Cow

Hannah Velten

Animal series
Cow
Animal
Series editor: Jonathan Burt

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Cow

Hannah Velten

reaktion books
For my brother, Christian Velten

Published by
reaktion books ltd
33 Great Sutton Street
London ec1v 0dx, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 2007

Copyright Hannah Velten 2007

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior
permission of the publishers.

Printed and bound in China

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Velten, Hannah
Cow. (Animal)
1. Cattle 2. Cattle History 3. Animals and civilization
4. Human-animal relationships
I. Title
636.2

isbn-13: 978 1 86189 326 0

isbn-10: 1 86189 326 4
 Contents

Introduction: Reintroducing the Cow, Bull and Ox 7

1 Wild Ox to Domesticates 10
2 Bull-Gods, Bull-Kings 31
3 Cow Mysticism and a Rural Idyll 67
4 Toiling the Fields and a Cattle Complex 97
5 Cattle Stars and Romantic Associations 127
6 Poor Cow: Pushing the Boundaries 156
Epilogue: Out of Sight, Out of Mind? 179
Timeline 182
References 184
Bibliography 198
Associations and Websites 201
Acknowledgements 203
Photo Acknowledgements 204
Index 206
Michael J Austin, Right of Way, 2005, oil on canvas. This is a fighting bull from Andalusia, southern
Spain, painted at home a breeding ranch in the country.
Introduction: Reintroducing the
Cow, Bull and Ox
In no animal is there to met with a greater variety of kinds;
and in none, a more humble and pliant disposition . . . a
source of inexhaustible wealth the pride and boast of this
happy country.
Thomas Bewick, A General History of Quadrupeds (1790)

There are over 1.37 billion cattle in the world.1 How many have
you met? Chances are if you live in the West, not many, or none.
You can imagine being close to a cow: experiencing their
weighty bulk near you, feeling their hot, grassy breath on your
face, touching their cool, slimy muzzle or experiencing their
curling, sandpaper-like tongue licking your skin. Our ancestors
would have known this close contact with cattle, living and
working with them, relying on them almost exclusively for food
and labour, and even sharing their diseases.
This unique relationship between humans and cattle has
shaped millennia of global history and culture both in religious
and secular life. In fact, as one commentator states, No other
event in early history was of such comparably far reaching
signicance for the development of human culture as the domes-
tication of oxen.2
From their limited global beginnings in the Near East, the
Indus Valley and Africa, the man-made domestic cow followed in
the wake of human movement; becoming the symbol of a civilized
life. Cattle were revered, loved, exalted and romanticized.
Today, cattle are on virtually every continent in the world
and the word cow is recognized in 539 different languages and
dialects.3 Yet, in the West, most cows are hidden away on farms
where only a few lucky people continue to relate with them.

7
 We do have a cattle culture of sorts in the modern Western
world, but it is generally not a happy lot for the cow. Cattle cultures
are now big business: dictated by the consumers, fast-food out-
lets and supermarkets, processors, abattoirs, transporters, auc-
tioneers, commodity traders, vets and scientists there are few
romantic associations attached to modern cattle production,
except the sight of cattle grazing in the fields.
But what does this mean for cows, and our relationship with
them? Our huge, urban societies demand a steady supply of
lean meat, wholesome milk and leather, of a uniform quality at
a reasonable price. To meet these demands, the cow has been
turned into an object one that is bred, reared and grown to
specication, as cheaply as possible, which means essentially
that economies of scale dictate the means of production.
Although cattle have largely escaped the excesses of inten-
sive production compared with pigs and poultry, there are now
far fewer people looking after more cows than ever before: this
is as true of cattle in automated beef-lots as of those being raised
on cattle stations in Latin America and Australia.
If there are fewer people looking after cattle, is it obvious that
the majority of beef- and veal-eaters, milk-drinkers and leather-
wearers have not the slightest link with cattle. As a consequence,
most cattle production, transportation and slaughter goes on
behind closed doors, and it is only through investigative jour-
nalism, animal rights campaigners, environmentalists and the
mass media that our current cultural views and opinions of cattle
are formed. As a result, people today are generally ignorant of cat-
tle: for example, few realize that the cow has to have a calf before
she will give milk; she does not produce milk naturally for
humans. In a media-informed age, you may see the cow as a stag-
gering, bse-infected mad cow, an exploited poor cow, an envi-
ronment-polluting hoofed locust4 or an esteemed sacred cow?

8
 Apart from the last-named, the images we are fed of cattle are John Kenny Lady
in White, 2005,
essentially negative. Hopefully, this potted cultural history of cat- gicle print on
tle will reintroduce you to the bull, cow, ox and calf as your ances- Hahnemuhle Rag
paper. Among the
tors would have viewed them: in a positive light, as fearsome sacred cows of
adversaries, mythical beings, as mobile wealth and respected ani- Gujarat, India.
mal companions.

These terms are used throughout the book:

bull entire male

cow female who has produced a calf
heifer young female who is yet to calve
ox castrated male used as a source of power
steer castrated male used for beef production

9
1 Wild Ox to Domesticates

aurochs evolution
Domestic or true cattle belong to the order Artiodactyla (mam-
mals with an even numbers of toes on each foot), and along
with sheep, goats and antelope, cattle belong to the family of
horned, ruminant herbivores called bovidae (bovines). Within
this family, cattle belong to the sub-family bovinae and the
genus Bos.
Domestic cattle throughout the world are all descended from
a single wild species, Bos primigenius, the recently extinct wild
ox or aurochs (spelled the same in the singular and plural).
However, the earliest representative of the genus Bos was named
Leptobos, which appeared in the early Pleistocene (c. 2 million
years ago) in Asia. These antelope-like mammals were rather
slim, stood about two metres high and were three metres long.
The Leptobos evolved into Bos primigenius during the late
Pleistocene and, as the global grass area expanded, the aurochs
migrated into the Middle East and north-east Africa, nally
reaching Europe about 250,000 years ago.1
At their peak, aurochs were widespread over the temperate
zones of the northern hemisphere, but never reached Ireland,
central and northern Scandinavia or North America. To cope
with the differing environments over this huge area, they
evolved into three different strains: the Indian/Asian type, Bos
primigenius namadicus; the Near East and European type, Bos

10
 The aurochs
earliest ancestors
were rather slim
and antelope-like,
but they were
nearly two metres
high at the
shoulder.

primigenius primigenius; and the African type, Bos primigenius

africanus (opisthonomus).2
Their world was much wetter and therefore greener than
todays. Aurochs chose to live in river valleys and marshy
forests and, like their domestic descendents, they were true
herbivores rather than just grazers. Their diet consisted of
grass and herbs, tree foliage and bark in the spring and sum-
mer, acorns in the autumn and dry leaves in the winter. To
digest this brous diet, the bovine familys stomach is divided
into four distinct compartments: the rumen, the reticulum, the
omasum and abomasum. This multi-chambered stomach
allows them to eat plant matter that is too coarse for most
mammals, including humans, to eat.
The bre is rst fermented and digested in the rumen. This
structure constantly churns the food with rhythmic contrac-
tions two to four times a minute, and with the help of rumen
micro-organisms and bacteria the bre is broken down. When
cattle are resting, they voluntarily regurgitate some of the
rumen content, chew a while, and then swallow it again, where

11
 it passes on to the reticulum. This ongoing process of second
chewing is called rumination, or chewing the cud, and may
occur for eight hours out of twenty-four in cattle.3

fearsome quarry
The rst evidence of human contact with aurochs can be seen
in European cave paintings. After horses and bison, aurochs
were the third most represented animal during the Upper
Palaeolithic period.4 However, in the Lascaux caves in south-
west France (decorated in about 17,000 bc), aurochs take centre
stage, being depicted 52 times. There are the majestic gures in
the Rotunda (The Hall of the Bulls), the cows and bull in the
Axial Gallery and the Great Black Cow in the Nave.

The Hall of
the Bulls in the
Lascaux caves,
France, where
images of aurochs
dominate the
walls and ceilings.

12
 It is still unclear what these images of aurochs represent, but
because the paintings are placed in the central areas of the caves,
rather than being hidden away, the aurochs was obviously an
important animal. These depictions could represent a record of
hunting trophies, or serve a religious or social function, possibly
totems of a tribal clan or as symbols of supernatural power.
Whatever their purpose, the rock art gives us an idea of what the
Palaeolithic aurochs of Europe looked like.
Although they were large, squarely built animals, there was
a fair size difference between the sexes, which originally misled
archaeologists and zoologists to wrongly conclude there was a
dwarf-aurochs.5 The cows were smaller and lighter, had slen-
derer heads and shorter horns than the bulls. The bulls stood
just under two metres in height and weighed about 1.3 tonnes.
There seems to have been a range of coat colours among bulls of
differing regions. Northern European bulls were mostly black-
brown in colour, with a narrow lighter stripe along their backs,
whereas the southern European bulls were brown or grey-
brown. The cows and calves of all regions were reddish-brown.
Aurochs horns grew up to two metres long, pointing for-
wards and curving inwards. The weight of the horns must have
been immense, but this did not stop the aurochs from being
agile. It was a feared quarry: an Anglo-Saxon runic verse from
the ninth century, found in north Germany, states

The aurochs is fearless and large-horned,

a erce animal it ghts with its horns
the famous marsh walker; it is a brave animal.6

The hunting of the aurochs is well documented, but mainly

in terms of the challenge that they presented. Even if the
hunters went for the weak or young animals in a herd, they

13
An aurochs
depicted by
Heberstain, 1549
but he does not
look nearly agile
enough!

would have had the king bull to contend with, who would pro-
tect his cows and calves.
So why were they hunted? The huge carcass of an aurochs
would provide enough rewards. Aside from meat, the
Mesolithic hunters of Europe (80003000 bc) found many
other uses for the carcasses: they used the bones (tools and
jewellery), hides (clothing), horns (for carrying/storing liquid
and ritual decorations), sinews (thread) and fat (oils).7
But these resources may have been of secondary importance
to the cultural benets of hunting down and slaying an aurochs,
purely because of the risks it held. As early civilizations devel-
oped, it could have been a test of manhood or an initiation rite
for young men, with the horns of the aurochs being kept as
trophies and as ancestral reminders.8 Aurochs hunting also
became somewhat of a hobby, or duty, of the aristocracy. The
Assyrian monarch Tiglath-Pileser i (11151076 bc) used the
kudos of aurochs hunting to illustrate his aggression, cruelty
and divine right. A description of the event reads:

14
 The gods Hercules and Nergal gave their valiant servants
and their arrows as a glory to support my empire. Under
the auspices of Hercules, my guardian deity, four wild
bulls, strong and erce, in the desert, in the country of
Mitan, and in the city Arazik, belonging to the country
of the Khatte, with my long arrows tipped with iron, and
with heavy blows I took their lives. Their skins and their
horns I brought to my city of Ashur.9

It seems that large numbers of aurochs were hunted, as seen

in a description of possibly the last aurochs hunt in Egypt by
Pharaoh Amenhotep iii (14171379 bc) and his army.10 A grue-
some total of ninety-six bulls were reportedly killed over the
course of two hunts, when a group of bulls, spotted in the
desert, were driven into an enclosure containing a ditch. Once
trapped in the ditch, they were slaughtered.11
Long after the aurochs became extinct in Egypt,12 they could
still be found in the Hercynian Forest in Germany, where they

Pharaoh Rameses
iii and his armies
hunting the
aurochs along the
banks of the Nile:
stone relief at
Medinet Habu
(Rameses iii
mortuary temple),
c. 1100 BC.

