Angus Started With A Scottish Dreamer
A trivia question! What famous breed of cattle was once considered a freak I’m Susan Allen your host of OpenRange, I’ll be back right after the break. At the Kansas City Livestock Exposition in 1873 a new Scottish breed of cattle not only turned heads but received comments…. They weren’t complements. It is comical now to reflect back on the reaction of folks to the a breed of cattle that has since become integral to ranchers throughout our nation. When George Grant exhibited two of his four bulls he had just brought from Scotland at the 1873 big Livestock Expo in Kansas City, a lot of people commented that they would be better off in the side show because they lacked what every good and perfect beef cow was expected to have...horns. It wasn’t the spread of a longhorn that was coveted, it was the shorthorn that exemplified perfect cattle. Ah but you can’t stop a man with a dream. Grant’s initial plan was to build Scottish colonies that would provide an endless supply of beef for Europe. So he bred his black polled bulls with Texas longhorns and found that darned if those black calves didn’t winter better, and weigh more in the Spring. The rest they say is history. Really it is pretty amazing to think that the American Angus Association was formed way back in 1883 and just four years latter twelve hundred head from Scotland had already been shipped to the US .The growth hasn’t stopped . The American Angus Association registers more cattle by far per year than any other association and is the largest beef breed registry in the world.