Hamilton (Cadzow) Park Cattle of the early 1800's - Immortalized by Sir Walter Scott -

"The ancient parish, quite or nearly identical with Hamilton parish, was variously called Cadyhou, Cadyou, and Cadzow; and it changed that name to Hamilton in 1445."

The Castle stands in the gorge of Avon Water, 1½ mile SSE of Hamilton; crowns a rock, nearly 200 feet high, on the left side of the stream; dates from the times of a semi-fabulous prince of the name Caw, prior to the era of the Scoto-Saxon monarchy; was a royal residence in the times of Alexander II. and Alexander III.; passed, in the time of Robert Bruce, to the family of Hamilton; appears to have been often repaired or rebuilt; consists now of little more than a keep, covered with ivy and embosomed with wood; and looks, amid the grandeur and romance of the gorge around it, like ` sentinel of fairy-land. '

The ancient forest surrounds the castle; contains, on the opposite side of the Avon, the summer-house of Chatelherault, built in 1730; is now called Hamilton Wood; comprises about 1500 acres; is browsed by a noble herd of fallow deer; and is the scene of Sir Walter Scott's famous ballad of Cadzow Castle. Of it Mr Rt. Hutchison writes, . . . surrounded by a stone wall 6 feet high and about 3 miles in extent, which was most probably the boundary in feudal times. . .

The wild cattle are pure white save for black muzzles, hoofs, and tips of the horns; show their wildness chiefly in their fear of man; have only one recognised leader among the bulls; and in Nov. 1880 numbered 16 bulls and 40 cows. Regarded commonly as survivors of our native wild cattle, they are held by Dr Jn. Alex. Smith, in his Notes on the Ancient Cattle of Scotland (1873), to be rather 'an ancient fancy breed of domesticated cattle preserved for their beauty in the parks of the nobility.'

Drawing of the Hamilton white cattle in 1835:



Sir Walter Scott spent the Christmas of 1801 at Hamilton Palace. Must read Link to Annals of the Andersonian Naturalist's Society commenting on the visit of Sir Walter Scot to the Hamilton herd in Scotland.





BALLAD of CADZOW (Hamilton) CASTLE Excerpt:

Through the huge oaks of Evandale,
Whose limbs a thousand years have worn,
What sullen roar comes down the gale,
And drowns the hunter's pealing horn.

Mightiest of all the beasts of chase
That roam in woody Caledonia,
Crashing the forest in his race,
The Mountain Bull comes thundering on..

Fierce on the hunter's quivered band,
He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow.
Spurns with black hoof and horn the land,
And tosses high his mane of snow.

And well the chieftain's lance has flown,
Struggling in blood the savage lies,
His roar is sunk in hollow groan.

Tis noon against the knotted oak,
The hunters rest the idle spear.
Curls through the trees the slender smoke
Where yeomen light the woodland.

Proudly the chieftain marked his clan,
On greenwood lay all careless thrown,
Yet missed his eye the boldest man,
That bore the name of Hamilton

"It is highly probable that Sir Walter Scott's ballad awakened the interest of the ducal family, and that a successful attempt to form or collect a herd was made, either from a few survivors of the former one that had been kept somewhere else, or from a distinct one. Under any circumstances a small herd of white cattle, numbering about a score, were browsing in Cadzow by 1809, and the cows being horned and the bulls humble (means POLLED) would seem to indicate a herd in process of formation from different sources. Later the whole herd became humble. For twenty-five years past, at least, they have been all horned."

Source

An ancient verse that speaks to the hunting and slaughter of the revered white cattle of the British Isles.....

Poem from "Flowers of Song from Many Lands . . ." by By Frederic Rowland Marvin

Global Warming - Cow Belches and Farts - Paul McCartney?

Hot news yesterday on CNN was an interview with Paul McCartney. He's asking folks to go one day a year without eating meat. Why? To help combat global warming. Those cow farts and belches just produce too much methane gas. How about he asks folks to give up pinto beans for several days a year, surely the gas humans produce impact global warming as well -- I'll have to check on that.