15
The Augsburg
Aurochs Picture;
probably the
most accurate
representation of
the last aurochs.
The original
painting was
found by a
British zoologist,
Hamilton Smith,
in a shop in
Augsburg,
Germany, over
a century ago. were hunted as the prize kill. Julius Caesar (10044 bc) encoun-
tered the urus Latin for aurochs in 53 bc, giving this descrip-
tion in his De Bello Gallico (The Gallic War):

They are slightly smaller than elephants, and in appear-

ance, colour, and shape they resemble bulls. They are
extremely erce and swift-footed, and attack people and
animals on sight. The Germans carefully trap them in
pits, and then slaughter them. Such tasks make the young
German men tough, and this type of hunting gives them
training. Those who kill the most wild oxen display the
horns in public as a proof, which wins them considerable
acclaim. The oxen cannot grow accustomed to people, or
become tame, even if they are caught when young. The
size, appearance, and shape of their horns are very differ-
ent from the horns of our own cattle. These horns are
much prized: the Germans give them a rim of silver and
use them as drinking-vessels at magnicent feasts.13

While aurochs horns were the main hunting trophies,

Polish kings were said to favour the aurochs heart bones (there
are two small bones in the bovine heart) and their curly, shaggy
forehead skin as trophies. The skin was cut loose in a circle

16
 Thomas Bewick,
Wild Cattle,
vignettes from
History of
Quadrupeds (1790):
The same bull
features in The
Chillingham Bull,
which he sketched
in 1789. Bewick
tells of the difficul-
ty he had getting
close enough to
the wild cattle to
draw them proper-
ly, without being
chased.

while the aurochs was still alive and then torn off. When ripped
into shreds and worn as a belt, this skin was said to help preg-
nant women give birth with ease.14
Poland had, and still has, a special connection with the
aurochs: it was their nal resting place. By the fteenth century,
due to loss of habitat, grazing competition from their domesti-
cated descendents, disease and hunting, aurochs were found
only in the Jaktorowski Royal Forest in Mazowsze in Central
Poland. It was here that they enjoyed legal protection under the
Crown. Only ofcially appointed hunters were allowed to kill
dangerous bulls, or those which mated with domestic cattle
(the offspring were never viable), and the local population,

17
Heck cattle or
reconstituted
aurochs, seen
here at the Lejre
Experimental
Centre, Denmark,
2006: the open-air
museum has
recreated ancient
villages and re-
enacts ancient
lifestyles.

rather than paying taxes, acted as gamekeepers and fed the

aurochs hay over the winter. But, nally, the last aurochs cow
died a natural death in 1627.
There have been efforts to recreate the aurochs since its
demise. At the end of the 1920s, the Aurochs makers brothers
Heinz and Lutz Heck tried, in the zoos of Munich and Berlin
respectively, to back-breed primitive forms of domestic breeds
of cattle with aurochs-like qualities, such as English Park Cattle
and Scottish Highland. The results of the two breeding experi-
ments the reconstituted aurochs were largely similar, but
today only animals from the Munich-type survive, mainly in
zoos and reserves. While they appear to look like true aurochs
(colour and horns) and have a ferocious temper, they never
reached the size of aurochs or achieved the size differences
between cow and bull.
The aurochs gained the dubious honour of being the rst doc-
umented case of extinction (the second being the dodo).15 And,
although the drier climate reduced their habitat, it was humans
who initiated their eventual downfall through hunting (with

18
pitfalls, nets, spears and arrows) and woodland clearance for
cattle pasture a sad end to a species which gave human civiliza-
tions arguably their most important domestic animals: cattle.

aurochs to cattle: a dening moment

In about 7,000 bc, the rst humans decided that they should
begin a closer relationship with the ferocious aurochs. But why
they should attempt to tame the beasts when they already had
domestic sheep and goats, providing them with meat, milk and
skins, is open to debate. Even archaeologists could not believe
that domestic cattle derived from the dangerous aurochs. In
1846 Professor Richard Owen found remains of small, short-
horned cattle in peat bogs in Ireland, which he labelled Bos
longifrons, thinking that he had found the true ancestor of the
domestic cow.16
Theories for cattle domestication are varied, but one from
Eduard Hahn (published 1896, 1909) emphasizes the religious/
spiritual associations that early civilizations made with the aurochs
(see chapter Two). The moon with its regularly changing phases
was a fertility symbol, and the crescent-shaped horns of the
aurochs became associated with lunar goddesses. Regular animal
sacrices were used to placate the goddesses in order to maintain
the fertility of their crops and animals, so a regular supply of less
aggressive and more docile aurochs would have been welcomed.
Other theorists, notably F. E. Zeuner (1963), envisage cattle
domestication as a by-product of humans ongoing battle to save
their crops from the hoofed crop-robbers (aurochs):

While struggling to keep the large animals out of his

elds, man would no doubt have captured and kept in his
settlements the calves a habit well known from modern

19
 primitive tribes . . . Having tied these animals up in his
camp, however, man would not have bothered much
about their feeding and, in course of time and on a near-
starvation diet, a smaller, more passive generation would
grow up within the precincts of human settlements. Thus
the large ruminants came as crop-robbers and ended up
as domesticated beasts.17

Having inadvertently tamed a few aurochs, it would have

been fairly easy to increase the herd either by letting nature take
its course, by luring wild aurochs near to the settlement (espe-
cially with salt licks), or by capturing them and introducing
them to the tamed animals. To illustrate how the latter method
may have worked, in 1834 Charles Darwin recorded a hunting
expedition with the gauchos (Argentine cowboys) to capture
feral cattle while visiting East Falkland Island:

When hunting, the party endeavours to get as close as

possible to the herd without being discovered. Each man
carries four or ve pair of the bolas [a missile consisting
of a number of balls connected by strong cord]; these he
throws one after the other at as many cattle, which, when
once entangled, are left for some days till they become a
little exhausted by hunger and struggling. They are then
let free and driven towards a small herd of tame animals,
which have been brought to the spot on purpose. From
their previous treatment, being too much terried to
leave the herd, they are easily driven, if their strength last
out, to the settlement.18

Cattle are gregarious creatures and, as such, will always live

in herds and become exceedingly anxious when separated from

20
their group. The English naturalist Gilbert White (172093), in
his observations of the wildlife around his Selborne home in
Hampshire, remarked of cattle:

There is a wonderful spirit of sociality in the brute creation,

independent of sexual attachment . . . Oxen and cows will
not fatten by themselves; but will neglect the nest pasture
that is not recommended by society.19

This quality would have made caught aurochs fairly easy to

bunch together and restrain. And bovines have a well-dened
hierarchy of dominance, which would mean that once a leader
was caught, the rest would follow.
To make handling these aurochs a safer occupation, it was
also possible that their horns were pared down (a painful oper-
ation, as bovine horn contains nerve endings) and the males
castrated. The ancient Egyptian fable of The Lion in Search of
Man20 also mentions other cruel methods which man used to
subdue cattle, including piercing their noses and threading rope
through it, and then passing the rope over the top of another
cows head and then through their noses; so a line of cattle
could be kept together.

cattle as wealth
Possibly without even realizing the signicance of what they
were doing, it seems that humans domesticated the aurochs in
three different areas in the Neolithic era between 60004000
bc: in the Fertile Crescent in the Near East, the Indus Valley
(now Pakistan) and the south-eastern Sahara in Africa. Although
each domestication centre had their own local strain of
aurochs, domesticated cattle developed into two distinct types:

21
A magisterial Zebu
bull adorns this
clay impression of
a carved seal. The
stone seal would
have been used to
stamp clay tablets
to indicate admin-
istrative dealings,
or used to seal
doors or contain-
ers, c. 2000 bc
from the ancient
Indus city of
Mohenjo-daro.

the humpless (taurine) cattle (Bos taurus) developed in the Near

East and Africa, while India produced the humped (zebu) cattle
(Bos indicus).
It is no exaggeration to say that Bos indicus and Bos taurus
played an enormous role in shaping civilization: mainly
through the innovation of milking and the cultivation of land
using the plough (see chapter Four). Previously nomadic peo-
ples could begin to cultivate marginal soils, become sedentary
and build villages and towns. As the populations in these towns
grew, the domestic cow and oxen became a form of mobile
wealth, which caused the early stratication of society.
The Roman scholar Varro Reatinus (11627 bc) explained:
Omnis pecuniae pecus fundamentum (for cattle are the origin of
all money the Latin word for wealth, pecunia, comes from the
word for cattle, pecus).21 The term cattle is derived from the
Middle English and Old Northern French catel, the late Latin
captale and the Latin capitale, meaning capital in the sense of
chattel or chief property.
There were several methods developed to record cattle owner-
ship. In Mesopotamia in the Near East, the Sumerian civilization

22
was the rst to develop a written symbol to denote cattle the
ox sign. This stylized form of a cows head was imprinted on
damp clay tablets using a stylus, and dates from about 3100 bc.
The tablets would have been used to record head numbers, and
possibly to record bartering transactions. Similarly, in Ancient
Egypt, the ideogram of cattle was determined by a horned cow
and was used to record the number of cattle owned by wealthy
Egyptians and the temples, particularly during the bi-annual
cattle count for taxation purposes. It was the numbers of cattle
which was important, irrespective of the condition or the fat-
ness of the individual animals.
Cattle were expensive to buy and also to maintain, so wealthy
owners started to hire out their oxen and cows to those who
could never afford to keep their own. This borrowing evidently
caused friction. Law codes drawn up by King Hammurabi of
Babylon in about 1750 bc show that out of 282 tersely written
laws, 29 of the decipherable entries concern crimes against oxen
and set out rules governing hiring payments and veterinary bills.
For example:

