic in South America. 7 The number of animals exported from the Further complications to the trade arose at the United Kingdom "not for food" increased in end of the century with the use of tuberculin to diagnose tuberculosis. Most importing H. M. Briggs, Modern Breeds of Livestock, New York, 1958. 6Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial 4j. Thornton, 'Shorthorns in 19o5', Livestock Jnl T~mes to 1957, Bureau of the Census, Washington, 196o. Ahnanac, 19o6, pp. 114-26. F. P. 2VIatthews, 'Shorthorns in I911', Livestock ffnl Agricultural Output of Great Britain, Cd. 6277, 1912, Ahnanac, 1912, pp. 12o-7; 'Shorthorns in I913', ibid., P. 37. 1914, PP. 25, 117. TABLE II BRITISH EXPORTS OF LIVE ANIMALS AND AVERAGE EXPORT VALUES ~861-i91o Quhtquennial Cattle Sheep average Thousands £ per head Thousands £ per head i86i- 5 0. 5 25 3.8 6.2 1866-7o 0. 5 z6 3'7 4 .0 i87t- 5 0. 7 46 4.8 8,I I876-8o 0"6 73 2"8 8.I I88z-5 3 "I 39 5"3 7"5 1886-9o 2"0 44 7'4 6.8 1891-5 4 .6 ~9 7"2 7"5 z896-19oo 3"3 34 8.8 zz. 5 i9oi- 5 2'8 45 5"7 I2.I z9 o6-Io 4 .8 45 8"8 Iz'7 'i, i Source: Departmental Committee, British Export Trade in Livestock, Cd. 5947, I911 , pp. 24, 26. El.~ i~ ! ,il i ~. PEDIGREE LIVESTOCK 49 countries then required that animals should Kents (Ronmeys), and Leicesters; rams of these have passed the tuberculin test, carried out breeds were used for crossing with merino or by veterinary surgeons in government em- part-merino ewes which were the original im- ploy either in the exporting country or while ported stock, though English Shropshires were in quarantine at the port of entry; animals also favoured in parts of America as giving a which reacted to the test while in quarantine good fleece, high fertility, and a meaty lamb. were destroyed without compensation. Since When refi'igeration opened the British meat there was no official testing service in Britain, market to farmers in other continents there was animals had to be exported subject to the risk a gradual shift from the long-woolled to the of destruction on arrival. The main reason Down breeds of sheep, in order to produce for establishing the committee of I9IZ was to early maturing lambs rather than wool, the persuade the Board of Agriculture to set up a price of wool having fallen sharply upon inter- testing and quarantine station in Britain; it had national markets fi'om the I86o's onwards. But just begun to function when war was declared, in the Argentine the demand for Lincoln sheep and the trade soon vanished, s for the unfenced pampas remained strong In spite of these difficulties, and in spite of the through the first decade of the twentieth cen- low prices of the z89o's, the demand for British tury2 livestock continued, and exports reached a new The formation of breed societies was thus peak in the boom years of 19o6--7. Some of this one response to the growth of the export trade demand may be ascribed to a "snob" element in pedigree livestock, but other changes also attached to animals imported at high cost from occurred in the organization of the home trade. British breeders, whose private records might Some breed societies instituted collective sales trace pedigrees back into the eighteenth cen- of breeding stock for their members, since only tury; but apart from fashion and prestige there the largest breeders could hope to attract over- remained the undoubted value of British pedi- seas buyers to their annual sale of surplus stock. gree livestock when used in the right circum- A group of Shorthorn breeders in the Midlands stances by those who had an "eye for the beast." began twice-yearly collective sales at Birming- By the end of the nineteenth century, the top ham in I868, and others followed at York, breeders in North and South America, in Perth, and Aberdeen. The Sussex Cattle Society Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as held an annual sale at Lewes from z888, the well as in Britain and Ireland, were using re- Highland Cattle Society one at Oban from lated livestock whose pedigrees were known for 1892.1° several generations, whose characteristics dif- A further development was the growth of fered because of adaptations to suit local con- firms specializing in the marketing and trans- ditions, but whose differences were kept within port of livestock, and in the introduction of limits by the interchange both of livestock and foreign buyers to likely sources of supply. The of judges for the main exhibitions in each firm ofA. Mansell at Shrewsbury, for example, country. was the official auctioneer for the Shropslfire Such differences were perhaps more marked Sheep Society, and it was exporting more than in the case of sheep than of cattle.