Summary of Article About Dexters

Home     Back to “Summaries of Publications and Articles About Dexters”

"The Contemporary Geography of Indigenous Irish Livestock" - Part I

by Richard Yarwood, Nick Evans and Julie Higginbottom

This Paper was published in the journal, Irish Geography, Volume 30, No. 1, 1997, pages 17-30.

At the time of publication, the authors were members of the Geography Department, Worcester College of Higher Education. This article is divided into three parts on this website.

Abstract (page 17)

"Livestock farming is an important part of agriculture in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. However, whilst many geographers have studied changes in the numbers of Irish livestock, there has been little consideration given to the contemporary distribution of different breeds of domestic farm animals in Ireland. Recent theoretical debate has encouraged geographers to consider the ways in which animals can reflect cultural differences between and within places. Drawing on these ideas, this paper examines agricultural livestock which are indigenous to Ireland and considers how they reflect changes in the rural economy. It uses secondary data gathered from appropriate herd books to examine temporal and spatial changes in Irish livestock and, in particular, breeds which have been classified as rare. Data from a recent survey of livestock owners are used to explain these differences."

Introduction (page 17)
 

The authors point out that there have been very few studies of how rural change in contemporary Ireland have involved breeds of livestock. Animals are constructed and valued by society in many different ways, so that what happens to various breeds reflects important social changes in the countryside. Their article draws on a wider survey of rare livestock breeds in Britain and Ireland.

The Fall and Rise of Irish Livestock (pages 18-19)

The livestock breeds found today in Ireland reflect the "selective breeding" approach developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This approach improved the genetic qualities of livestock, including their weight, milk yield, leanness and speed of maturity. Many of the resultant breeds had strong associations with particular places, such as Dexter cattle with the south west of Ireland and Galway sheep with Galway. However, the era following the second world war was characterised by an increased emphasis on efficiency leading to the introduction of more profitable breeds to Ireland. The best example of this is Holstein-Friesian cattle which now accounts for the vast majority of the Irish dairy herd because of their exceptionally high milk yield.

On the one hand, Holstein-Friesian cattle were very beneficial for the dairy industry but it has also been suggested that they "diluted Irish landscape identity" (page 18), making it less distinguishable from other European dairying regions. For these new breeds displaced indigenous livestock, which increasingly came to be viewed as unprofitable by farmers. As a result, many Irish breeds became extinct and only a few indigenous breeds remain. There are no breeds of Irish pigs left in existence and the Galway is the only indigenous breed of sheep left. There is only a handful of equines left, such as the Connemara pony, the Kerry Bog pony and the Irish Draught. Also, the cattle breeds of Irish Moiled, Kerry and Dexters are still to be found in Ireland.

However, the remaining breeds are seriously threatened. A 1991 census by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust revealed that there were only 74 Irish Moiled cows. "At one point, Dexter cattle actually disappeared from Ireland (Curran, 1995), but they survived abroad and are now starting to experience a revival in their native country" (page 18). Table 2 (below) sets out the status of the five Irish breeds deemed by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust  (RBST) as having rare or minority status. 

Table 2: Breeds indigenous to Ireland which warrant the Rare Breeds Survival Trust's

Rare or Minority status (1995).

Since the formation of the RBST in 1973, many native Irish breeds have increased their numbers in Ireland and Britain. "For example, there were only 250 adult Dexter cows in 1981, but this number rose to over 1,500 by 1993 (RBST, 1994). By January 1996, Dexters were thriving to such an extent that they no longer required protection from the RBST and were removed from their minority list" (page 19). Kerry cattle also increased in number from less than 150 breeding females in 1981 to nearly 400 in 1991. "Although the numbers of these breeds have been carefully monitored, very little is actually known about their contemporary geographies. This paper continues by analysing the status and location of native Irish livestock and, in doing so, helps to explain why these animals are once more becoming important within Irish agriculture" (page 18).
 

On to Part II

To Top of Page