248. If any one hire an ox, and break off a horn, or cut off
its tail, or hurt its muzzle, he shall pay one-fourth of its
value in money [to the owner].
251. If an ox be a goring ox, and it shown that he is a gorer,
and he do not bind his horns, or fasten the ox up, and the
ox gore a free-born man and kill him, the owner shall pay
one-half a mina in money.
224. If a veterinary surgeon perform a serious operation
on an ass or an ox, and cure it, the owner shall pay the
surgeon one-sixth of a shekel as a fee.
225. If he perform a serious operation on an ass or ox, and
kill it, he shall pay the owner one-fourth of its value.22

23
Early pictorial evi- Apart from hiring out their cattle, owners also increased their
dence of milking
cows in the pres-
wealth by trading animals with countries overseas this was
ence of their how zebu and taurine cattle spread from India and the Near
calves, c. 2500 bc,
from the ancient
East, respectively, from the third millennium bc. Zebu cattle
city of Tell Ubaid, had evolved to tolerate higher temperatures, more humid envi-
Iraq.
ronments and to be more resistant to tropical diseases and
insects than taurine cattle. For these reasons, zebus were traded
outside India, probably most signicantly to East Africa (via
Arabia) where they were crossed with the local taurine breeds to
produce more vigorous hybrid cattle.23 Similarly, Australia and
Latin America have most recently come to depend on the zebu
genes to produce more drought and insect resistant breeds.
Meanwhile, taurine cattle also spread from the Near East via
trade with the Indus Valley, and later via Greece, where they
then followed Neolithic human migration on two paths: one by
sea route into the western Mediterranean/Europe and another
by land route into north-western Europe.
Wherever cattle landed, they helped to shape society and
became valuable possessions. Pliny the Elder reported in The
Natural History (c. ad 77) that oxen were our especial compan-
ion and that they were considered by his Roman ancestors to

24
be of such value, that there was once an instance of a man being
tried for killing an ox before the end of its working life. He had
killed the beast in order to humour an impudent concubine of
his, who said that she had never tasted tripe; and he was driven
into exile, as though he had killed one of his own peasants.24
Cattle also played a central role in Ireland after taurine
breeds, which had arrived in England from the European main-
land, were shipped over in about 3430 bc.25 From early literary
sources it appears that early Irish units of currency were based
on the value of a cow: a sd was the value of one dairy (milch)
cow and three sd made a cumal (female slave), being the value
of three cows.26

cattle for survival

Not only were cattle of economic importance, but they also
meant survival for most European communities up until the
mid-eighteenth century. When their cattle died, peoples source
of power and food also vanished (see chapter Four for the dis-
astrous effects caused by loss of cattle on African pastoralists).
This meant that great care was taken to protect the animals

25
from plague (known as murrain or rinderpest), infertility and
milk loss. But rather than relying on vaccinations and technology
as we mainly do today, the Europeans practised rituals which
they believed to ward off cattle diseases, and keep away the
witches who stole milk from their cows.
According to the anthropologist James Frazer, the Celtic
ritual res at Easter, Beltane (May Day) and Midsummers Eve
played a major role in the purication of the cows.27 To purify
the cows after winter, and to bring luck for the coming year, the
cows were either driven round the res, driven through the
res ashes or had the ashes mixed into their drinking water. It
was as though the cattle plague was an evil force that could be
kept at bay by a barrier of re between it and the herds, and that
witches were burnt or scared off by the heat of the re.
If plague did strike then prayers were said, begging the Lord to
put an end to the ordeal; or cow-leeches were employed. These
people were the earliest known cattle veterinarians in England,
before the rise of rational medicine. Their methods were some-
what suspect, and relied on blood-letting and a range of herbal
remedies to treat illness. One method for treating plague,
described in 1648, was to dissolve a handful of hens dung into a
quart of old urine (presumably cows) and give it to all cattle to
drink, whether they were sick, or in danger of becoming sick.28
However, diseases were not just passed between cattle; own-
ing cattle could also prove fatal to the owners. As the cow and
humans became more intimately connected (living and often
sleeping in close proximity), greater was the chance of transfer-
ring infections and disease through faeces, urine, breath, sores
and blood. American evolutionary biologist and author Jared
Diamond has termed the diseases as deadly gifts from cattle
to mankind: tuberculosis, rinderpest (measles) and cowpox
(smallpox).29 These gifts were passed on to the New World

26
when European explorers arrived, bringing their cattle-derived The Cow-Pock:
caricature by James
diseases with them. For example, Christopher Columbuss Gillray in 1802
second voyage to the West Indies (14936) took on board an showing Dr
Edward Jenner
unknown number of domesticated long-horned Spanish cattle, inoculating
which he aimed to introduce to the island of Hispaniola (now patients at the
Smallpox and
the Dominican Republic) as part of his drive to found a mining- Inoculation
agricultural colony; a mini-Spanish civilization. Having never Hospital at St
Pancras, London,
been exposed to cattle or their diseases, the indigenous peoples with the frighten-
soon succumbed to the germs.30 ing vision of cows
emerging from
human body parts.
The word vaccina-
other uses for cattle tion comes from
the Latin vacca,
Imports of more Spanish and Portuguese cattle continued inter- meaning cow.

mittently into the Americas until the large imports of English

27
Plowing on the
Prairies . . .:
ploughing oxen
are the symbol of
settled and civi-
lized life. A wood-
engraving (after a
sketch by
Theodore R. Davis)
from Harpers
Weekly, 9 May
1868.

cattle which came with the founders of the Jamestown colony in

Virginia in 1611. These cattle were not only exported to provide
milk, labour and meat for the settlers, but also came as symbols
of English civilized life: it was thought that they could help
build the English Empire.31 In 1656 the House of Burgesses ruled
that to give a cow to the Indians will be a step to civilizing them
and to making them Christians.32 To gain their cow, the Indians
had to present eight wolves heads to the county ofcials and, in
return, this cow could be used to cultivate their land; thus turn-
ing the Indians into settled, working farmers, rather than disor-
dered, idle and chaotic hunters.
This may seem like a tall order for cattle (to civilize the
Indians), but, since they were rst domesticated, humans have
called upon cattle to act as mediators to miracles. Not only did
the Shang dynasty of ancient China use the ox as a sacricial
animal, but its bones were also employed in divination cere-
monies as oracle bones. Questions about the future were written

28
on ox scapulae, then the bones were heated with a brand until
they cracked. These resulting cracks, which were supplied by
the royal ancestors, were the answers to the questions.
Humans have also employed cattle, dead or alive, for other
unusual purposes (some less savoury than others). The
Arabians used cattle flesh to help collect inaccessible cinnamon
sticks, which were bought into Arabia by large birds. These
birds used the sticks to line their mud nests, which they built on
mountain precipices. Herodotus describes the method employ-
ed to collect the sticks in The Histories (440 bc):

[The Arabians] cut up the bodies of dead oxen . . . into

very large joints, which they carry to the spot in question
and leave on the ground near the nests. They retire to a

The Roman
marble Farnese
Bull represents
the Greek myth
of Dirce, who was
tied to a wild bull
by the sons of
Antiope to punish
her for the ill-treat-
ment inflicted on
their mother,
1st century bc.

29
 safe distance and the birds fly down and carry off the
joints of meat to their nests, which, not being strong
enough to bear the weight, break and fall to the ground.
Then the men come along and pick up the cinnamon,
which is subsequently exported to other countries.33

Herodotus also describes the execution method used by the

nomadic Scythians to kill their lying prophets or soothsayers,
when their predictions or declarations were proved wrong:

a cart is lled with sticks and harnessed to oxen; the guilty

men, gagged and bound hand and foot, are thrust down
amongst the sticks, which are then set alight, and the oxen
scared off at a run. Often the oxen are burnt to death
together with the soothsayers; often, too, the pole of the
cart is burnt through enough to allow them to escape with
a scorching.34

Similar fates were suffered by Christians who refused to make

sacrices to the bull-gods of pagan Europe, such as Sernin
(Saturninus), the rst bishop of Toulouse, who was reportedly
tied to a bull that dragged him along, breaking his skull in two.

30
2 Bull-Gods, Bull-Kings

Wherever aurochs were indigenous, early civilizations regarded

the bulls especially with awe and fear. These bulls were, for
them, the supreme example of masculine strength and ferocity
in nature, the epitome of fertility and virility. What better
animal than the bull to associate with the gods who created
your world, controlled the weather and dictated your well-being?
It also followed that kings, whose power and authority were
derived from the gods, were associated with the bull.
Bull-gods in all their ery and thunderous glory were found
in all early agrarian civilizations, where they were credited with
providing the life-giving element of rain. They were storm
gods who fertilized the soils, providing the crops that kept the
agrarian/pastoral peoples alive. Bulls also became associated
with gods of the sun and moon, the heavenly bodies upon which
people relied for plant growth.

symbol of fertility and virility

In Mesopotamia, the Sumerian supreme deity was the bull-god
Enlil, the god of the storm and of fertility. In legend it was Enlil
and Ninlil, the cow or Mother goddess, whose marital union
caused the rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates to rise and flood
the land, giving fertility to the soil. Enlil was praised as the

31
Gilgamesh (left) Overpowering Ox and was the father of Nannar, the moon-god
and Enkidu (right)
fighting the Bull who was also depicted as a bull, with particular emphasis on his
of Heaven and horns. The association of the crescent-shaped horns of the bull
another beast;
cylinder-seal and the waxing and waning of the moon was a powerful symbol
impression, of regeneration and rebirth. Sumerian kings such as Sargon wore
c. 23402150 bc.
horned headdresses and shared with Enlil the title of Wild Bull.
The people believed their kings derived their strength, power and
authority from this supreme god, and many carvings and statues
of bulls were humanized, by having them wear a kingly beard.
In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the legend of the historical Sumer-
ian king of Uruk, Gilgamesh is described as Wild bull of
Lugalbanda, Gilgamesh, the perfect in strength, / suckling of the
august Wild Cow, the goddess Ninsun!1 But rather than being a
king who protected and guided his people, he is tyrannical. He
works his people hard with the building of the city, and he is
sexually promiscuous, so that neither the wife of a noble, a
mothers daughter nor the warriors bride is safe from him.
His downfall begins when he angers the love goddess Ishtar by
refusing her advances. She demands that her father Anu sends
down to earth The Bull of Heaven to kill Gilgamesh. The fero-
cious, divine bull arrives on earth and with his rst snort opens a
chasm in the ground, which kills one hundred men. The great

32
bull slobbers foul-smelling drool all over Gilgamesh, and brushes The constellation
Taurus, from
his companion Enkidus face with its dirty tail. But the two heroes Jehoshaphat
work together: while Enkidu holds the bull by the tail, Gilgamesh Aspin, A Familiar
Treatise on
kills it with his sword. Astronomy . . .
Although they have triumphed over a mighty adversary, the (1825).
gods punish them for slaying the sacred bull. Enkidu dies a
lingering death and the distraught Gilgamesh realizes that he
too is mortal. The spring of his youth, as a young bull, is over.
Such was the influence of the bull over the lives of the
ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia that they named the fertile
spring in their calendar Gut-sidi, or the directing bull, and they
were the rst to identify and name the constellation of Taurus
the Bull, as we know it now. They named it Gut-anna (The Bull
of Heaven or The Bulls Jaw).

