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Original
Article About Dexters
"Kerry and
Dexter Cattle" (cont'd)
by Professor James Wilson
from Volume One "Cattle" of the six volume
Live Stock of the Farm, 1918
Page 104:
number in the neighbourhood of Dublin. In 1844 a class was opened for Kerrys
at the Royal Irish show. Thirty years later they found their way into
England, and now there are, perhaps, more herds there of considerable size
than in Ireland. More recently they have also found their way to America, a
country in which a number of circumstances conspire to make them popular.
But for a century and a half, if not for longer, a second kind of cow had
been living unknown alongside the animal we have just been discussing.
Indeed, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, two kinds of cows were
living together in all those parts of Ireland in which the native Celtic
cattle were dying out. The native cattle were light-limbed, slender, and
agile, whereas the other kind were stout in the body and short in the limb.
Sampson, who wrote the Survey of Londonderry in 1802, describes the
two kinds thus: “I observe two varieties of native cows; the one is light in
the bone, small in size, extremely active, crooked in the ham, with a good
eye and sharp nose, and nice thin neck, a crooked horn, frequently turned
upward. This strain is generally black, reddish, or brindled, with some
white. There is a coarse-boned, ill-shaped breed also; these have swollen
bellies, heavy head, a dewlap very pendent, a bull-like aspect.” Other
writers of the time mention the two kinds of cattle; some thinking the tall
kind, others the short, the original cattle of the country, although there
is now little doubt that the tall kind is the original type, and the short
kind the result of crossing with imported stock - in all probability with
the cattle brought in by the Norsemen, since they were the only importations
with such noticeably short legs and large bodies. Both kinds, however, died
out excepting in Kerry. But the second kind of cow in Kerry was in some
respects different from the second cow in other places.
The earliest hint of there being two kinds of cattle in Kerry was given by
Arthur Young in 1780. He wrote: “The common stock of the mountains are young
cattle bred by the poor people; their breed is the little mountain or Kerry
cow, which upon good land gives a great deal of milk. I have remarked as I
travelled through the country much of the Alderney breed in some of them.”
The Alderney breed as Young knew it was short in the leg and heavy in the
body.
In 1812 Wakefield writes of the short-legged type found in the mountains of
south-west Cork, and suggests that it was produced by frequent crossing with
the Longhorn, an impossibility as we now know.
Kerry Bull, "Kilmorna Lord 7th" and Kerry Cow, "Duv Rosebud"
Plates between pages 104 and 105
Page 105:
In 1834 Youatt describes the two kinds - the long-legged kind as the
aboriginal breed, and the short-legged as the “cow of Kerry”: “The former is
plainly an aboriginal breed. They are found on the mountains and rude parts
of the country, in almost every district. They are small, light, active, and
wild.” ... “The cow of Kerry is truly a poor man’s cow, living everywhere
hardy, yielding, for her size, abundance of milk of a good quality, and
fattening rapidly when required. ... Were it not for the cloddiness [that is
heaviness] about the shoulder, and the shortness and thickness of the
lower part of the neck, and the pied colour, we should almost fancy that we
saw the middle-horn North Devon cow.”
In 1845 Low gives attention to both kinds of the cattle in Kerry, and states
how he thought the short-legged kind had been produced. After saying of the
Kerrys that “this fine little breed has been greatly neglected”, he
proceeds: “A few honourable exceptions, however, exist to this too general
neglect of the mountain dairy breed of Ireland. One attempt had succeeded to
such a degree as to form a new breed, which partially exists with the
characters communicated to it. It has been termed the Dexter breed. It was
formed by the late Mr. Dexter, agent to Maude Lord Hawarden. This gentleman
is said to have produced his curious breed by selection from the best of the
mountain cattle of the district. He communicated to it a remarkable
roundness of form and shortness of legs. The steps, however, by which this
improvement was effected have not been sufficiently recorded, and some doubt
may exist whether the original was the pure Kerry, or some other breed
proper to the central parts of Ireland now unknown, or whether some foreign
blood, as the Dutch, was not mixed with the native race. One character of
the Dexter breed is frequently observed in certain cattle of Ireland,
namely, short legs, and a small space from the knee and hock to the hoofs.
... When an individual of a Kerry drove appears remarkably round and
short-legged, it is common for the country people to call it a Dexter.”
We now know Low’s theory as to the production of the Dexter breed to be
untenable. There were cattle of Dexter type in Ireland before Mr. Dexter
came to the country, about 1750. Mr. Dexter’s home was in Tipperary, more
than fifty miles away from the nearest point in Kerry, and in his day the
movement of cattle from his district was in the opposite direction from
Kerry. But above all, it was not possible for Mr. Dexter or anybody else to
have converted the ordinary Kerry into a Dexter in a lifetime or even in
twenty lifetimes. It is possible, however, that the
On to Pages 106-107
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