Blue milk: keeping the cows tied to a stake during the heat of the day

In the first half of the nineteenth century the cause of blue milk was a subject of much speculation.  Several authors supposed that the eating of plants that contain indigo-like compounds was the cause of this phenomenon, that was considered a disease by some and someething outside the cow by others. Chabert and Fromage in 1805, in a book that I discussed in the two preceding blogs, tried to connect the blue milk to abnormal digestion and metabolism of the cow.

In Gellé (1841) other theories were discussed. Gellé wrote a book (1), devoted to diseases of cattle. In a long paragraph (p.695-701) he discussed the alterations of the secretion of the milk, the main subjects being red milk and blue milk. Red milk was a less important problem, mainly caused by blood in the milk of which the origin was uncertain; Gellé cites, without giving the source, a certain M(onsieur) Serain who in 1805 had a couple of cows, some of which gave milk full of blood; it appeared to be some kind of epidemic in the field that was called “vaches harondelées” because it was thought that the udders of these cows were picked at by swallows (hirondelles).

With regard to blue milk Gellé included in his review quite a number of reports of persons who had observed blue milk occurring in practice and had tried to explain and cure or prevent it. Of the many theories described and commented upon by him I want to concentrate on a report by Monsieur Sarin, a health officer in Saintes, in France, who did some investigations in Normandy. As with the others, the source of the report is not given by Gellé; it may have been oral. Sarin had observed in a certain, not specified, year that during the months June, July and August, when blue milk was expected to manifest itself as usual, he could not find it, because, as he speculated, the weather was rather cold then. In addition, he observed that in regions where it was a custom to tie the cows to a stake during the whole day and right in the sun, blue milk was seen frequently. Sarin concluded from these observations that an excess of atmospherical heat should be the cause. He described that he had met a farm-maid (bonne femme) who had told him that she protected the tied cows against blue milk by pouring three or four buckets of cold water on the back of the cows, in the morning and in the afternoon. Sarin believed he had found the cause and the remedy and was supported in this belief by an experiment he performed  in which he produced blue milk in cows in a very warm cow-shed; subsequently he got rid of the blue milk by the cold water treatment. When he repeated this “protocol” by heating the shed again and then cooling the cows in the shed by cold water, the blue milk returned and disappeared as before.

Gellé did not believe it, he prefered the other theories, given by his sources: either nutrition is the cause because the cows eat plants containing substances that give a colour to the milk, or it is the consequence of irritations of the udder, developed during the parturation process.

I think the report of monsieur Sarin is interesting for two reasons.

First he is trying to confirm an hypothesis, based on field observations, of heat as a cause of blue milk, by performing an experiment. I our view it may be a sloppy experiment; it lacks at least one necessary control, i.e. cows in the same shed not treated with cold water. But nevertheless it is an experiment as a step in scientific reasoning that was absent in most of the other theories that were based on observations and subsequent correlations alone. Gellé thought it was a mistake to adhere to the heat theory because in other regions in France with “atmospherical heat” no blue milk was found. Sarin’s theory was rejected, not because his experiment was wrong but because the hypothesis that was the starting point for his experiment was considered not plausible and was not supported by other evidence, apart from his experiment.

Second, Sarin’s report is interesting because he tells us about farming practices of the early 19^th century, that we easily forget since we are used to machine milking and farms with tens or hundreds of cows. In Sarin’s days cows were sometimes tied to a stake and left on their own for the whole day. What did they eat? I suppose the plants that were in their reach, but probably also all kinds of vegetable feedstuff that was collected by the farmer or his wife and his employees in the direct environment of the farm: plants from fallow land and sides of ditches, containing weeds and contaminations, sometimes causing the milk to be coloured blue, red or yellow. Compared to what we are used to now, farming practices were different, housing of cows was different and what cows were given to eat was also different.

And concepts of disease were different.

1. P.-B.Gellé. Pathologie bovine ou traité complet des maladies du boeuf. Tome troisième.

Paris, Bouchard-Huzard, 1841

Blue milk according to Chabert and Fromage (1805), part 2

Chemical observations and ethical considerations

The third chapter of Lait bleu, the book of 1805 about the problem of blue milk, is called Observations chimiques qui peuvent avoir quelques rapports au phénomène du lait bleu, or, “Chemical observations that may be related to the phenomeon of blue milk”. It is not the chemistry that we are used to since our highschool years, however, because in 1805 chemical ideas were still under the influence of alchemy and early pharmaceutical concepts whereas the investigations of Lavoisier and Priestly did not yet have an impact on ideas about the composition and properties of milk.