33
 Over time, every major culture adapted the Taurus constel-
lation to represent their specic myths and gods. The title of
Bull was translated into, or adapted to Greek (Tauros), Latin
(Taurus), Sanskrit (Vrishaba), Persian (Gav) and Arabic (Thaur).2
Taurus later becomes a Western zodiac sign for the dates 21
April to 22 May. People born under this sign are said to be
practical, reliable, patient, persistent, industrious, strong willed,
sensuous, affectionate, warm hearted and trustworthy. On the
downside, apparently they are also lazy, possessive, self-indul-
gent, dull, inflexible, unoriginal, unimaginative, greedy, stubborn
and resentful.

egypt
Like the Sumerians, the Egyptian kings were also associated
with the mighty wild bull, as seen in a number of Egyptian
palettes made before 3050 bc. At this time, Egypt was a battle-
ground for power struggles to control the small clusters of
villages in Upper Egypt. The all-conquering supreme ruler is
depicted as a bull triumphing over his human foes.3
But, while the rest of early civilizations were indiscriminately
worshipping bulls, it was the Egyptians who believed that certain
sacred bulls were the earthly embodiments of actual gods. The
Mnevis bull was connected with the sun-god Ra in Heliopolis,
and the Buchis bull was related to the war-god Montu at Armant.
However, probably the best-known sacred animal in Egypt
was Apis, whose cult was established before 3000 bc. This bull
was believed to embody the creator and fertility god Ptah, who
was responsible for the periodic floods of the Nile which gave life
to crops and to the Egyptian people.
When Apis died or was ritually sacriced, an urgent search
over the whole of Egypt took place to nd a bull with the distinct

34
 A fragment of
The Bull Palette,
showing the
Egyptian bull-king
goring a foreign
adversary, c. 3120
bc.

markings of Ptah. In his Histories, Herodotus describes those

markings, and how the bull was believed to have be created by
Ptah, appearing as a celestial light:

Now this Apis is a calf born of a cow who after this is not
permitted to conceive any other offspring; and the
Egyptians say that a flash of light comes down from heav-
en upon this cow, and of this she produces Apis. This calf
which is called Apis is black and has the following signs,
namely a white square upon the forehead, and on the
back the likeness of an eagle, and in the tail the hairs are
double, and on the tongue there is a mark like a beetle.4

35
 Apis lived in sumptuous comfort, with the best food and a
harem of cows, in a temple built exclusively for him, which stood
opposite to the temple dedicated to Ptah. He was kept mainly in
solitude, but took part in rituals and at a xed hour every day he
was let loose in the temple courtyard. Huge crowds of devoted
followers, or indeed curious travellers, would gather to watch his
antics and each of his movements was interpreted as foretelling
the future. Pliny the Elder relates that when the Roman general
Germanicus was murdered, it was remembered that just before
his death the Apis bull had refused to eat from his hand.
Either Apis died naturally or, according to Plutarch, he was
drowned in a holy spring if he reached the aged of twenty-ve.
This was so that his powers were never tempered by the weak-
ness and frailty of old age. Passages from the Cannibal Hymn
of the Pyramid Texts indicate that the king would eat the flesh
of the dead Apis to renew himself with the god Ptahs strength,
power, and virility.
On his death, the body of Apis was mummied, enclosed in an
immense sarcophagus of sandstone or pink granite, and buried in
vast subterranean chambers at Saqqarah, after a splendid funeral
service. It was believed that the bull-gods soul joined with that of
Osiris, god of the underworld, to created Serapis, a fusion fertility
god whose cult was adopted by the Greeks, and later the Romans.
Another bull taking part in Egyptian fertility rituals was the
white bull of Min, the god of sex and fertility. The bull took part
in the coronation rites of the pharaohs in the New Kingdom to
ensure their sexual vigour and, hopefully, the birth of a male
heir. The white bull was also honoured at harvest festivals,
where he would be offered the rst sheaves of wheat to ensure a
plentiful harvest, and he presided over the hoeing festival to aid
the fruitfulness of the earth.

36
india
It is likely that the Indus civilization also venerated the bull as a
symbol of fertility, possibly serving as a consort to the Mother
Goddess. But, the best accounts of bull worship come from the
Rig-Veda, a collection of hymns written by the conquering Aryans
from Indo-Europe, who brought their fertility bull-gods to India
in the second millennium bc. The Aryans were pastoralists;
descendents of the nomadic Eurasian steppes people who herded
vast numbers of cattle, which they regarded as their wealth.
In Sanskrit, the language of the Rig-Veda, the words for bull
and for rain are both derived from the same root word meaning
to water and to impregnate.5 Indra is the supreme bull-god of
the thunderstorm, who vanquishes the demons of drought
and darkness by making

. . . his ally the thunder, and with its light milked cows
from out the darkness.
The waters flowed according to their nature.6

Like the generative storm, his temper is ferocious, and his

strength legendary:

Swift, rapidly striking, like a bull who sharpens his horns,

terric, stirring up the people,
With eyes that close not, bellowing, Sole Hero, Indra,
subdued at once a hundred armies.7

Almost three thousand years on, India still reveres the bull
for its fertility and Shiva, one of the great Hindu gods, is a bull
in one of his earthly forms. It is now believed that Shiva is a
fusion of the bull-god of the Indus civilization (creator) and the

37
This impressive
sculpture of Nandi
stands halfway
up Chamundi Hill
near Mysore,
India. Carved in
1659, from a single
granite boulder,
Nandi is 7.5m long
and 5m high.

bull-god, probably Rudra, of the Aryan civilization (destroyer of

cattle and men). Shiva will bestow fertility, but can also destroy.
In a similar fashion to the Apis bull, the priests of Shiva can
designate a bull as the living vehicle of the god. The chosen bull
is branded on the right hindquarter with a trident symbol
(Shivas weapon of choice) and, because he embodies Shiva, he
is universally worshipped. Shivas vehicle or mount is the sacred
milk-white bull called Nandi (literally translated as He who
pleases). In Hindu mythology, he is the guardian of all four-
legged creatures and also the sentry guard protecting the four
corners of the world. Nandi is usually found guarding the
entrance of a fertility temple dedicated to Shiva.

bull rituals and sacrice: minoan crete

Myths and legends of all early civilizations abound with bulls,
and none more so than the Greek myths. A whos who of char-
acters in these myths can be traced back to the bull worship of

38
the Minoan civilization on Crete, which venerated the bull as
the father-god symbol.
In a similar fashion to that of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the
bullgodking association existed within Crete. The supreme
Greek god Zeus, who possessed irresistible power and unin-
hibited sexuality, was said to have disguised himself as a
magnicent white bull in order to seduce Europa. She was play-
ing by the sea at Tyre with her handmaidens when the bull
approached. As he was very tame, Europa dared to climb on his
Paolo Veronese,
back, at which point Zeus galloped into the sea and swam to The Rape of Europa,
Crete. Their union created three sons, including Minos, the 1580, oil on canvas.

39
Detail from a
stone sarcophagus
found at Hagia
Triada, Crete,
showing a
trussed-up bull
being sacrificed
on an altar,
c. 14501400 bc.

future king of Crete, who would be somewhat haunted by bulls

throughout his life (see page 44: The Mighty Bull).
The Minoans worship of the bull centred on certain ritual
activities: the spring fertility dances, the bullghts (see
Spectacular Sport, page 49) and the bull sacrice. All of these
celebrated the bulls strength and fertility. Bulls were sacriced
in Crete to appease many bull-gods, such as Poseidon, the
Earth-shaker (god of earthquakes). And particularly in the
spring, the sacricial spilling of bulls blood on to the earth
signied the Father-god fertilizing the Earth mother.
Yet not all bull sacrices were public, solemn and dignied.
There were also mystic ceremonies. The Cretans were particu-
larly known for their biennial festival of Zagreus-Dionysus (son
of Zeus), who in myth was killed and eaten by the Titans when
he was ghting in the form of a bull. Zeus was so enraged that he
blasted the Titans with a flash of lightning, and from their ashes
arose mankind. Therefore man contains good and bad elements.

40
During the festival, the devotees or maenads (frenzied ones)
would congregate at night in a secluded area and drink wine,
dance, scream, shout and take part in orgies. The climax of the
event would be the introduction of a young live bull to the pro-
ceedings, which the maenads would tear apart with their bare
hands and teeth. By eating the sacricial bull, the devotees could
obtain mystical union with the god, which would bring them
renewed life, fertility and increased strength.
The ritual of sacrice was not unique to Crete, as it was also
practiced by the Sumerians, Egyptians and the peoples of the The Calf Bearer:
a marble statue
Levant. The sacrice of a bull was either meant as a gift to the found on the site
gods as a method of appeasement, or the sacrice and resulting of the Acropolis,
of a sacrificial
feast were a vehicle to transfer the mystical powers of the bull- bull-calf offered
god to human devotees. to Athena, the
Protector of Athens,
6th century bc.

rome
In common with the Minoans, Roman mystic ceremonies often
involved the bloody sacrice of a bull. The worship of the
Phrygian god of vegetation, Attis, and his lover Cybele (the
goddess of fertility), was adopted by the Romans in ad 204.
According to myth, Attis castrated himself so as to offer his
vitality to Cybele and bled to death under a pine tree, but spring
flowers sprung up from his blood. The Romans held an annual
ceremony in the spring to mourn his death and rejoice in his
resurrection.
But in secret, the devotees of Attis performed a taurobolium,
which baptized or initiated them into a cult:

. . . the devotee, crowned with gold and wreathed with

llets, descended into a pit, the mouth of which was
covered with a wooden grating. A bull, adorned with

41
The Roman god
Mithras killing
the sacrificial
bull, marble,
2nd century ad.

garlands of flowers, its forehead glittering with gold leaf,

was then driven on to the grating and there stabbed to
death with a consecrated spear. Its hot reeking blood
poured in torrents through the apertures, and was
received with devout eagerness by the worshipper on
every part of his person and garments, till he emerged
from the pit, drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head
to foot, to receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his
fellows as one who had been born again to eternal life
and had washed away his sins in the blood of the bull.8

Another god taken over by the Romans was the Persian god
of light, Mithra. He was said to have attacked and killed the
3000-year-old primeval bull, Geush Urvan, and from the blood
and semen of the bull sprung all animals and plants. Mithra ate

42
the flesh of the bull with the sun god, Sol, while they sat on the
bulls skin. The Romans renamed the god Mithras in 67 bc, and
Mithraism reached its peak in ad 308, when it was declared the
official religion of the Roman army. This was a secret male cult,
especially entrenched in the military, and many of its rituals
were held in caves, away from prying eyes.9 Mithras was regard-
ed as the god of light, justice and truth, and by feasting on bulls
flesh, the initiates would be able to triumph over their adver-
saries; giving them a moral victory over evil, and assuring them
of salvation in this world, and in the afterlife.
Celtic admiration
for the bull is
christians and celts shown on the
Gundestrup
With bull worship so rmly entrenched in the psyche of so Cauldron found in
Denmark in 1891,
many civilizations, the Christian Church found it hard to change which depicts a
peoples afliation. According to the Bible, the bull worship in ritual bull sacrifice
or hunt. Embossed
Israel had to be wiped out: there was the supreme god of the silver-gilt, 1st
Canaanites, El and Baal to contest. These bull-gods were repre- century bc.

