Red Poll Cattle

Use: The Red Poll is a rare, exceptionally hardy, dual-purpose cattle breed raised for beef in North America, but it makes a fine household dairy cow, too.

History: Red Polls originated in eastern England, where cattlemen created a medium-sized, all-red, polled (hornless) dual-purpose breed by combining small, hardy, red-and-white, horned beef cattle from Norfolk with red, dun or brindle, polled dairy cattle from Suffolk. Recognized in 1846 as the Norfolk and Suffolk Red Polled cattle, in about 1880 the name was shortened to simply Red Poll.

The first Red Poll cattle were exported to North America in the 1880s. Breeders chartered the American Red Poll Association in 1883, five years before the British society was founded. Importation was a thriving business for a few years, but after 1902 few additional Red Poll cattle were brought over. The Red Poll cattle breed was established in the United States on only about 300 head from Britain. The breed spread from the United States into Canada.

Conformation: Red Poll cows weigh about 1,200 pounds; bulls weigh about 1,800 pounds. The cattle are solid red, though a splash of white on the underline is acceptable. Genetic consistency is the hallmark of this cattle breed and individuals are very uniform.

Special Considerations/Notes: Red Poll cattle are noted for their hardiness, longevity, quiet yet inquisitive demeanor and the ability to thrive on marginal pasture. Calves are born small and grow quickly, making calving problems practically nonexistent. Red Poll meat is fine-grained, tender and tasty, and cows give a good amount of milk for a dual-purpose breed. Red Poll cattle generally produce 1,250 gallons of milk per year through their teens or about 10,000 pounds of meat. In 1933, one Red Poll cow, Florabel, had an 11-year milk total of 108,310 pounds- an all-breed record for the era. The Red Poll is listed as Threatened on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy’s Conservation Priority List, and it’s listed as endangered on the Rare Breeds Canada conservation list.

Use: Caspian horses are slim, elegant small horses ideally suited for driving and for small adult or young riders. Their beauty, background and rarity make them a favorite horse breed among wealthy, equine rare-breed conservators.

History: Caspian horses are a horse breed of great antiquity. They descend from now-extinct miniature horses of Persia that lived in the region from 3000 B.C. through the seventh century A.D.

In 1965, Louise Firouz, an American-born horsewoman living in Iran was enchanted when she discovered a tiny group of horses in the Elburz region south of the Caspian Sea. Naming the breed Caspian, she brought three of them back to the Norouzabad Equestrian Center in Tehran, Iran, and returned a year later to purchase seven mares and six stallions, becoming the first serious breeder of Caspian horses in more than 1,000 years.

The Shah of Iran presented Prince Philip of Great Britain with a pair of Caspian horses when the prince visited Iran in 1971. Intrigued, Prince Philip approached Firouz about exporting breeding stock to Great Britain. Over the next five years, she exported 26 Caspian horses to Europe, thus providing foundation stock to fuel the rebirth of this ancient breed outside the Middle East. The breed wasn’t exported to the U.S. until the 1990s.

Conformation: The Caspian horse breed is small, but it’s not a pony. It casts the overall impression is of a well-bred, elegant horse in miniature. Adult Caspian horses stand from less than 40 inches to 50 inches tall, measured at the withers, and they come in all colors except spotted.

Special Considerations/Notes: DNA testing performed in the 1990s by Gus Cothran at the University of Kentucky’s Horse Genome Project directly linked Caspian horses to the horses of ancient Egypt and Persia, demonstrating a link to Arabian horses.

Roughly 2,000 Caspian horses are registered throughout the world, 600 of them in North America. The Caspian horse breed is listed as Critical on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy’s Conservation Priority List. Additional conservation breeders are needed to grow this horse breed’s population.

Use: Dorper sheep are a large, hardy meat sheep breed from South Africa. They do one thing, and they do it well.

History: In the early 1930s, meat-sheep raisers in South Africa set out to create a mutton breed that didn’t require shearing and could produce high-quality, fast-growing lambs under harsh conditions. To do so, they crossed British Dorset Horn rams with fat-tailed Blackhead Persian hair-sheep ewes, the former because of its ability to breed out of season and the latter for its supreme heat-hardiness and its wool-less hair coat. The resulting sheep were culled for productiveness and color. The end result was a black-headed white sheep they called a Dorper (“Dor” for their Dorset Horn sires, “per” for their Persian Blackface dams). Other breeders created an all-white version they called the White Dorper.

Twenty-eight farmers and 11 officials formed the South African Dorper Breeders Society in 1950. Dorper sheep and White Dorper sheep were (and continue to be) registered in separate flock books, but they’re scored on the same set of characteristics. The first National Dorper Show was held in Hopetown, South Africa, in 1955. It’s since grown to be one of the biggest small-stock shows in the world, with more than 1,000 sheep vying for annual prizes.

In the mid-1990s, American and Canadian sheep ranchers became interested in Dorper sheep, but because the USDA doesn’t have an import protocol for South Africa, Dorpers had to come to North America as embryos processed through the Canadian import system. The first purebred Dorper lambs were born in the U.S. in 1995. Dorper sheep are now the fastest growing sheep breed in North America. Significant populations exist in South America, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, as well.

