December 2025 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN 25 Shorthorns, with the Cruickshank Brothers in Scotland later perfecting them. As for the dual-purpose strain, Thomas Bates is credited with perfecting that line of cattle. The Bates cattle were large, late maturing and stylish, and were noted for both the quantity and persistence of milk yield. Bates was a lifelong bachelor who was thought of as an eccentric. Upon his passing in 1849, it was estimated that 5,000 people attended his herd’s dispersal that his nephews conducted. The high prices and excitement from the Bates dispersal created a purebred fad in the United States around his dual-purpose cattle. This fad, like most purebred fads over the years, had people striving to produce a couple of high-priced animals – with the pure Dutchess bloodlines being particularly valuable in the Bates fad – but it was at the expense of their commercial customers, who would have been much better served with beef Shorthorns. The Bates bloodline cattle were thought by many seedstock producers to have reached perfection under the breeding management of Thomas Bates, so it was felt that to breed them to anything other than like-bred Bates bloodline cattle was to downgrade them. This led to intense inbreeding and the inbreeding depression that came with it. This particularly hit the cattle’s ability to reproduce. The Bates cattle were not noted for having good fertility when not inbred, and the inbreeding depression exasperated the problem. With poor reproduction and vigor, which was magnified by inbreeding, the number of pure Bates Shorthorns dwindled, which inexplicitly made them more valuable due to rarity. By 1873, Samuel Campbell had cornered the market on all the pure Dutchess cattle and most of the rest of the cattle of other pure Bates bloodlines. Cashing in with a dispersal that year with the 11 remaining Dutchess females averaging $21,709 with a top of $40,600, and the overall average on 109 head being $3,504 – all unheard-of prices in 1873. Reality The Bates fad ended up being a disaster for all involved except Campbell. While the few Dutchess females that went back to Great Britain faired a bit better, the ones in the United States were extinct within a decade due to their poor fertility and vigor. One of the high-selling cows died a few days after the sale, after being walked to a neighboring farm to be bred. The high-selling bull turned out to be an infertile cryptorchid. As for commercial producers, the inbreeding depression would disappear when the cattle were crossed, but they were still breeding hot-weather-adapted Longhorns to dual-purpose Shorthorns that were generally too big and had too high milk potential for range conditions, which were often not inherently fertile cattle. For the ranchers, this came to a head in the “Big Die Up” of the winter of 1886-87 that was discussed in last month’s column. By 1880, the Herefords had started to penetrate the range bull market, so most herds would have had a combination of dual-purpose Shorthorn/Longhorn crosses and Hereford/ Shorthorn/Longhorn crosses. At the end of that harsh winter – having provided no supplemental feed – a high percentage of the Shorthorns were dead, and although there was also significant death loss with the Herefords too, a higher percentage of them were alive – the most basic economically relevant trait. The Shorthorn people who had enjoyed 100 years of market dominance quickly transitioned to beef Shorthorns, but the damage had already been done due to the Bates fad. Some of the Midwestern and Canadian Shorthorn breeders who had run with the fad the hardest switched to Aberdeen-Angus, creating a fad there. However, they were generally over-leveraged from their losses with Shorthorns, and the depression of the 1890s took most of them out. Thus, Angus moved from being controlled by the promotors to more serious breeders, which put Angus on much sounder footing. Despite their setback, Shorthorns would continue to be the favored breed of farmers who maintained small herds. Meanwhile, Angus became a favorite of the Midwest cattle feeders, while Herefords would enjoy close to 100 years of dominance on the western range after the Big Die Up. Herefords would eventually be supplanted on the range by Angus in the late 20th century. However, the importance of the Shorthorn breed in the improvement of the early range cattle should not be overlooked, nor should the negative impact that short-term fads had and continue to have on the beef industry. ~NC~ Above: The prototype Hereford, the 1882 bull Anxiety 4th. Courtesy American Hereford Association. Left: 1873 Shorthorn Duchess cows, sold for $40,600 and $35,000. Courtesy of Hough and Moore.
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