43
sented by the idol of the Golden Calf/Bull which Aaron built at
the bottom of Mount Sinai, while the Israelites waited for
Moses to return from God with the Ten Commandments. Bull
cults were branded as sexually perverse, full of false doctrine
and weird practices.
The ancient Celts were particularly resistant to change as the
Druids (the religious priests of the Celts) used bulls as sacricial
offerings. Pliny the Elder wrote lyrically about the Druids sacri-
cing a pair of white bulls as a gift to the gods, when mistletoe was
found growing on sacred oak trees. The mistletoe, when taken
in a potion, was believed to increase cattle fertility, and the plant
was an antidote to all poisons affecting humans and cattle.10
Another Celtic ritual was that of the tarbhfheis (bull-sleep),
which was used at Tara, during the installation of the High King
of Ireland. A bull, usually with yellow skin, would be sacriced
and one Druid would feast on the flesh and drink a broth made
from the animal. He would then go into trance, or sleep, wrapped
in the sacriced bulls hide. During this sleep he would receive
a vision of the next true king.11
It was no coincidence that at the council of Toledo in 447,
when the Christian Church published its rst ofcial descrip-
tion of the Devil, it was apparently part-bull:

. . . a large black monstrous apparition with horns on his

head, cloven hoofs or one cloven hoof asss ears, hair,
claws, ery eyes, terrible teeth, an immense phallus, and
a sulphurous smell.12

the mighty bull as adversary

Although bull-gods did eventually disappear, the image of the
bull as a mighty adversary has lived on to this day. Anyone who

44
 Bulls fighting on
an 18th Dynasty
Egyptian ostrakon
(c. 15501290 bc).

has witnessed the sight of two adult male bulls ghting during
the mating season will have an idea of their strength and power.
In the Celtic legend of the Tin B Cuailnge (Cattle Raid of
Cooley), the Donn Cuailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley, was an
extremely fertile stud bull belonging to Ulster. He was strong,
virile and an object of wealth and desire: a status symbol which
the rest of Ireland wanted to own. The following passage
describes the strength and ferocity of the Brown Bull as he
attacks another one, the White-Horned Bull of Connaught:

And he fought the White-horned, and tore him limb

from limb, and carried off pieces of him on his horns,
dropping the loins at Athlone and the liver at Trim. Then
he went back to Cualgne, and turned mad, killing all who
crossed his path, until his heart burst with bellowing,
and he fell dead.13

More realistically, the following passage from The Georgics

(29 bc) written by the Roman poet Virgil is perhaps the best

45
poetic portrayal of a young bull challenging a dominant bull for
supremacy, and his eventual victory:

While with charge and countercharge they ght it out,

The blood from many wounds darkening their sides.
Crashes are heard as they fling themselves together;
A furious bellowing lls woods and sky.
They cannot share a stable. One or the other
Must yield, broken in the ght, and withdraw far off,
Taking with him the injury and shame of defeat;
The love he has lost belongs to his proud conqueror;
One last look back and he goes like a banished king.
Through days and nights of exile, brooding his return,
He hardens himself with rough living, a bed of stones,
A diet of sharp-edged rushes and prickly leaves.
He learns how to make his horns declare his fury
And tests himself, butting treetrunks, slashing the air,
Pawing up the ground as if battle had begun.
Once he has recovered strength he advances again:
He rushes his enemy, catching him off guard,
Like a wave which begins to whiten far out at sea,
Gathering behind it the lifted force of waters
As it curls shoreward and roars across the rocks,
A fluid mountain that tears itself from its base
To topple and break in eddies of black sand.14

It is obvious from this description why the might and fury

of the bull made him a supreme opponent for the heroes in
Greek mythology. Jason has to yoke two re-breathing, bronze-
footed bulls to obtain the Golden Fleece, and Heracles and
Theseus have to contend with several destructive and savage
bulls.15

46
 Heracles rst encounter was during his seventh labour, Adrien Voisard-
Margerie, Bulls
when he was dispatched to Crete to capture and remove the sea- Fighting (Rivalry),
born Cretan Bull. This white bull had been sent by Poseidon as 1923, pastel on
paper.
a divine sign of Minos right to succeed his adoptive fathers
throne. But Minos failed to sacrice this bull to Poseidon,
because it was so dazzlingly beautiful. As part of Minos pun-
ishment, the angry god sent the Cretan Bull mad. It turned into
a savage, re-breathing beast which devastated the whole of
Crete, spoiling crops and knocking down orchard walls.
Heracles managed to catch hold of the bull by its horns and
vault on to its back, where, despite being bucked, he stayed on
and rode it until it became broken like a horse. He then rode the

47
Theseus slitting
the throat of the
Minotaur; painted
Greek ceramic
vase, 600501 bc.

bull into the sea and across to the Greek mainland. The bull was
turned loose, but reverting to its old ways, it started to rampage
across the plains of Marathon towards Athens. Eventually, the
Athenian hero Theseus was called in to overpower it and drag
it to Athens, where the re-breathing and murderous bull was
sacriced to Apollo.
As well as sending the Cretan Bull mad, Poseidon also caused
King Minos wife, Pasiphae, to fall madly in love with the crea-
ture. To satisfy her desires, she persuaded the craftsman
Daedalus to build her a decoy cow, made of wood and covered
with hide. She climbed inside the decoy and arranged herself so
that when the Cretan Bull mounted the cow he also mated with
her. The result was the monstrous half-bull, half-man, known as
the Minotaur.
This creature was housed in the Labyrinth built by Daedalus
at Knossos, and every nine years seven boys and seven girls
were sent from Athens to the Labyrinth as food for the monster.
However, one year Theseus volunteered to be in the sacrice

48
party. Instead of being the victim, he stole into the Labyrinth How to capture
a wild bull,
and killed the sleeping Minotaur. according to the
gold Vaphio cups,
c. 1500 bc
spectacular sport
These myths seem to have been based on fact, because in
Crete there was a tradition of people demonstrating their
skills in the dangerous sport of bull-leaping. Although the
sport probably had a religious aspect, it was also enjoyed as a
highly entertaining spectacle.16 The bulls used for the ghts
may have been specially bred, having their speed and wits
dulled. They were probably kept semi-wild on ranches and
then caught. Two possible methods used to capture them for
the ring can be seen on embossed gold cups from about 1500
bc, found at Vaphio near Sparta (although they were Minoan
or Cretan in origin). One shows a wild bull being driven into a
large net stretched between trees, and then having his legs tied
together for transport into town. The other shows a rather
unsporting scene of a tame cow being used as a decoy to
attract the wild bull, whose back legs are then tied together
when he is distracted.
While Minoan bull-sports are the best known, there is evi-
dence of similar acrobatic feats in Cappadocia (south-east Asia

49
Bull-leaping Minor) and in Anatolia (Turkey). In one shrine at Catal Huyuk
fresco, Palace of
Knossos, Crete,
in Turkey, a mural portrays a man jumping on the back of an
17001500 bc: enormous bull six feet long; part of the mans loincloth is
The man is
leaping over the
caught on the bulls horns.
bulls back, while There is another bull sport shown on a number of Minoan
two women act as
a bull-grappler seals, which can only be described as bull-wrestling. It is an image
and a catcher. associated with Heracles and Theseus subduing the Cretan Bull.
The man, on foot, grasps the bull by the muzzle and by the horns,
twists its head around and tries to throw it to the ground.
This feat was replicated by cowboys in the Wild West shows
of 1880s America; jumping from their horses on to the bulls
back. In todays rodeo, the spectacle has been turned into an
event known as bull- or steer-dogging. The other bull-related
event from the early days of rodeo is bull-riding, which nally

50
 Matt Morgan,
Cowboy Life
Riding a Yearling,
1888, wood
engraving (from
a photograph by
C. D. Kirkland),
on the cover of
Frank Leslies
Illustrated News-
paper, 5 May 1988.

became a stand-alone sport in America in 1992, with the forma-

tion of Professional Bull Riders, Inc. (pbr). It is now a multi-
million-dollar business, with events spread across America,
Brazil, Canada and Australia.
The bulls are specially bred to have the desire and ability to
buck wildly. In 2003, the sport was voted the most dangerous
contest in America for the competitor, not the bull. The riders
aim (as it has always been) is to stay on the bull for eight seconds,17
holding on to a strap around the bulls neck with one hand.

51
Their eventual score partly rests on the judges scoring of the bulls
bucking performance, and the bull is the wild card of the event
on some outings they are mellow, at other times extremely
dangerous. One of the most famous bulls was Red Rock, who
bucked off every one of the 309 riders who tried to ride him
between 1984 and 1987. Eventually, he was conquered by the
World Champion Bull Rider of 1987, Lane Frost, in May 1988.
Neither of the rodeo events mentioned are connected to real
life cowboy tasks; they are just spectacular entertainment.18
Professional riders such as J. W. Hart speak of the thrill and
adrenaline rush they get when facing the bull:

There just aint a rush like getting on a 2,000 lb bull. It

gets your heart racing. Once you nod for them to open
the shoot gate, theres no backing out. You think about
staying on, nothing else. When a bull jumps, youve got
to counter that, but at the speed theyre going, theres no
way you can think that fast and keep up for eight seconds.
Eight seconds is a long time on the back of a bull.19

Ordinary people have flocked to Pamplona in Spain for cen-

turies to experience the same thrill of facing a bull. The
Running of the Bulls during the Fiesta da San Fermin (714 July)
is mentioned in accounts of the festival from the seventeenth
century onwards, when the moving of the bulls from their
corrals to the bullring became part of the entertainment.20
Volunteers who wish to run with the bulls wear red bandan-
nas or scarves round their necks, and the bravest souls carry
a rolled-up newspaper, which is nicknamed the Pamplona
Badge of Honour. It indicates their intention to get closest to the
bull, and if they are unable to touch the bull with their badge,
they feel their honour is lost.

