POLLED CATTLE.

Patea Mail, 10 January 1882, Page 4

POLLED CATTLE.

“ Agricola ” in the Auckland News says: Polled cattle are getting more into favor, both in England and America. There ore now choice herds in Yorkshire and Northumberland, as well as in Oxfordshire, Sussex and Surrey. Several shipments to Canada have taken place within the past few months. At sales by auction these cattle invariably realise top prices. And it is thought that, becoming a popular breed, the Royal Agricultural Society should offer more encouragement in the shape of prizes for this class of stock. At a sale held about three months ago in Aberdeenshire of the polled cattle belonging to the trustees of the Marquis of Huntly, there was a splendid herd of cows offered, which taking them as a lot, averaged £52 each. One cow fetched 100 guineas. There were thirty-two animals sold, twenty-four of which were cows, and the lot averaged more than £SO per head. There was another sale of polled cattle in October last, the stock belonging to Mr. Taylor. The crack lot in the catalogue was a handsome seven-year-old cow, who was a prize-winner. She was started at 70 guineas, and ultimately knocked down at the high-fignre of 155 guineas. Eleven other cows averaged about £57 each. According to the Liverpool Journal of Commerce, one of the most valuable shipments of polled Angus cattle that ever left England, left the Mersey early in October for Quebec and Montreal, having been purchased for the estate of the Hon. J. H. Pope, Minister of Agriculture for the Dominion. Mr Pope has already some sixty head of polled pedigree stock, and the above shipment, it is said, will make him the owner of the best herd of this class of cattle outside Great Britain. Another valuable lot of these cattle was shipped two or three weeks after, for the Hon. M. H. Cochrane, of Hillhnrst, Canada, they were mostly all prize takers, a yearling bull having cost 150 guineas. In one of the most important agricultural districts in England, namely Herts, a fine herd of polled cattle is being raised by Mr Greenfield of Dunstable, consisting of first-class pedigree animals, for which high prices had been given. I need hardly say that the polled Angus has long been celebrated as a beef breed. It will be remembered too, that some years ago, at the great International show in France, a polled animal took first prize against every other class of cattle, and so against all the world. For shipping there is a decided advantage in having hornless bullocks, as they cannot injure each other as those having horns often do. There is no doubt a great prejudice on the part of some farmers against poley cows as they like to see beasts with horns on. But from the facts I have given above, it will readily be seen that notwithstanding such prejudice, polled cattle are gradually coming to the front, if not in these

colonics, at all events in the Old Country and Canada. I suppose in course of time they may not be unfashionable oven on this side of the globe.