PURE GRASS BEEF
WEST HIGHLAND OR KYLOE CATTLE
Photo from:
British breeds of live stock, By Great Britain Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1913
Text and photo from Farm live stock of Great Britain, 1907
By Robert Wallace, Loudon M. Douglas, Primrose McConnell, W. B. Wale
THE West Highland Breed belongs to the Western Islands of Scotland (the Outer and Inner Hebrides) and to Argyllshire and the adjoining counties.
It is the remaining selected representative of the different varieties of Scottish mountain cattle, the domesticated descendants of the ancient breed of the forests.
The West Highland, or Kiloe, was originally black, and smaller and shaggier than the Highlander, being kept in more exposed and altogether harder circumstances.
There was no Bakewell or Colling of the West Highland Breed, and the system of in-and-in breeding was eschewed for selection of the best or " natural breeding," and the natural selection of the survival of the fittest Youatt says that at one time through the whole of the Hebrides " one-fifth of the cattle, on an average, used to perish every winter of starvation," and also that " it was the uniform experience that attempts at crossing only destroyed the symmetry of the Kiloes, and rendered them more delicate and less suitable to the climate and the pasture."
text and photo from: Food supply: a practical handbook for the use of colonists and all intending to become farmers abroad or at home, Robert Bruce, 1898
Photo from Types and Breeds of Farm Animals, Charles Sumner Plumb, 1906
