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"Kerry and Dexter Cattle"

by Professor James Wilson

from Volume One "Cattle" of the six volume Live Stock of the Farm, edited by Professor C. Bryner Jones, published by The Gresham Publishing Co., London, 1918, pages 102-111.

On 28 December 2005, while browsing through a second hand bookstore in Auckland (New Zealand), I came across a pile of tatty, stained and torn old books on the floor near the "Farming" section. Discovering that they were entitled "Live Stock of the Farm", published early in the 20th century, my heart began to beat a little faster as I searched for the volume that dealt with cattle. Having found it, I hesitated a moment or two before gathering the courage to open it to look at the Contents, hoping for an entry on Dexters. And there it was, with the Kerrys, and written by someone who I knew had some knowledge of the Dexter breed. Glancing over it, it seemed to go into more detail on the history of the Dexter and its relationship to the Kerry than I had seen before. I had to buy all six volumes to get the one I really wanted, but it was worth it.

One of the other pieces written on Dexters by the author, Professor Wilson, can be found elsewhere on this website.

CONTENTS

Pages 102-103 - origins of Irish breeds in ancient Celtic black cattle; effects of the cattle of Norse, Anglo-Norman-Welsh immigrants and English "planters"; remnants of Irish cattle in County Kerry; development of Kerry dairy breed 

Pages 104-105 (with Kerry photos) - two varieties of native Kerry cattle observed in 19th century writings; comments on role of Mr Dexter (he could not have bred the Dexter though may have given it the name) 

Pages 106-107 - Mr Dexter as a livestock breeder; Dexters not from Norse cattle; more likely to come from crossing with North Devon breed; comparison of characteristics of Kerry with Dexter

Pages 108-109 (with Dexter photos) - more comparisons of Kerrys with Dexters, including bone and muscle, and milking qualities; comments on "malformed and useless calves" which can be avoided by "mating Dexter with Kerry" ; new Dexter of recent times results from crossing with the Shorthorn 

Pages 110-111 - history of breed societies, showing and herd books; observations on Dexter weights at fat-stock shows; inspections for herd book registrations in Ireland "became markets for selling to buyers from a distance" in England

Jones (1918) on Dexters as Beef Cattle - an extract from an entry in the same volume, this one by A.E. Jones on "The Selection and Judging of Cattle"

Page 102:

The Kerry cattle are one of the remnants of the ancient black cattle of Western Europe, holding out in their remotest stronghold against the inroads of other races swarming up behind them from the east. Their ancestors were slender, long-limbed, active animals, with black coats and small upright horns. Till the coming of the Norsemen in the eighth and ninth centuries, with their short-legged, heavy-bodied, light dun, hornless cattle, they held Ireland to themselves. Indeed, they might almost be said to have held Ireland eight centuries more, for the Norse cattle either came in numbers too small, or scattered themselves too widely to conquer any part of the country completely; their effect was to leave a leaven of their prominent characters - colour, hornlessness, short legs and stout bodies, and milk-giving powers - and a number of more or less pure-bred descendants among the cattle of the country, chiefly in the north and west. These hornless Irish cattle came to be called Maoiles, pronounced Moylies in English, from a Gaelic word meaning bald; and sprinklings of them are still to be found in some northern districts.

The real expulsion of the Celtic black cattle from the rest of Ireland began in the seventeenth century on the “plantation” of the country with landowners from England. These were not the first English immigrants, for Strongbow’s Anglo-Norman-Welsh invasion took place in the twelfth century, and was followed by immigrations to the eastern and southern coasts from Louth to Kerry, the immigrants coming chiefly by way of the Bristol Channel and Devon and Cornwall ports. But though these people certainly brought cattle along with them, their eventual effect upon the cattle of the country was no greater than that of the cattle brought in by the Norsemen.

Page 103:

The effect of the importations begun by the planters in the times of Elizabeth and James was altogether different. Through their common struggle against the Spaniard, the Englishman of the sixteenth century came to know something of the agriculture of the people of the Low Countries, which at that time was the best in Europe. The result was the importation to England not only of specialists in the art of draining low-lying, marshy country, but also of cattle, sheep, and horses for breeding purposes. In a few decades, chiefly through crossing the native with the imported stock, the cattle in the Midlands were larger and better, according to the standard of the time, than any other cattle in England. Consequently, when they wished to improve the cattle in Ireland, the planters imported Longhorns, as they came to be called, from the English Midlands; and, before the end of the eighteenth century, the old black cattle had been crossed or shouldered out of Ireland, excepting from Kerry and other mountainous parts like Donegal and Connemara. In another century the Longhorns themselves were driven out, chiefly by the Shorthorn, which came to Ireland about 1770, but also by the Hereford, which came about the same time, and the Aberdeen-Angus, which came about 1840.

But none of the imported breeds made headway in Kerry. For one thing, the land was too rough and poor, and the pastures too high and stormy for full-sized cattle; and, for another thing, beginning about the end of the eighteenth century, the demand for the small “single” cow for suburban and small country residences was sufficient to turn the scale in favour of the retention of the original small-sized cow of the country still remaining in Kerry.

For the dairy with one, or only a very few cows, the Kerry was almost an ideal animal. She had been the cow of the small Irish farm, and almost a member of the farmer’s family. She had been the standby in the rearing of the farmer’s children; and her butter and her calves had been the only things bringing back money to buy the necessaries and the luxuries which the farm could not produce. Thus many years of selection had rendered her gentle and domesticated, and a very good milker; and, being small in size, she was easily handled, and appropriate to buildings which were not always palatial.

In the eighteenth century, droves of Kerry cattle were collected in Kerry to be driven off to the pastures in the east. Heifers from these droves were occasionally retained as dairy cows, and so the Kerry cow became known on all the roads from Kerry to Dublin. Here and there small herds sprang up in places far away from Kerry; and early in the nineteenth century there was a considerable
 

On to Pages 104-105