The chapter has three parts and all three are quotations from the work of two French chemists, Antoine François Comte de Fourcroy (1755-1809), who had been working with Lavoisier and supported his ideas, and  J.A.C.Comte Chaptal de Canteloup (1765-1832), who was also an important person in the French government. The first part quotes de Fourcroy and deals with the relation of temperature on the fluidity of cream and the coagulation of milk under the influence of electricity (thunderstorms). The second part, also by de Fourcroy, is a report of observations made by putting fresh milk in the open air for 30 days; understandably for us is the development of moulds on the surface, and when a blue colour develops, it may be related to the blue colour of Roquefort cheese. The third part is a quotation from the work of Chaptal, and is a speculation of the nature of the blue colour that may also explain why milk becomes blue. Chaptal has the opinion that oxygen gas may condensate in different degrees, each degree giving its own degree of deflection of light; since blue rays are the weakest rays, they will be deflected first when oxygen binds to the material of cadavres and milk.

The importance of this chapter is not its contents, but the fact that Chabert and Fromage suspected that the phenomenon of blue milk could be explained by the influence of factors from the outside: something happens to milk when it is kept under certain circumstances in which electricity, oxygen and moulds may have a role.

The forth chapter returns to the cows as the source of the blue milk, because, as explained in the earlier chapters, it is also the constitution of the cow that contributes to the problem. The underlying cause is that cows that have been fed a poor diet in winter are going to the fields in spring and have access to excessive and rich fodder, which may cause the milk becoming blue. So chapter 4, dealing with prophylaxis and cure, concentrates on dietary regimens and therapies that are in essence an advice to prevent the access of the cows to an excessive amount of food, or in the case of a cure of blue milk, to reduce the food, drench the animals with salts and apply blood letting. But the most interesting part of this chapter is an ethical consideration which is worth while citing. Chabert and Fromage fully understand that farmers want their cows to eat much as soon as possible, because that helps the milk production, but, they state:

“ … we should realize how the demands we make of high and lasting milk production weakens the lungs; by the state of domestication of the animals, we knowingly condemn them to inanation for our needs and it is not reasonable to requiere that the Doctor to furnishes remedies for a disease that is absolutely voluntary. So, either the cows are exhausted and waste away of lassitude to give us milk, or the butcher kills them to feed us with their meat, men should not pretend that he does not know, neither in the first case nor in the second, that his taste condemns the animals to be his victims. Only his interest and his sensibility should stimulate him to let them suffer as little as possible until the moment of their sacrifice.”¹

[1] P.Chabert en C.M.F.Fromage, ‘D’une altération du lait de vache, désignée sous le nom de lait bleu’, Paris, A.-J.Marchant, 1805, p. 32-33

Blue milk according to Chabert and Fromage (1805)

Early in the nineteenth century blue milk was an important problem, even more than mastitis. Most authors of veterinary publications, especially in Germany, treated mastitis and blue milk in one and the same chapter of diseases of milk, but only blue milk was mentioned as affecting the economy of the dairy farm, or any other farm at which milk was a commercial product for consumption, butter and, sometimes, cheese.

I have written about blue milk before (blog of september 18, 2013), but since I found that the problem of blue milk has been intimately connected to the development of the chemistry of milk and the microscopical detection of what we now call microorganisms in milk, the problem of blue milk merits a more detailed historical analysis.

One of the first publications discussing blue milk is a French booklet, dating rom 1805 (Germinal an XIII) and is written by P.Chabert and C.M.Fromage, both members of the Imperial Veterinary School of Alfort of which Chabert was the director and Fromage a teacher. The title of the booklet is “D’une altération du lait de vache, désignée sous le nom de lait bleu” or “The alteration of cow’s milk, designated as blue milk”.

Its introduction contains an interesting statement: “most of the alterations [i.e. changes in colour, consistency and other properties that make milk agreeable] have not sufficiently been the object of observations of the Chemistry and the Hygiene”. And although the authors gave much attention to the chemical background and characteristics of blue milk (to be discussed next time), hygiene is left out of their text, at least the hygiene that we in  the 2015 recognize as such; I suggest that chemistry and hygiene in 1805, as scientific disciplines, may belong to one and the same activity.