Conformation: Dorper sheep are large, broad, muscular sheep. Rams range in weight from 230 to 275 pounds, while ewes are smaller at 155 to 210 pounds. Both sexes are polled. They grow light, protective body fleeces during the winter months and shed or mostly shed them the following summer. (They shed from the bottom up, and some Dorper breeders shear their animals’ backs to keep their sheep neater looking.) Dorper sheep have hair on their tails instead of wool, so some Dorper breeders leave their tails long instead of docking them as lambs.

Special Considerations/Notes: Dorper sheep are the ideal, easy-care meat sheep. They’re both heat and cold hardy, they eat brush and weeds as well as grass, and ewes are protective mothers that don’t require crutching (trimming the wool around their udders and backsides) prior to lambing. Dorpers usually deliver twins, and lambs are born big and vigorous, weighing 7 to 11 pounds. Ewes give lots of milk, and lambs begin eating solid food at an early age, producing a muscular, lean, roughly 80-pound carcass at 12 to 14 weeks.

Dorper sheep are sensible, easily worked sheep. Some feel the White Dorper is slightly more docile than its black-headed kin.

Two categories exist for Dorpers and White Dorpers in the American flock book. Only animals of 100-percent South African breeding are full bloods. Full bloods and purebreds are registered in separate flock books. Purebreds never achieve full-blood status.

Use: Nigerian Dwarf goats are perfectly scaled miniature dairy goats. Nigerian Dwarfs give up to two quarts of 6- to 10-percent butterfat milk per day. Nigerian Dwarfs, particularly bucks, have been used to develop a number of other small breeds, including the six breeds registered by the Miniature Dairy Goat Association (Miniature Alpines, Miniature LaManchas, Miniature Nubians, Miniature Oberhaslis, Miniature Saanen/Sables and Miniature Toggenburgs), the Miniature Silky Fainting Goat and the cute, fleecy Nigora.

History: Like Pygmy goats, Nigerian Dwarf goats originated in West Africa. The first documented imports of both Pygmys (short-legged and cobby, they’re used for meat and milk in Africa) and Nigerian Dwarfs (a more svelte, proportionate dairy-type goat) arrived to the U.S. in the 1930s to 1950s and found their way to private and public zoos and preserves, then to everyday owners and breeders.

Conformation: Four organizations register Nigerian Dwarfs, and their standards differ somewhat. Generally, the ideal height for a mature doe is 17 to 19 inches, with does up to 22½ inches tall acceptable. Mature bucks should be 19 to 21 inches tall with up to 23½ inches accepted. Ideal weight is around 75 pounds. Nigerian Dwarfs have soft, short- to medium-length hair, upright ears and straight profiles. They come in all colors, though Pygmy-specific markings are penalized in the show ring.

Special Considerations/Notes: Nigerian Dwarfs are sweet, friendly goats that make wonderful pets. Kids weigh about 2 pounds at birth. They are precocious breeders, and bucklings can be fertile at 7 weeks of age. Most doelings are mature enough to breed at 7 to 8 months of age, though it’s better to wait until they’re at least 1 year old. Bucks can be used for service as young as 3 to 6 months of age. Nigerian Dwarfs breed out of season, and litters of three and four kids are the norm.

Use: Shorthorn cattle were once triple-purpose beef, dairy and draft cattle, but since 1948, there have been two main types of registered Shorthorn cattle: Shorthorns raised for beef and Milking Shorthorns.
 

History: The Shorthorn is one of the most influential cattle breeds in the history of agriculture. It was among the first livestock breeds to be improved and had one of the first herd books, which was established in 1822.

Charles and Robert Colling began developing Shorthorn cattle in the Tees River valley of northeastern England during the late 1700s. Shorthorns, then known as Durhams, came to the United States in 1783. Many were subsequently imported to New England where they were treasured for their meat, milk and plowing abilities.

The American Shorthorn Herd Book was first published in 1846. The American Shorthorn Association was formed 26 years later in 1872. The registry originally recorded both dairy- and beef-type cattle in its herd book, but in 1948, breeders of dairy-type Shorthorn cattle formed their own breed association.

Conformation: Both breeds of Shorthorn cattle are usually red or white, often with brindle markings or roaning. Milking Shorthorn bulls weigh between 1,800 and 2,200 pounds, and cows weigh between 1,200 and 1,400 pounds. Beef Shorthorn bulls weigh about the same as Milking Shorthorn bulls, but beef Shorthorn cows are beefier, thus heavier, at 1,450 to 1,800 pounds. Most have small, cream-colored horns, though polled strains exist.

Special Considerations/Notes: Both breeds of Shorthorns are unusually even-tempered. They calve with ease, graze efficiently, and are long-lived and hardy. The average Milking Shorthorn cow produces more than 1,820 gallons of 3.6-percent butterfat in a typical lactation; it’s the quintessential household dairy cow. Shorthorn beef from either breed is close-grained and tasty. Genetic testing has shown that among beef breeds, beef Shorthorns have one of the highest percentages of the tenderness gene. Milking Shorthorns are listed as critically endangered, not only by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy but by rare-breed societies in Canada, Britain and Australia.