The newscaster went on to quote stats that 18% of the methane gas produced is from livestock, and a mere 13% was the result of all the automobiles running the highways. It seems a cattle rancher driving a hybrid is way more destructive than a suburbanite driving a gas guzzling suburban. Just about every time the news media covers the methane gas produced by livestock, they show a video clip of cattle, generally at pasture. Video footage of a nasty and cattle-crowded feedlot is apparently not their first choice to demonstrate those awful gas producing bovines that are a key culprit in global warming.

How exactly have we reached such a place, such a mode of thinking, in regard to the once highly revered bovine? Certainly their fall from grace in the eyes of liberal Global Warming freaks is vast and immeasurable. I offer you the following words of George-Louis Leclerc, de Buffon, from William Smellie's 1781 English translation, in regard to cattle, or to "The Ox", as they were commonly referred for thousands of years:

But these are not the only advantages which man derives from the ox. Without the aid of this useful animal, both the poor and the opulent would find great difficulty in procuring subsistence; the earth would remain uncultivated; our fields and gardens would become parched and barren. All the labour of the country depends upon him. He is the most advantageous domestic of the farmer. He is the very source and support of agriculture. Formerly the ox constituted the whole riches of mankind; and he is still the basis of the riches of nations, which subsist and flourish in proportion only to the cultivation of their lands and the number of their cattle: For in these all real wealth consists; every other kind, even gold and silver, being only fictitious representations, have no value, but what is conferred on them by the productions of the earth.

This movement to denigrate the awesome cow for the sake of Global Warming may very well lead to cattle ranchers, along with the real polluters, having to pay a federal penalty, or federal tax, to compensate this horrible smelly damage their occupation is causing to our environment. Once that happens, many, if not most, small ranchers will have to close their ranch gates and find some other livestock that farts "good gas" I suppose. What happens then to the price of beef? Basic economics. There will be less beef on the shelf at the supermarket, and that beef will be priced much higher. Shall we all become vegetarians now, and pooh pooh the hard won evolution of society to one which affords the poor and rich alike the pleasure and sustenance of meat? Let's hear what Buffon had to say in regard to meat for the poor........

Of those animals which man forms into flocks, and whose multiplication is his principal object, the females are more useful than the males. The produce of the cow is almost perpetually renewed. The flesh of the calf is equally wholesome and delicate; the milk is an excellent food, especially for children; butter is used in most of our dishes; and cheese is the principal nourishment of our peasants. How many poor families are reduced to the necessity of living entirely on their cow? Those very men, who toil from morning to night, who groan and are bowed down with the labour of ploughing the ground, obtain nothing from the earth but black bread, and are obliged to yield to others the flour and substantial part of the grain. They raise rich crops, but not for themselves. Those men who breed and multiply our cattle, who spend their whole lives in rearing and guarding them from injuries, are debarred from enjoying the fruits of their labour. They are denied the use of flesh, and obliged, by their condition, or rather by the cruelty of the opulent, to live, like horses, upon barley, oats, coarse pot-herbs, &c.

Even today, there are many small cattle ranchers that do not eat the beef they raise because they need the proceeds from selling their livestock. They eat cheaper meat, and less meat than perhaps they would prefer -- a modern version of what Buffon describes in the late 1700's. The rising costs of inputs over the past few years (mostly due to that corn ethanol boon-doggle)to raise cattle and to keep pastures fertile has strapped the small beef producer. Oftentimes they can only just break-even for all their efforts to provide beef to the USA, and too many actually lose money at this endeavor. Something is quite morally wrong about that.