What follows is an essay of about 30 pages, dealing with blue milk only.

According to Chabert and Fromage the characteristics of blue milk are the following. Freshly drawn milk is normal, the cow looks healthy and the quantity of milk is not diminished; nevertheless, after 12-18 hours the milk starts to become blue, the surface of the milk and cream is covered with small small blue dots, the size of a lentil, which expand  to form a closed layer on top of the milk in a pail or vessel. Butter and cheese are affected in quality too, but the blue stain is mostly limited to the whey. The phenomenon does not occur in the milk of all cows but sometimes in one out of ten only; when the affected cow is kept separately, in another field, and its milk not mixed with the normal milk, the problem seems to disappear, but when the cow is brought back to the other cows it may appear again. As a passing remark, Chambert and Fromage tell us that some people think that blue milk is contagious, which may be based on the re-appearance of the problem after bringing formerly affected cows back into the herd. Other people say that the occurrence of blue milk may be reduced when you clean milk vessels with common salt. Both remarks seem important to us, because of what was later found about the cause and treatment of blue milk.

The authors think that the problem of blue milk was seen for the first time in 1787 at an abby near Evreux and elder people think that it is a very old problem. It is certain, say the authors,  that it has been increasing rapidly during the last 12-15 years (which is, for Chambert and Fromage, since 1790). Some farmers think that magic may be involved, or poisoning by enemies.

Dairy farms close to a larger town may succeed in selling their milk when it is still fresh and unchanged. Otherwise it should be given to pigs or dogs (who may not like it).

Chabert and Fromage discuss five possible causes. 1. The lay-out of stables and milk rooms. 2. The cleanliness of the milk rooms and the farmer’s houskeeping. 3. The nature of the soil and the cultivation of the vegetation. 4. The forage. 5. Wheather and climate. With regard to forage, they mention several plants that may contain indigo-like compounds that may bne transferred to the milk unchanged after ingestion.

Their main conclusion is that the blue milk comes and goes without any regularity and that it should be seen as a real disease because there is a change in the product of the phenomena of life. The underlying cause may be a change in physiology, which itself may be due to weakness of several organs, in combination with what we now may call stress by sudden heat or cold. This may lead to an altered action of the lymph, the blood vessels, the lungs and the milk glands.

(to be continued)

The Langreuter project: the reconstruction of the rise and fall of a milking machine

In the collection of big and small objects that are present in the basement of the Utrecht University Museum is a milking machine. It had been standing there for years, collecting dust only and doing nothing, a dead object.

On my proposal to try to revive the machine again the response was more than favourable: Babke Aarts, assistant-curator of the veterinary collection of the museum, and deciede to start a project immediately,  with the aim of finding out whether the milking machine could be brought to life and of reconstructing its history.

Hardly any data were available in the archives of the museum with regard to this machine. It had a number painted on it, corresponding to a card, telling us that it was obtained some 60 years ago. This was in agreement with a publication in the Tijdschrift voor Diergeneeskunde (Journal of Veterinary Medicine) of 1963, in which Jan Grommers, than having the function of wetenschappelijk ambtenaar 1^e  klasse (to be compared to an assistant professor nowadays) at the Institute voor Zoötechniek (Animal Husbandry) of the Veterinary Faculty of Utrecht University. The publication dealt with the role of the milking machine in the etiology of mastitis. Grommers wrote:

“Although in the development of the milking machine it has been attempted to imitate the milking by hand (a machine of this type has been handed over to the veterinary department of the university museum) all milking machines that are now in use operate by suction power”. (p. 1553)¹

This was all the knowledge we had when we started: the milking machine had been a property of the Zootechnical Institute and it worked by imitating the hand of the milk-maid or milkman; in addition it had lost the competition for the market.

However, the machine delivered some information too. It had an identity label attached to it with the following text:

Melkmaschine “Langreuter”

(Patent Jens Nielsen)

Fabrikat der Maihak A.G.

HAMBURG

The name Langreuter is apparently the type of the machine and we took this name for the name of our project.

The machine has two parts, which we call the driver and the milking unit.The driver is shown in figure 1.