52
 If all goes smoothly, the bull run lasts two to three minutes,
but sometimes a bull becomes separated from the pack and
becomes confused, swings round, tosses his head, and furious-
ly attacks anyone in his way. Ernest Hemingway in his novel The
Sun Also Rises (1926), originally titled Fiesta, describes the gor-
ing to death of one of the runners:

I saw the bulls just coming out of the street into the long
running pen. They were going fast and gaining on the
crowd. Just then another drunk started out from the
fence with a blouse in his hands. He wanted to do cape-
work with the bulls. The two policemen tore out, collared
him, one hit him with a club, and they dragged him
against the fence and stood flattened out against the
fence as the last of the crowd and the bulls went by. There
were so many people running ahead of the bulls that the
mass thickened and slowed up going through the gate
into the ring, and as the bulls passed, galloping together,
heavy, muddy-sided, horns swinging, one shot ahead,
caught a man in the running crowd in the back and lifted
him in the air. Both the mans arms were by his sides, his
head went back as the horns went in, and the bull lifted
him and then dropped him. The bull picked another man
running in front, but the man disappeared into the
crowd, and the crowd was through the gate and into the
ring with the bulls behind them.21

Since record-keeping began in 1924, fourteen people have

been killed during the Pamplona runs and over 200 gored. The
last death was in 1995, when a young American was killed on
the horns of a bull.

53
Purple Fury: the bull sports in asia
colourful event
of Jallikattu, The Asian equivalent of the Pamplona bull-running is the South
held annually in
Madurai, India. Indian sport of Jallikattu or Manchu Virattu (chasing the bull).
The annual event is played out in the villages of Tamil Nadu, on
the third day of the Pongal Festival (harvest thanksgiving), on
which day the cattle are celebrated. The object of Jallikattu is to
tame an agitated and drunken bull running in the open or in an
enclosed space by gaining control over its horns, neck or tail.
Traditionally, the contest winner was assured of snaring a bride
after showing off his valour and skills against the wild bull.22
No less dangerous is bull-racing, which is a popular rural
sport in Pakistan, Bali, in the Punjab region of India and on
Madura, an island in Indonesia. The sport is thought to have
evolved centuries ago from plough teams racing across barren
elds; and on Madura it was a sporting passion of the early king

54
of Sumenep, one of the islands towns. A pair of zebu bulls are
yoked together and dressed up with gaudy decorations. They
are often fed a special racing diet of grains, pulses and grass,
and given a mixture of ginger, pepper, chillis, honey, beer and
eggs to enliven them even more. The aim of the race is for the
jockey to stand on a metal board or cart behind the bulls as
they career off, hopefully in a straight line, for two kilometres,
only holding on to the bulls tails or a pair of reins which are
attached to the yoke.23
The other bull sport in Asia does not involve humans; just
the head-to-head combat of two bulls. Annual contests take
place in Thailand and South Korea, where bulls are specially
trained and fed for the event. Whereas today the owner of the
winning bull (the one who stands his ground) receives money,
traditionally the prize was the seasons best grazing ground.24

bulls versus other animals

While the sports mentioned tend to glorify the bull, humans
have also invented combats that cast the bull in a darker role,
often ghting to the death against other animals.
Bulls played a major role in the Roman venationes, or hunting
games. They were pitted against elephants at the Circus Maximus
in Rome in 79 bc and later with tigers, rhinoceroses, wild boar
and lions. Fights to the death between animals symbolized the
struggles of the jungle and were illustrative of the primal chaos
of the natural world.25 Seneca (4 bcad 65), the Roman
philosopher and dramatist, tells of a bull and panther that were
chained together; they ripped each other to shreds before they
were nally put out of their misery.
Whereas the Romans used bulls to recreate the spectacular
violence of nature, the English baited the bull before it was

55
Bull-baiting scene
from Edward Jesse,
Anecdotes of Dogs
(1846).

slaughtered to tenderize its flesh. Although baiting a bull with

dogs was the national sport of England between the thirteenth
and nineteenth centuries, the sport began as a misguided culi-
nary practice.26 Ironically, the distress of the animal would
make its flesh tougher.
Butchers had their own dogs which they would send out to
round up a bull from the eld, chase it and throw (pin) it to the
ground. Once the bull was chained to a stake the dogs would be
set at it, one by one. These specially bred dogs bulldogs were
tenacious and brave. They would aim to pin and hold the bulls
nose, its most tender part, which would render it helpless. The
bull would retaliate by trying to get its horns under the dogs
bellies and throw them into the air.
The public developed a taste for this violent and cruel event.
Baiting occurred at country fairs and wakes, and in ale-house

56
courtyards where local dogs would be invited to challenge
travelling bulls. Bets were taken on the outcome: the bulls eye,
a crown piece in circulation during the early 1800s, was often
placed on the outcome of a bait. Most towns had a bull/bear
ring, commonly known as a bear garden, and in eighteenth-
century London bull baiting took place twice a week at Hockley-
in-the-Hole, Clerkenwell, at Marylebone Fields, Soho, and at
Tothill Fields, Westminster.27
The bulls were paraded through the streets before the baiting.
John Gay in Trivia (1716) describes the scene in the notoriously
dangerous and unruly area of Hockley-in-the-Hole:

. . . led by the Nostrill walkes the muzzled Beare

Behinde him moves majestically dull
The Pride of Hockley-hole, the surly Bull . . .28

An added entertainment, described in The Weekly Journal of 9 June

1716, was a wild bull with reworks stuck all over him, turned
loose and chased through the streets. Spectators were asked to
arrive at about three oclock, because this sport continues long.29
A similar type of event happened annually in Stamford,
Lincolnshire, and Tutbury in Staffordshire, where it was known
as The Bull Running. The bull would have its ears cropped, its
tail cut down to a stump, its body smeared with soap and pepper
blown up its nostrils. Then, in a maddened state, it would be
turned loose and everyone would try to catch him.
Far from being a pastime solely for the mob, bull-baiting
was enjoyed even by royalty. Elizabeth i was known to organize
bull-baits for visiting dignitaries at Whitehall and she even visit-
ed the public baits held at Paris Garden on Bankside.
Early attempts to ban bull-baiting were futile, mainly due
to the authorities requirement to improve the quality of meat,

57
and it was not unusual for a newly elected provincial Mayor to
provide the citizens with a bull for baiting. When the rst
Parliamentary proposal was made to abolish bull-baiting in a
bill sent before the House of Commons by Sir William Pulteney
in 1800, hardly any politicians bothered to turn up. The Times,
which reported the bills defeat, hailed the issue as beneath
the dignity of Parliament, and the future Prime Minister
George Canning defended the sport on the grounds that the
amusement inspired courage and produced a nobleness of sen-
timent and elevation of mind.30
Eventually in 1835 the baiting of bulls was made illegal
though not because of cruelty towards the bulls, but because
the baits threatened social order. The law-makers (often gentle-
man who themselves liked to frequent the baits) were more con-
cerned about the effects of the bloody spectacle on the lower
orders, who preferred watching bull-baits to working. It was
now felt that watching these violent baits encouraged, and
vindicated, cruelty towards humanity.31

ghts to the death: man versus bull

Returning to the Roman amphitheatre, another contest pitted
man against bull in a ght to the death. Being a familiar symbol
of savagery in the Mediterranean world, the bull was an ideal
animal enemy for Romans to ght and conquer. Pliny the Elder
describes these ghting bulls in The Natural History:

The bull has a proud air, a stern forehead, shaggy ears,

and horns which appear always ready, and challenging to
the combat; but it is by his fore feet that he manifests his
threatening anger. As his rage increases, he stands, lash-
ing back his tail every now and then, and throwing up the

58
 sand against his belly; being the only animal that excites
himself by these means.32

Specialist bullghters called taurarii fought on foot with

lances and pikes. Julius Caesar introduced unarmed ghters on
horseback in 45 bc, an idea he borrowed from the people of
Thessaly (now Macedonia). The horsemen would chase the bull
around the arena until they were exhausted; at this point the
ghter would jump from the horse on to the bulls back and
attempt to wrestle it to the ground by twisting its neck.
The world of Roman venationes is a far cry from the modern
bullring. Although the end result is the same (the bloody death
of the bull), the commercialized corrida (bullght) is anything
but a sport, as it is not a fair contest is it a spectacle, ritual,
ceremony, a sacrice or art?33 Pablo Picasso, an acionado of
bullghting from a very young age, declared the corrida an art:
It is rare to nd an art that is so intelligent about itself , he told
his art dealer after visiting Nmes (one of the French centres of
bullghting) in 1912.34
Bullghting has been an elite Spanish social institution at
least since the Middle Ages. In about 1090 the hero El Cid in the
Poem of the Cid fought bulls at the marriage of his two daugh-
ters. Ordinary Spaniards have incorporated bullghting (though
not to the death) into some of their rituals, mainly those relat-
ing to marriage. A late nineteenth-century ritual in rural Spain
began two days before a wedding. The groom and his friends
would run a bull through the town, taunting it with their jackets.
When they reached the ances house, the groom would thrust
a pair of darts, which had been decorated by his ance, into
the bulls back, the idea being that the sexual potency of the bull
could be transferred to the newlyweds.35 In 1726, Francisco
Romero introduced the modern bullght: the matador fought

59
Francisco de Goya,
La Tauromaquia,
plate 1: How the
ancient Spanish
hunted bulls on
horseback in the
countryside, 1816,
etching and
aquatint.