Something is also quite morally wrong about targeting cows as key villains in this so-called Global Warming crisis. The extreme left wing liberals, like Paul McCartney, would have you believe they are looking out for the working class, the little people -- nothing could be farther from the truth. The long term ramifications of implementing their pie in the sky philosophies and beliefs may well lead to another era of poor diets for the poor such as Buffon so succinctly described as existing over 200 years ago and beyond. Of course, the really poorest of the poor will get more and more food stamps I imagine, and they can buy whatever they want at the supermarket -- but the hard working poor will not.

Polled and Horned "white urus" in the British Isles -Important FACTS about the Chillingham herd of White Cattle & the Hamilton (Cadzow) Herd

The following are excerpts of an 1836 book from the highly respected and much published Sir William Jardine. These excerpts clearly establish the polled Park cattle (now known as British White) as not only a treasured heritage breed in the early 1800's, but also as a distinctly different body type over those of the horned Chillingham herd. The horned Chillingham cattle are purported to have been kept in isolation and the bloodlines pure through the 20th century (the works of other early 19th century authors have proven this to be a false statement, and Sir William also notes that at one point prior to 1836 there was only ONE horned Park animal left in the Chillingham herd.) "The stock at Chillingham was once reduced to a cow in calf. The produce fortunately proved a bull." Which Chillingham obviously used for cross-breeding in order to re-populate their herd, and it's a solid assumption that stock from the Hamilton/Cadzow herd were likely used as well in building their herd anew.


THE NATURALIST'S LIBRARY, Volume 12. BY SIR WILLIAM JARDINE, BART., Lizars, Edinburgh 1836

THE WHITE URUS - HAMILTON BREED OF WILD CATTLE. P.205
"The (once wild white cattle)most remarkable now are the parks of Chillingham in Northumberland, the property of Lord Tankerville, and that of Hamilton Palace in Lanarkshire, where the drawing for the accompanying illustration was made. This very ancient and peculiar breed of cattle has been long kept up with great care by the noble family of Hamilton in a chase in the vicinity of their splendid seat at Hamilton, in the Middle Ward of the county of Lanark. They are generally believed to be the remains of the ancient breed of white cattle which were found on the island when the Romans first visited it, and which they (the Romans) represent as then running wild in the woods."

*We are indebted to Robert Brown Esq Chamberlain. . . to His Grace the Duke of Hamilton for having procured for us the following interesting account:

". . .The chase in which they browse was formerly a park or forest attached to the Royal castle of Cadzow where the ancient British kings of Strathclyde and subsequently kings of Scotland used frequently to reside and to hold their courts. The oaks with which the park is studded over are evidently very ancient and many of them are of enormous size. Some of these are English oaks and are supposed to have been planted by King David, first Earl of Huntingdon about the year 1140. The chase is altogether of princely dimensions and appearance amounting to upwards of 1300 Scotch acres. The number of white cattle at present kept is upwards of sixty. Great care is taken to prevent the domestic bull from crossing the breed and if accidentally a cross should take place the young is destroyed. In their general habits they resemble the fallow deer more than any other domestic animal. Having been exposed without shade or covering of any sort to the rigours of our climate from time immemorial, they are exceedingly hardy and having never been caught or subjected to the sway of man they are necessarily peculiarly wild and untractable."

"Their affection for their young, like that of many other animals in a wild or half wild state, is excessive. When dropt they carefully conceal them among long grass or weeds in some brushwood or thicket and approach them cautiously twice or thrice a day for the purpose of supplying them with the necessary nourishment. On these occasions it is not a little dangerous to approach the place of retreat, the parent cow being seldom at any great distance and always attacking any person or animal approaching it with the utmost resolution and fury."

"The young calves when unexpectedly approached betray great trepidation by throwing their ears back close upon their necks and lying squat down upon the ground. When hard pressed they have been known to run at their keepers in a butting menacing attitude in order to force their retreat. The young are produced at all seasons of the year but chiefly in spring. The mode of catching the calves is to steal upon them whilst slumbering or sleeping in their retreat when they are a day or two old, and put a cloth over their mouths to prevent them crying, and then carry them off to a place of safety without the reach of the herd; otherwise, the cry of the calf would attract the dam and she, by loud bellowing, would bring the whole flock to the spot to attack the keeper in the most furious manner."

