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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 106:
Dexter cattle may have got their name from Mr. Dexter. He was referred to by
Arthur Young as a well-known breeder and importer of sheep from England, who
let out rams in the Bakewellian fashion. It is not impossible for Dexter’s
sheep to have found their way into Kerry; and as the sheep imported from
England at that time - they were Leicesters - were stouter in the body and
shorter in the leg than the native Irish, it is not impossible for sheep of
this type to have been called “Dexters”, and for the name to have been
transferred to any kind of animal that was short in the legs and stout in
the body. “When travelling in Kerry some years ago”, an author “found that
the word ‘Dexter’ was used in a generic sense with reference to all
diminutive animals, even men, if low-set and bandy-legged; and also that the
term was in the first instance applied to short-legged sheep kept by a
resident coastguard officer.” This last statement is a fine instance of a
rash conclusion becoming widely accepted. The coastguard officer did live in
Kerry, but long after the original Dexter. Indeed, he was the original sheep
breeder’s grandson, but he was not a breeder of sheep of one kind or
another.
For the ancestors of the Dexters we must look back either to the
importations of the Norsemen or to importations of a much later date. And
the evidence is in favour of the later importations, for had the Dexters
been descended from the Norse cattle there would have been many more Norse
characters among them, like hornlessness, the dun colour, the narrow chine,
and the sickle-hocked legs. Their horns, their breadth across the shoulder,
and the red colour which is frequent among them must therefore be traced to
some other source. And the only other possible sources are the cattle
brought in by the Normans, or the cattle imported since the time of the
plantations. In either case we must look to the Bristol Channel and the
south-west of England. In Norman times the cattle of the south-west of
England were of the red race which the Anglo-Saxons had brought over with
them from western Germany and Denmark. But both in Devon and Somerset there
was a very strong infusion of characters such as hornlessness, the yellow
colour, and shortness of limb, which could only have come from the
Norsemen’s cattle. So strong, indeed, was this infusion in North Devon, and
especially in the neighbourhood of Barnstaple, that it is scarcely possible
to think otherwise than that the present North Devon breed is indebted to
the cattle of the Norsemen for several of its most esteemed features. But
Dexter cattle are all very much alike in build, and it is scarcely possible
for a type so regular to have been produced till long after Norman
Page 107:
times, and we are therefore driven to look for their ancestors among the
importations of later times.
Although we have no definite descriptions of the cattle brought to the south
of Ireland by the planters, yet, since they came in mainly by way of the
Bristol Channel, they must have been generally of the type common to the
south-west. In the eighteenth century, however, a considerable number of the
North Devon breed, which had begun to take on its characters of the present
day, was imported to the south-west of Ireland. Arthur Young refers to them;
and we will make a quotation from Wakefield which gives the names of four
landowners in the south-west of Ireland who had imported Devons, and also
indicates that this breed was common in the south of Ireland: “In the south
I met with some persons who had imported Devonshire cattle; Lords Bantry,
Shannon, and Doneraile, Mr. Hyde, and others possess considerable numbers of
them. Lord Farnham in Cavan has a herd of them, and from what I have seen of
this stock in the north of Devonshire, where they are natives of Exmore, I
am inclined to think that they are the best cattle known, and had I anything
to do with mountain estates in the south of Ireland, I should strongly
recommend them for general use. ... As I have never seen them in the
northward, I should be afraid to introduce them into that part of the
kingdom.”
From the facts that none of the other cattle brought into Ireland was like
the Dexter, and that the North Devons of the eighteenth century were like it
in several of its characteristic features, there is little room for doubt
that the round-bodied, short-limbed animal which has been living side by
side with the longer-limbed native is the result of the introduction to
Kerry of cattle of North Devon type, either in the eighteenth century or
earlier. And because of an extraordinary peculiarity which is hereditary in
the Dexter, it will have to continue to live alongside the Kerry for some
time to come.
Although the Kerry and the Dexter, purified now in both cases in colour and
other things derived from other breeds in the past, are very different, the
differences between them are mainly the result of a single cause. The Kerry
cow is elegant and deer-like, with slender limbs and body, light at the
shoulder and deeper in the hind quarters; her head is light and graceful,
with a sharp nose, bright eyes and ears; her horns are white with black
tips, not thick at the base, spreading outwards and ascending towards the
points, which frequently turn inwards. She is nearly always black, sometimes
with a little white on the underline; but an occasional red Kerry is born
for the same reason that red calves
On to Pages 108-109
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