Fig. 1

   It contains two camshafts (which I hope is a proper translation of what it is called in Dutch) connected to two drawing cables that transfer the operation of the driver to the milking unit. The driver is operated by hand but the handle is missing.

Fig. 2

The milking unit is given in figure 2. It is shown upside down: the milk flows out of the tube’ that is now on top, into the milk-pail.

The progress of the project will be presented in a series of blog messages, in Dutch; for those who understand Dutch, see Langreuterproject.wordpress.com. We will try to translate and/or summarize our findings and I will post them on this blogsite. So keep following PHOAS.

In studying the the Langreuter milking machine and trying to bring it to work again, we hope to obtain more insight in the history of milking machines in general and why the Langreuter, together with other machines of the same type, lost the competition.

1. 1. F.J.Grommers. Een overzicht van de betekenis van het machinaal melken in de aetiologie van mastitis. Tijdschrift voor Diergeneeskunde, 88, 1553-1558, 1963

On which side do you milk a cow?

Some time ago, 9 november 2014, I posted a blog with the title “To ascertain the state of the secretion”. The subject of this blog was a short essay published in 1835, dealing with the lack of practical experience, shown by recently graduated vets in England, when called to farms for treating diseases of cattle. Young vets should obtain the skills to manipulate the animals when working with them: take up the feet, hold the bullock by the nose, know how to milk a cow for taking milk samples for inspection of mastitis. For if he should go to the wrong side of the cow, the milk-maid or the mistress should laugh against him: “he did not know the milking side of the cow.”

This remark has me kept thinking since then. Why should the author, apparently an experienced vet, make such a remark?  Was there a standard milking side in the 1830’s? And if so, was it the left- or the right-hand side? Suppose it had to be the right-hand side, why should those young vets did not know it, since even in the London metropole sufficient small dairy farms were present in those days to make them able to observe on which side a cow was milked.

Nowadays cows, when they are hand-milked, are milked on the right-hand side. Nobody seems to know why. Internet is onlu a little bit helpful (see below). Searching the older literature gave some results that may lead to a conclusion.

1. Several drawings dating from the early 19^th century (and later) show milk-maids milking a cow on the right-hand side. One of those is shown here, taken from a Dutch five volume book on the natural history of cattle ¹.

  

2. Most 19^th century authors of dairy farming books are not interested in the side on which to milk a cow, they do not mention left or right. When they do, they prefer the right side of the cow. A Dutch instruction for dairy farmers by ter Haar, published around 1900, states that you should milk your cows on the right-hand side. He advises: “For milking you set yourself at the right side of the cow … That cross-wise milking should be better, as has been claimed, has not been confirmed” ².

3. An anonymous author, who calls himself Ruricola, states in 1856: “The cow is generally milked from the left side, the milkmaid then having the right hand more at liberty, as the left hand is comparatively confined to the flank.”. ³ I must admit that I have no personal experience with milking cows, but I do not understand the argument for this proposal. In my view the argument holds for right-side milking.

4. The Dutch professor of Animal Husbandry H.M.Kroon, who had a main interest in and was an expert of milk science, published a short book in 1897 with practical instructions for dairy farmers. “The milk-man or milk-maid who is going to milk a cow, is generally setting his- or herself at the right-hand side of the animal, close to the right hindleg”. He then quotes a certain Dr.Brümmel who has the opinion that when the hind quarters of the udder give more milk than the front quarters,  milking on the left-hand side gives a better yield. But this is only true for cross-wise milking: the right hand has more power and milks the teats that give more milk.⁴

5. Cows may be milked on both sides at the same farm. This is the observation of Charles Louis Flint, who described the daily practice of dairy farming in Holland in the 1860’s. “The milking takes place on the right side of the cow, so that the milker sits on this side. In West-Friesland and North-Holland there is an exception to this rule. The cows are tied in pairs in the stalls and one is milked on one side and the other on the other, the milker sitting with his back to the board partition to avoid annoyance from either animal”.⁵ Flint was an American who relied mainly on European sources for his description of dairy farming practice.

6. I make room for one observation of milking from modern times. In India, as was suggested on an internet forum, cows are milked on the left side.This was confirmed by a video I found on YouTube, in which is shown how an Indian farmer teaches his wife to milk a cow on the left side.⁶

Conclusion.