Francisco de Goya,
La Tauromaquia,
plate 19 More of
his [Martincho]
craziness in the
same bullring,
1816, etching and
aquatint.

on foot rather than on horseback, and was equipped with a cape

(muleta) and sword, which allowed the bull to be killed from the
front, with a single thrust.
The history of Spanish bullghting, beginning with the
hunting of bulls in open country, is captured in the 33 etchings

60
which make up Goyas Tauromaquia, published in 1816.36
Although they are part-memoir and part-fantasy, the images
reveal the showbiz side of the bullring: the famous matadors
and their amazing performance stunts.

ghting bulls
What makes a good ghting bull can be described by two words
bravura (wildness or ferocity) and nobleza (honest and straight
charges, predictability). The bulls, to be worthy competitors,
need to show pure aggression, endurance and a limitless pain
barrier.
From the late eighteenth century onwards, when the number
of corridas increased, specialist breeders began to breed bulls
selectively to meet demand, and also to avoid the effects of
domestication, which were threatening to dilute the bulls wild-
ness. Previously, event organizers contacted their local butcher
to provide suitably erce bulls from those intended for domestic
slaughter.37
Today, bulls with a target weight of 500600 kg are carefully
reared for four years on ranches (ganaderias): they are deliber-
ately bred to kill or be killed. And although it is a pedigree
animal, it will only ever be in the arena once. Spectators, rather
than seeing an individual animal, only remember a good, bad
or indifferent type of bull unless, of course, it manages to kill
a matador: then it becomes famous.38
The popular image of the dangerous bull, with its head low-
ered, pawing the ground before attacking is a universal one, still
beloved of Hollywood lm, cartoons and school playgrounds.
But any ghting bull exhibiting this behaviour in the modern
Spanish bullring is classed as cowardly although it is a threat-
ening action, the bull is hesitant and not sure of its attack.

61
 During the corrida the bull goes through three physical and
emotional stages. First, the toro bravo (wild bull) enters the
arena. He is strong, proud and spoiling for a ght. The matador
takes him through some preliminary movements, called suerte
de capote (act of cape). He charges wildly and freely at the cape;
the proverbial bull in a china shop. Like the champion boxer
Jake La Motta, played by Robert de Niro in the lm Raging Bull
(1980), he is full of rage and violence, emotions which make him
virtually unstoppable in the ring.
Most depictions of the bullght show the next stage of the
corrida: the bulls contact with the mounted picadors. Although
the horses are heavily armoured and blindfolded, traditionally
the horses were unprotected, and bore the brunt of the bulls
anger: Picasso, Goya and Manet all captured the gory mess
made of the picadors horses.
At the end of this confrontation the bull appears to have
won as the horses leave the arena. He is left alone. But then, as
Hemingway notes in Death in The Afternoon (1932):

Lake Price, Chulos

Playing the Bull,
186070,
lithograph. A
Chulo (roughly
dandy) is the
bullfighters
assistant.

62
 In the second act he is baffled completely by an unarmed douard Manet,
Bullfight, 18656,
man and very cruelly punished by the banderillas [har- oil on canvas.
poon-shaped darts] so that his condence and his blind In modern
bullfighting the
rage go and he concentrates his hatred on an individual horses may be
object . . . When the banderillas are in he is done for. They blindfolded and
covered by latticed
are the sentencing. The rst act is the trial, the second act padding, but they
is the sentencing and the third the execution.39 are still viewed by
the bull as the
natural enemy.
A good bull will be slowed by the banderillas, but he is prob-
ably at his most dangerous because he now recognizes his
enemy. He is aiming his attacks. He is still brave and strong.

63
The Espada The nal act is the matador dominating the bull with the
(swordsman)
meeting the
muleta. This act is designed to wear down the bull until he knows
plunging bull, he has lost the battle. The bulls head will lower, he will lose his
buries the sword
in his shoulder: speed and he becomes heavy and tired. The execution the
Dealing the fatal moment of truth or estocada when it is performed correctly,
blow at a bull-
fight in Seville, should see the matador going over the bulls horns to thrust his
Spain, c. 1902, sword between the arches of the bulls shoulder-blades.
stereographic
photograph. It appears that the heroic matador has confronted death
purposefully, even gracefully, and by his control, skill and
actions has outwitted the bull. But the muleta will only protect
the matador if the bull has never faced a man before. If he has,
then the matador is as good as dead. This is why a fighting bull
never enters the bullring twice.

provoking emotions
Rather than depicting the death of the bull, most artists have
tended to capture the vivid theatre of the bullght, and also the
bulls victories. Goyas The Death of a Picador (1793), part of a

64
series of eight bullghting studies, shows the bull goring the
picadors horse and the picador himself.
The bullght, and its symbolism, was a familiar part of
Picassos work throughout his life, but most markedly from the
mid-1930s. He used the violence of the bullght (the bull sym-
bolizing masculinity, the horse of femininity) to try and vent
the rage, guilt and desire that dogged him in his private life dur-
ing his secret affair with Marie-Thrse, while married to Olga:
he is also the Minotaur in his Minotauromachie series.40 But
probably Picassos most famous depiction of a bull is in
Guernica (1937), which he painted as a response to the tragedy
of the Nazi German-led bombing of the town of Guernica on 26
April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Although he never
denitively explained the paintings symbolism, the bull could
stand for the Spanish people, standing deantly against the
aggressors, or he could be a symbol of the brutality and dark-
ness of war and fascism.
Progressing from canvas to celluloid, the bullght, with its
potential for spectacle, was the subject of one of the earliest
lms, shot in Madrid in 1895 by Francis Doublier. The footage,
which was shown at the Grand Caf in Paris, includes parts of
the parade and the ght, the sudden charges and threats of the
bull, and the matador attempting the kill.
The later lm A Spanish Bullght (1900) was subject to cen-
sorship in Britain on the grounds of animal cruelty. The stark
black-and-white images, played out in silence, show the demise
of the bull without the usual background of crowd noise, intense
emotion and warm sunshine: the brutal ght to the death.41
The bullring has also been used to illustrate a simple moral:
peace and gentleness are better than ghting and death. The
character of Ferdinand the Bull was created by Munro Leaf in
his bestselling book, published in 1936. Ferdinand is a gentle,

65
peace-loving bull who, when forced into the Madrid bull-ring,
only wants to sit down and sniff the scent of the flower bouquets
which the lady spectators have thrown at the matadors. The
story was turned into an award-winning Disney cartoon,
Ferdinand the Bull (1938).
Aside from Spain, bulls are regularly fought in France,
Portugal and in the Latin American republics of Colombia,
Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.
There is even a bullghting school in San Diego, California.
However, in 2004 Barcelona declared itself an anti-bullfighting
city following a series of public protests and a petition. Another
38 Catalan municipalities have followed suit, and in December
2006 it was anounced that the last bullring in Barcelona is to
close after a fall in visitor numbers. It is thought that Barcelona is
a good yardstick for all cultural trends across the country: the
corrida may be lost forever in Spain.

66
3 Cow Mysticism and a Rural Idyll

As in nature, the attributes of the cow and her associated sym-

bolism are the direct opposite of those of the bull. While he is
linked with strength and power, she radiates gentleness. He
bellows; she lows. He is feared; she is loved.
There is probably no other animal surrounded by such
poetic associations and rural idealism as the cow: the gentle
caresses of the pure milkmaid are needed to bring on her milk
and she is a source of solace from the urban bustle; she
provides relaxation for the tired.1 And there is also no other
animal so closely associated to the human female: cows are
mothers, beautiful girls, aristocratic leaders and downtrodden
women.

respect for the cow

Until recently, humans throughout the world have respected
and treated the cow well for she was (and still is in pastoral
cultures) the epitome of usefulness. Without complaint and in
a gentle manner, she provides male calves for use in the elds,
nourishes humans with milk and milk products, and provides
manure for fuel and fertilizing of crops. She is the ultimate
provider of inexhaustible riches. And as a bulky and expensive
animal to keep, she has been looked after and petted she is a

67
A weeping cow
allowing her milk
to be taken to
feed man, rather
than her calf,
Egypt, 11th
Dynasty
(21341991 bc).

precious commodity. As the English courtier and scientist Sir

Kenelm Digby wrote in 1658:

theres not the meanest cottager but hath a cow to furnish

his family with milk; tis the principal sustenance of the
poorest sort of people . . . which makes them very careful
of the good keeping and health of their cows.2

She is an everyday sort of animal: neither exotic nor exciting,

just there and always providing, living quite happily alongside
humans. It seems rather a contradiction, then, that an animal
so passive and forbearing became such a huge star of global
folklore and ancient mythology. But a passage in the novel The
Cow (1999) by Beat Sterchi seems to sum up the reason: respect.
The Spanish herdsman, Ambrosio, who is used to the pride
and the nimble rage of a young bull from Corua, takes charge
of a herd of twelve Simmental dairy cows in Switzerland. He is
unable to admire the cows, but

68
 . . . he couldnt deny that these overbred bodies had
something reassuringly decent about them, it might well
be dull, but the warmth they radiated, their incessant
inner activity, their endless ruminating, digesting, multi-
plying, lactating, producing-even-while-they-slept, all
that impressed Ambrosio in spite of himself. Sometimes
their uninterrupted productivity seemed positively god-
like to him, and he learned to respect it.3

The cow symbolizes maternal nourishment because of her

ability to provide milk. In effect, she is the Mother of humans, and
by inference also of the gods. Her milking ability is her passport to
greatness. There is nothing more to her: milk is her raison dtre, as
simply put by the American poet Ogden Nash (19021971):

The cow is of the bovine ilk;

One end is moo, the other, milk.4

The house
cow provided
the households
entire dairy needs,
photograph of
c. 1902.