"These cattle are seldom seen scattering themselves indiscriminately over the pasture like other breeds of cattle, but are generally observed to feed in a flock. They are very wary of being approached by strangers, and seem to have the power of smelling them at a great distance. When any one approaches them unexpectedly they generally go off to a little distance to the leeward and then turn round in a body to smell him. In these gambols they invariably affect circles, and when they do make an attack, which is seldom the case, should they miss the object of their aim they never return upon it, but run straight forward without ever venturing to look back. The only method of slaughtering these animals is by shooting at them. When the keepers approach them for this purpose they seem perfectly aware of their danger, and always gallop away with great speed in a dense mass, preserving a profound silence and generally keeping by the sides of the fields and fences"

"The cows which have young in the meantime forsake the flock and repair to the places where their calves are concealed, where with flaming eyeballs and palpitating hearts they seem resolved to maintain their ground at all hazards The shooters always take care to avoid these retreats. When the object of pursuit is one of the older bulls of the flock the shooting of it is a very hazardous employment. Some of these have been known to receive as many as eleven bullets without one of them piercing their skulls. When fretted in this manner they often become furious and owing to their great swiftness and prodigious strength they are then regarded as objects of no ordinary dread"

"The White Urus or Hamilton breed of wild cattle differs in many respects from any other known breed and as compared with those kept at Chillingham Park, Northumberland by Lord Tankerville." (The Plate pictured here is of the Hamilton herd, drawn in 1835, note both horned, polled, and undermarked are represented, it's presented sideways as it is on google books, but worth turning your head or your monitor to the side to look at, as it is much sharper and clearer than the large copy I have on the Picture of the Day link.)



"They (the Hamilton white cattle) are larger and more robust in the general form of their bodies, and their markings are also very different. In the Tankerville breed the colour is invariably white, muzzle black, the whole of the inside of the ear and about one third of the outside from the tip downwards red. (they were black muzzled and red eared, no doubt mineral deficient) The horns are very fine white with black tips and the head and legs are slender and elegant. In the Hamilton Urus, the body is dun white, the inside of the ears, the muzzle, and the hoofs black; and the fore part of the leg from the knee downwards mottled with black. The cows seldom have horns, their bodies are thick and short, their limbs are stouter, and their heads much rounder than in the Tankerville breed. The inside or roof of the mouth is black or spotted with black. The tongue is black and generally tipped with black. It is somewhat larger in proportion than that of the common cow, and the high ridge on the upper surface near to the insertion of the tongue is also very prominent. It is observable that the calves that are off the usual markings are either entirely black or entirely white or black and white, but never red or brown."

"The beef like that of the Tankerville breed is marbled and of excellent flavour and the juice is richer and of a lighter colour than in ordinary butcher meat. The size of the smaller cows does not exceed fifteen stones, . . . weight but some of the larger sort especially the bulls average from thirty five to forty five stones. The circumstances of their breeding in, and of beng chased so much when any of them are to be shot, of being so frequently approached and disturbed by strangers, and of having been exposed so long to all the vicissitudes of the seasons and constantly browsing the same pasture, have no doubt contributed greatly to the deterioration of the breed and must have reduced them much in size and other qualities."

"The favourite haunt of these animals in ancient times seems to have been the Caledonia Sylva or Caledonian Forest . . . . dividing the Picts from the Scots and being well furnished with game, especially with fierce white bulls and kine(means cow). It was the place of both their huntings and of their greatest controversies."

"The Roman historians delight much to talk of the furious white bulls which the Forest of Caledonia brought forth."