Although hand milking on the right hand-side is preferred above milking on the left side, a clear convincing argument for this habit cannot be found. Milking on the left side may work equally well. I think it is more a matter of tradition and of not annoying a cow that is used to be milked at one side by changing sites unnecessary.

1. Joannes Le Francq van Berkhey,  Natuurlijke historie van het rundvee in Holland , Vierde stuk. Trap, Leyden, 1809, p.370

2. A.A. ter Haar, Melk en melkproducten. Volledig leerboek der zuivelbereiding Noordhof, Groningen, 1905, p.29.

3. Ruricola, Dairy farming. The rearing and feeding of dairy stock, and the management of their produce., Lovell Reeve, London, 1856, p.136.

4. H.M.Kroon, Het melken. Een bevattelijk boekje voor den veehouder. Doetinchem, Misset, 1897, p.23 and 29.

5. Charles Louis Flint, Milch cows  and dairy farming, Tilton & Co, Boston, 1867, p.298-299

6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhJnHYtLB-o&feature=related

I thank Babke Aarts for bringing references 2 and 4 to my attention.

Cruelty to cattle in the 1830’s

“Barbarities which it would not be thought could be practiced in a Christian country”.

This is what Youatt wrote in 1834 when describing the situation at the Smithfield cattle market in his days. His complaint and accusations were based on the fact that the market was no longer large enough to contain all the cattle and drive them through the streets to the butcher. This lack of space resulted in danger for the people and “many an act of cruelty to the poor beasts”. “The most barbarous expedients were resorted to to pack the cattle in the circumscribed space. Youatt supported his accusations with an extremely long footnote which contains a text, taken The Voice of Humanity, “an excellent and cheap quarterly publication”. Parts of this texts are worthwhile quoting.

“In Smithfield market there is not room to tie up to the rails much more than half of the cattle sent there for sale! The remainder are disposed of by being formed, in groups of about twenty in each, into “ rings” or “ off-droves,”as such divisions are termed. About two o’clock in the morning the Smithfield barbarities are at the height, and the constables, being sent into the market in the daytime only, are consequently not in attendance. The drovers surround the unfortunate bullocks which cannot be tied up in the market, and commence by aiming with their bludgeons blows at their heads, to avoid which they endeavour to hide their heads, by keeping them towards the ground. On attempting to run backwards, the bullocks are restrained by blows upon their bucks and legs, together with the application of goads; whilst, if they venture to lift up the head, a dozen bludgeons are instantly hammering on it, until again lowered to the ground. This scene of barbarity is continued until every bullock, however refractory, obstinate, stupid, or dangerous at first, has been disciplined to stand quietly in a ring—their heads in the centre, their bodies diverging outward like the radii of a circle: this is done that they may conveniently be handled by the butchers. The barbarity of Smithfield is at its height during the night; but in the daytime, by seeing the process by which one or more bullocks, when sold, are driven out of a “ring” or “off drove,"—and observing the hammerings with bludgeons on the head; the thrusting the goads into the nostrils of the animals to make them move backwards, after similar instruments had been applied to urge them in the contrary direction; by witnessing the mode of re-forming the “ rings" or "' off-droves," which are constantly broken through by the withdrawment of purchased animals, as well as by the passing and repassing of carts and drays, some faint idea may be formed of the amount of needless barbarity inflicted, and of the consequent deterioration of the meat.”

The footnote continues with statements of witnesses who describe salesmen with 20 cattle or so having to make their beasts form a ring in the manner described above; but when these animals have to go out of this ring again, to be led to the butcher, they are now anxious of all the blows and mistreatments and want to join every other ring they see, from which they have to be removed again with similar blows to heads and legs, making them blind and cripple; and so the animals are in the greatest distress and in the end, at the moment of slaughtering, severely wounded.

“All this would be entirely prevented, if there were room to tie each bullock separately” .

William Youatt, Cattle, their Breeds, Management and Diseases, London: Baldwin and Craddock, 1834, p.258-260.

The cattle market of Smithfield

The cattle market of  Smithfield: the selling of cattle and the consumption of meat.

