PURE GRASS BEEF
HISTORY OF SPECKLED PARK CATTLE AS TOLD BY TOM LAMONT
Now here is Mary's own story as told to me by her in the Lindsay kitchen in the big house. It was a real treat to me if I ever had time to go up to the Lindsay's and see what they had. Mary would shove the coffee to a hotter spot on the stove and she and Em would take turns visiting with me as they did some chores and housework. Mary would always have something interesting to tell me. It was on one of these visits that she told me where her colored cattle came from. She sat me at the kitchen table, gave me a writing pad and pencil and this is her story, word for word. I still have the copy I wrote that day and this is what it says:
"Sometime back in around 1937, Mr. Lindsay Sr. bought a few head of cattle from Gus Formo in the Tangleflags District, an area northeast of Lloydminster, Saskatchewan; one cow being a strawberry roan lineback and a three-year-old daughter, darker roan, also a lineback, and a year old heifer. Later the cow had a white calf with black ears and a black nose (this cow then is the mother of the heard). Mary kept this cow and raised a bull calf from a Scotch Highland bull (Mary being one of the first importers of Highland cattle from Scotland). In the meantime, her sister, Emma, had bought some purebred Jersey cows from the Mayor of Wetaskiwin. (This could have been C.D. Enman). They used Mary's bull on these Jersey cows and the offspring were sort of yellow roan and were very rich milkers and also showed lineback. Mary bought the heifer calves from Emma and they were bred to an Angus bull and nearly all had lineback spotted calves being black and white, black ears, black skin and black hooves. They, and their descendants, have been crossed with Angus and Galloway ever since. The Lindsay's do have some crosses of Shorthorn and a bit of Highland and some of these crossed back to Angus will produce black and white lineback spotted calves. Dave Lindsay, Mary and Emma, each had some and you will see some white ones with red ears and some with black ears, the main group being black and white with more solid black on the shoulders, ribs and flanks, being spotted on the legs and hips. Sometimes they are spotted all over with the main colour being white or sometimes a light grey-blue".
Strathmere Cows and Calves: owned and raised by Maureen Bexson and the late Rusty Bexson
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