"In the sixteenth century they seem to have become entirely extinct as a wild race, and as we learn from Meaner, were all slain except in that part which is called Cummernad. Another author informs us that ". . .thocht thir bulls were bred in sindry boundis of the Colidin Wod (Caledonian Forest today) now be continewal hunting and lust of insolent men they are destroyit in all parts of Scotland and nane of them left but allenerlie in Cumernald." At what period the present breed were introduced to the royal chase at Cadzow cannot now be well ascertained. It is well known that the Cummings were at one period proprietors of Cadzow and Cumbernauld; and it is likely that in their time the white cattle were in both places. But be that as it may, they have long been extirpated at Cumbernauld, while they have been preserved in great perfection at Hamilton."

". . . .The universal tradition in Clydesdale is that they have been at Cadzow from the remotest antiquity, and the probability is that they are a part remaining of the establishment of our ancient British and Scottish kings. At present they are objects of great curiosity, both to the inhabitants and to strangers visiting the place. During the troubles consequent on the death of Charles I and the usurpation of Cromwell, they were nearly extirpated; but a breed of them having been retained for the Hamilton family by Hamilton Dalzell and by Lord El phingstone at Cumbernauld they were subsequently restored in their original purity."

Note from Jimmie: This really informative book was found on Google books, and I've had to add punctuation (and no doubt missed some that are needed!) as it didn't retain this on a cut a paste of the excerpts, as well there are misspellings that haven't been corrected that are a part of the original work..............

Did You Know? Cash for Clunkers $ Taken from Alternative Energy Stimulus Dollars

In the midst of this really bad economy, at least corn prices have backed off their record highs, though how much that's reflected in the price of a bag of feed at your local feed store is quite variable. Once a higher price point is reached, it takes a while for the retail products to see a matching decline, if ever. While I don't feed corn to my cattle, I'm very aware of how the rising price of corn and other grains used in ethanol production has negatively impacted the value of livestock in the USA.

One possible hint of relief from the disastrous impact of increasing corn ethanol production is the growing research and ingenuity in designing electric cars, and getting our vehicles and machinery out of the lead acid battery dark ages (Lead-acid batteries were invented in 1859 by French physicist Gaston Planté.) Also a possible source of relief from dependence on ethanol and fossil fuels is solar energy.

These collective alternative energy areas received much play in the days of the last presidential campaign. Theoretically, we now have an administration and Congress that has provided for the subsidy of these expensive new technologies (In most of Europe, the government has subsidized alternative energy growth with great success.) However, of the mere $6 Billion or so that was designated for alternative energy in the Trillion Dollar Stimulus Bill, Congress now proposes to riddle the original concept with red tape and wrinkles, and even worse they propose to take ~$2 Billion dollars of the $6 Billion, and divert those monies to the Cash for Clunkers money pit (IMO). Where is the logic there? I've not even noticed this focused on in the news!

Alternative energy companies are a natural to put folks back to work in places like Michigan where solar companies are already positioned and there is a ready labor force for production of solar panels and batteries, etc... Yet, this piddling bit of $6 Billion dollars for alternative energy has not only been NOT disbursed, it is now in danger of being given away to a program that pulls money out of your pocket and straight into the pocket of the automotive industry. In no way does this help the USA get off the ethanol track and put our corn back to use as Food for ourselves and our livestock.

August 10th Credit Suisse Alternative Energy Report:
Solar US market: Developments in the last week diminish the positive impact of the DOE's loan guarantee program for commercially viable solar PV technologies. There is a possibility that only ~$750mm is available to cover credit subsidy costs for commercially proven technologies (versus $6bb we thought 3 months ago). $2bb from the $6bb allocated for DOE loan guarantee program could be diverted to "cash for clunkers.”

Ethanol crush spreads have strengthened over the past few months, driven by lower natural gas and corn prices plus stable ethanol prices. Ethanol production volumes have been kept in check, helping to support ethanol pricing. Cash margins for ethanol producers have again turned positive.

Follow this link for the full Credit Suisse comments and analysis regarding the Cash for Clunkers ripping off the Alternative Energy sector.