When describing all the breeds of Great Britain, following the breeds of all the counties, Youatt also turns his attention to Middelesex, or, in his words, the Metropolis. (1)

He starts the description with stating that there is no distinct breed in the county, and only a small portion of the fields are applied for fattening of cattle for the butcher. Some land is devoted to the temporary keep, the parking so to say, of cattle as they have journied from all over the country to the cattle market of Smithfield. Youatt presents a table, taken from another source, of the number of cattle and sheep sold each year at Smithfield from 1732 up to 1830. The number of cattle sold in 1732 was 76,210 and of sheep 514,700; in 1830 their number had been increased to 159,907 for cattle and 1287,070 for sheep, that is (my calculations) 440 cattle and 3500 sheep per day. Think of all the noise, stench and jams in the streets of all those animals, coming in and going out in one day! All these were the supplies for London and towns and villages in the neighbourhood, and for the navy.

Next to that there was what Youatt called the dead market, which was the selling of dead meat sent up from the country “generally speaking perfectly wholesome, and fairly and honestly slaughtered, although it is said that the flesh of some animals that did not come by their death through the hands of man, has occasionally found its way to the Newgate market.”

Based on several assumptions, estimations and numbers of tables, Youatt calculates the average quantity of meat consumed by each individual in the course of one year. The outcome for London is 170 pound per person per year or half a pound per day. He considers this a very high calculation compared to that of Paris, where people consume 80 pounds per day, and of Brussels, where they consume 89 pounds, but, says he, “ours is a meat-eating population, and composed chiefly of Protestants; and when we remember that this includes the bones as well as the meat, half a pound per day is not too much to allow to each person”.

 

(1). William Youatt, Cattle, their Breeds, Managment and Diseases, London: Baldwin and Craddock, 1834, p.255-257.

The intelligence of the oxen.

Youatt’s book on cattle has two distinct parts, Breeding and Diseases, but he walks along a lot of side tracks. The reason is that he has quite a number of observations and anecdotes in store, and he likes to tell them. He has made observations of the cattle market in London and the local dairy industry there and where in his book should he give them a place? He has chosen to put them in a chapter about the shorthorn breeds, in the paragraphs dealing with the county of Middlesex, which contains London.

Another interesting description is that of the behaviour of the ox; Youatt put it in part 2, The Anatomical Structure and Diseases of Cattle, the first chapter of which is The Structure and Diseases of the Head of the Ox. Not a single detail of the head is forgotten, ears, eyes, sinuses, skin and bones, all organs and tissues play a role in his treatise. When he arrives at the brain he starts with an introductory paragraph of the subject which he closes with the following sentence: “Shall we somewhat enliven a dry part of our work by adding one or two additional anecdotes to those already related?” (p.285).

Then follows the paragraph “The intelligence of the oxen”, containing four anecdotes and a conclusion. The anecdotes illustrate, respectively, maternal affections of cows, two times the attachment of oxen to their keepers, and the reasoning faculty in the ox. The latter subject is the story (from “a gentleman near Laggan, in Scotland”) of a fat and drowsy boy who was kept to watch the cattle, a bull grazing with cows in open unfenced meadows, to prevent them tresspassing on the neighbouring fields and destroy the corn. The boy was often found asleep, for which he was then punished. “Warned by this, he kept a long switch, and revenged himself upon them [the cattle] with an unsparing hand, if they exceeded their boundary”. Apparently the bull became conditioned by this treatment because he used to strike the cows with his forehead (he had no horns) whenever they crossed this boundary and place himself before the cows in a threatening attitide if they approached it. “At length, his honesty and vigilance became so obvious that the boy was employed in weeding and other business, without fear of their misbehaviour in his absence”.

Youatt finished the paragraph with a philosophical comparison between the relative brain size and the intelligence of the ox, the horse and the dog, concluding that the ox occupies an inferior rank. But “he occasionally displays the germ of every social affection; and the knowledge of this should give us a kindlier feeling towards him, and protect him from many an abuse”.

About which Youatt has a lot to say elsewhere in his book

Youatt’s cattle breeds (1835).

Youatt’s book of cattle is divided in two parts. The first is about breeds, the second part is about anatomy and diseases.

The first part contains eight chapters, one about the history of the ox (with some speculation about the biblical flood and Abraham) and seven describing the different breeds of cattle: the British ox (dies it exist?), middle-horns, polled cattle, Irish cattle, long-horns, short horns and foreign breed (among them zebus and other breeds of the British colonies).

Each of the classes of breeds is described as belonging to the British counties and of parts of those where the breeds are kept and within each county or district important cattle breeders are mentioned with the breeds they are raising.  Some historical and geographical context is given as well.

As an example take a closer look at the cattle breeds of a part of Scotland. Youatt gives six classes of cattle breeds and one of them is the West-Highlander, a middle-horn breed. This breed is also found on the Hebrides, and according to Youatt they seem to retain most of its original character there and he treats it as a separate, Hebridean, breed.

He starts the discussion of this cattle-type with the history of the Hebrides, going back as far as the Middle Ages because this history may explain why the inhabitants neglected their cattle (because they were fighting and seafaring) and why they started to breed cattle (because they became honest, industrious fishermen, who learned agriculture). Youatt then continues telling us of the excellent properties of the cattle and how various owners on different islands treated their flocks.

Dairy on the Hebrides in 1835 is considered of little importance; the farmers rarely keep more milch cows than will furnish their families with milk, butter and cheese. The Highland cow does not give much milk, but that milk is rich and the butter made of it is excellent. During milking the cows are carefully drained to the last drop “…because the retention of any part [of the milk] is apt to hasten, if it does not produce, that which is one of the principle objections to the Highland cows as milkers, the speedy drying up of their milk”.

The West Highland breed still exists, but seems to be more hairy than the cow depicted in Youatt’s book.

Youatt uses almost any detail known about cattle breeds and their management for his overview. Stories of superstitious behaviour of farmers are mentioned in footnotes all over the book. He also describes the slow and interrupted journey of the cattle from the islands to the mainland as far south as London; we tend to forget that they had to walk the whole distance. He gives calculations of expenses and gains to estimate the financial benefit of fattening of cattle kept on the Hebrides.

I did not count all the breeds in Youatt’s book but my estimate is that he described approximately 80 breeds in the wy he described the Hebridean breed.

He certainly has collected an enormous amount of data from all over Great Britain and Ireland!

William Youatt, Cattle, their Breeds, Managment and Diseases, London: Baldwin and Craddock, 1834, p.64-73.

William Youatt (1767-1847) on cattle breeding and diseases

William Youatt, who lived from 1776 to 1847 was an influential veterinarian in England in the first half of the eighteenth century. Although he was originally not a veterinarian – he was educated for a ministry – he joined a veterinary hospital and became a veterinary surgeon by practical training. He started to give lectures and demonstrations for veterinary students in 1828 and initiated the journal The Veterinarian to which he contributed a large number of publications about all kinds of veterinary subjects. A nice anecdote is described in the Dictionary of National Biography:

“In 1844 Youatt standing at the head of his profession, was not a registered member of it; he objected to the constitution of the examining body of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, which consisted chiefly of physicians and surgeons. When, however, in 1844 this body was remodelled, and composed chiefly of veterinarians, Youatt, then being nearly seventy years old, presented himself for examination.  The difficulty by his refusal to answer a professional question rather impertinently put to him was overruled by the tact of the chairman, who handed him his diploma on the spot.” (1)

Youatt wrote many veterinary books, monographs on horses, pigs, rabies, dogs, sheep, bruteness against animals,  and cows. The latter is the book to which I will give more attention, because it contains many data and insights which are of interest for veterinarian historians and veterinarians in general (2) who are interested in bovine diseases and cattle breeding.

The book was written for improving the British veterinary education in the 1830’s. As Youatt himself states in the introduction:

“ ….  owing to the absence of efficient instruction concerning the diseases of cattle in the principal veterinary school, and the incomprehensible supineness of agricultural societies, and agriculturists generally, cattle have been too much left to the tender mercies of those who are utterly ignorant of their structures, the true nature of their diseases, the scientific treatment of them, and even the very first principles of medicine.”

Youatt apparently had not much practical experience with cattle, but he solved it by using a huge network of correspondents; his book is full of reports of visits he brought to breeders and farmers and quotations of letters he received from people in the country about their experience with diseases of cattle. Also worthwhile is his report of the cattle market in London and the way milk is handled as a commodity.

Some of these reports will fill more of my blogs on Youatts book. For those who are interested: the book is freely available on the internet via Google books.

1. E.Clarke, ‘Youatt, William’. Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, vol 63, p 354-355. See: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Youatt,_William_%28DNB00%29

2. William Youatt, Cattle, their Breeds, Management and Diseases, London: Baldwin and Craddock, 1834, p.2.