69
cow mythology and folklore
While cow-goddesses are often the consorts of bull-gods (as seen
in Mesopotamia), she takes centre stage in several creation myths.
Audhumla is the primeval cow in Nordic mythology known as the
nourisher, who provides four rivers of milk for the evil frost-giant
Ymir, whose body parts eventually form the world. She herself
feeds on the salt which covers the ice-blocks in the great abyss
(Ginnungagap) which is full of latent energy awaiting creation.
Over the course of three days, she licks at the salty blocks until the
rst human man appears, called Buri. He has a son called Bor, who
in turn has three sons. They hate Ymir so they attack and kill him.
With his body they make the earth, the sea from his blood and the
sky from his skull. Audhumla is therefore also known as the
creative force.
The Egyptians, according to Herodotus in An Account of
Egypt, did not sacrice or eat the flesh of cows, as they were
sacred to their cow-goddesses. Neith, the great primeval mother
whose cult centre was at Sais, was similar to Audhumla. The
fullest account of her part in creation is written on the temple
walls at Esna. At the beginning of time she appears as a cow,
Ihet, floating on the Nun (a watery mass of dark, directionless
chaos). By invoking their names, she forms thirty primeval gods
who have to help her in her creation. She starts by giving birth
to the sun-god, Ra, and is therefore the Mother of all gods.
In later times, the Egyptians had several different cow-god-
desses Nut, Hathor and Isis.5 The sky-goddess Nut is some-
times depicted as a cow, for this is the form she assumes when
she bears Ra on her back up to the sky. The dutiful cow gets obe-
diently to her feet, but rises so high that she becomes dizzy. Four
gods are appointed to support her legs (which became the four
pillars of the sky). Shu, god of the air, holds up her belly, which

70
 Hathor as a cow,
watching over
the Pharaoh
Psammetichus i,
572525 bc.

becomes the rmament to which Ra attaches the stars and the

constellations to light the earth.
In one myth Nut gives birth to Ra daily and he passes over her
body until he reaches her mouth at sunset. He then passes into her
mouth and through her body, and is reborn the next morning.
The mother-goddess par excellence of Egyptian gods is
Hathor, and when she is at her most nurturing and protecting
she is depicted in her cow form. Hathor became goddess of
motherhood, gaining titles such as The Great Cow Who
Protects Her Child. Her priests (male and female) were oracles
and midwives, and Hathors protection could be invoked over
children and pregnant women. In connection with Isis, she pro-
vides sustenance for the souls of the dead in the Underworld
during their mummication, and when their hearts are being

71
weighed in the Judgement Hall. She is also depicted in cow form
as the Mistress of the Theban Necropolis.
Mythology, therefore, places the cow at the centre of the uni-
verse and as Mother of humans and gods. Folklore, on the other
hand, tends to depict the cow in her normal role as continuous
provider, albeit in a respectfully magical way.
In Celtic folklore there are cows who will magically appear
before any deserving person in need of their milk, supplying a
never-ending amount for free: the brindled black-and-brown
magic Welsh cow Fuwch Frech, and Glas Ghaibhneach, the grey
cow of Irish tradition.6 However, the cows will soon disappear if
they are struck, milked into a leaky bucket or otherwise offend-
ed. The Dun Cow a gigantic beast belonging to a giant and
kept on Mitchell Fold in Shropshire reacted in a particularly
violent way when she was expected to provide more milk than
she wanted to. As with most mythical cows, her milk supply was
inexhaustible, but one day an old woman who had already lled
her milk bucket, wanted also to ll her leaking bucket, therefore
wasting precious milk. This so enraged the cow that she broke
loose from the fold and wandered onto Dunsmore Heath,
where she was said to have haunted a ditch and savagely injured
many people. She was eventually slain by the heroic Guy, Earl of
Warwick.
Another cow steeped in (negative) folklore is Daisy, the cow
belonging to the Irish immigrant Kate OLeary, who became a
legend of the silver screen. Daisy was supposed to have started
the Great Chicago Fire on 8 October 1871 after kicking over a
kerosene lamp. Even though Michael Ahern, the reporter who
created the cow story, admitted in 1893 that he had made it up,
the tale become an urban myth and was depicted in the lm In
Old Chicago (1935). Chicago became known as The City That a
Cow Kicked Over.7

72
 Another rural myth concerning cows has recently been
exposed by researchers in Canada. The idea that you can tip over
a cow using brute strength, known as cow-tipping, is a fallacy. It
is often cited as a drunken entertainment in the countryside,
reports The Times, to sneak up on an unsuspecting cow and
turn the poor animal hoof over udder.8

naturally aggressive cows

They appear to go against the grain, but naturally aggressive
cows do exist, and indeed are often celebrated. At the end of the
daily bull runs in Pamplona, when the bulls are safely held in
corrals, the amateurs congregate waiting for the vaquilla. This
event sees the release of ve ghting cows into the ring, allow-
ing a brush with danger, without confronting a bull.
The raging cow played a part in the martyrdom of Perpetua,
one of the many patron saints of cattle. She was put into a Roman
amphitheatre against a mad heifer for preaching Christianity.
The story goes that she was tossed by the heifer, but got up and
helped her slave, Felicitas, who was also in the arena. Perpetua
killed herself with a gladiators sword, rather than being
despatched unwillingly.
Another breed of naturally aggressive cow is the Herens
breed (sometimes known as the Eringer breed), which come
from the Swiss Canton of Valais. They instinctively engage in
duels to determine the hierarchy for leading the herd to its
Alpine summer pastures. Since 1923, organized competitions
have seen huge crowds gather to watch regional bouts
between specially bred cows, with the Queen of the Herd or
Cantonal Queen eventually crowned in May at the nals held
in Aproz. Calves born to the Queen will be worth at least
$3,600.9

73
Herens cows
battling for
supremacy during
the spring
competitions at
Raron, in the Swiss
canton of Valais.

While the Herens cows are not particularly dangerous to

humans, there is always a risk involved when working with
cattle: it is a dangerous occupation. According to the British
Health and Safety Executive, between 1994 and 1999 23 people
were killed by cattle, with hundreds of others injured. Incidents
involving cows are most likely when their maternal instinct is
aroused to protect their calves from dangerous people.10

the sacred cow

Not surprisingly, India is home to the greatest concentration of
cows in the world and in Hindu India we nd an overwhelming
abundance of cow-love. Like many countries, India has its own
mythical cow, Surabhi, who is known as the Cow of Plenty (and
also as Kamadhenu, the Wish-Fullling Cow); she is the rst of
the treasures to emerge from the primeval ocean of milk
churned by Vishnu, and is believed to be the mother of all cows.
Hindus daily lives are full of rituals, practices and habits
which revolve around the cow. Cows are worshipped at festivals,

74
 Feeding a sacred
cow: averting evils
and fulfilling your
wishes.

and in some parts of India a special day in November called

Gosthastami is set aside for the cow. The bulls of Shiva roam the
streets unmolested, and cows milk, curds and ghee are used in
temple rituals as offerings to the gods. The heady liquid known
as Pancha-gavya is a solution made from the ve products of the
live cow: milk, ghee, curds, urine and dung. It is the most potent
and sacred substance known to Hindus and it is ascribed magical
and purication properties, such as averting evil and bestowing
blessings on marriages.
So how and from where did the concept of the sacred cow
arise? Although there is no evidence of the cow being sacred in the
Indus Valley, the cow was certainly linked to the Mother
Goddess, who was herself the cow providing milk as the life-
bestowing agent. But the cow becomes central to Indian society
during the Vedic period: cows are the mothers of the universe. In

75
the Rig-Veda, the cow is associated with Prithivi (the Mother
Earth) who is consort to Dyava (the Heavens). The mother of the
gods, Aditi, is called the Milch-cow11 and cows symbolize life-
giving substances such as rain clouds, and the cosmic waters
from which the universe is created.12
Despite the esteem and affection bestowed on the cow, she
was not viewed by the Aryans as sacred and inviolable in her
own right. She was sacriced to the gods, with her flesh ritually
eaten by the Brahman priests at funeral rites (men would be
wrapped in her hide to protect them on their journey) and on
other occasions, such as the building of a new house.
It was not until late medieval times, when the principle of
ahimsa became widespread the Hindu, Buddhist and Jainist
moral and ethical doctrine of non-injury and compassion that
the cow was regarded as totally sacred and the thought of killing
the surrogate mother of the human race became repugnant. But
although the concept of ahimsa was probably introduced to
India around the sixth century bc, it took time to break down
Brahmanical rule and change societys behaviour.
The abolition of cow sacrice and the avoidance of beef was
rmly entrenched in Hindu India before the Moslem invasions of
the eleventh century, but the introduction of Islamic culture to
India only served to strengthen the cows sanctity. The Moslem
invaders were beef-eaters and cow killers; thus the cow became a
symbol of Hindu culture, and the chief reason for Hindu resist-
ance against the spread of Islam. In a similar fashion, resentment
against Moghul India, and the British presence in India, con-
tributed to the cause of cow-protection. Even today, there are
clashes between Hindus and Moslems over cattle sacrices and
feasting undertaken during Id al-Adha (the Feast of the Sacrice).
Another, more signicant, reason for the increased Hindu
respect and reverence for the cow is related to the cult of

76
Krishna. He is the most important of the avatars (incarnations)
of Vishnu, the preserver of the world. The pastoral aspect of
Krishna depicts him as the Lord of the Herdsmen and Govinda
(one who brings satisfaction to the cows), surrounded by
bovines and gopis (cow-girls) who are devoted to him. He
describes the importance of cows:

We are cowherds, wandering in the forests, maintaining

ourselves on cows, which are our wealth; cows are our
deities, and mountains and forests.13

Probably the most compelling evidence for the sacred cow

concept being alive in modern India is the continued existence
of pinjrapoles (homes for old animals) and goshalas (refuges for
cattle), where a few fortunate cows end their days. These animal
shelters are totally uneconomical to run, because the costs of
upkeep far exceed any income derived from the dung, hides and
carcasses of the cows; yet they still exist. And it is still deemed
political suicide to suggest that all useless or injured cows should
be slaughtered in an attempt to feed the many starving people in
India, as Indira Gandhi related in 1975: There exists no politi-
cian in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses
that cows can be eaten.14
But, ironically, there is plenty of cow suffering as a conse-
quence of this policy, as the urban cow population is over-
whelming. In Delhi, most of the estimated 40,000 cows live
openly among the estimated 13 million residents. Most of these
cows are left to wander freely, scavenging for food and water,
and blocking up the citys roads. Many of them are neglected,
ill-fed and riddled with disease. City ofcials employ urban
cowboys to round up and ship ownerless or useless animals
from the suburbs out to reserves.15

77
The Festival of
Cattle, Rajasthan,
c. 1830, gouache
on cloth. This
temple wall-
hanging shows
Sri Nathji (a
Deity of Krishna)
surrounded by
cows and cow-
herds, as a
reference to
Krishnas early
playground,
called Golaka or
cow-place.

Modern travel accounts of India always contain a mention of

the sacred cow and the reverence in which they are held. But, as
the following extract from Norman Lewiss A Goddess in the
Stones (1991) shows, there exists a different reality for the urban
cow and the country cow:

Suddenly we were in cow-country, of the kind I had never

seen before. Cities like Patna were full of cows which had
to fend for themselves. They fed exclusively on rubbish
and were in consequence stunted and skeletal versions of
the species. In the country, however spartan the condi-

78
The consequence of too many city-living cattle in Kathmandu, Nepal. It is illegal
to slaughter cows in Nepal, but beef can be eaten (it is imported from Christian/
Moslem India).
 tions, things were quite different . . . This became very
apparent in an unnamed village past Bahr where we
overtook a stately perambulation of thin, upright men
escorting a magnicent and immaculate cow on its way
possibly to preside at some festival which was being
most carefully groomed as it plodded along by two atten-
dant boys, one on each side. Children were running
ahead flying blue kites.16

cow personality: literary representations

Where cows and humans have a close physical relationship (in
terms of living and working side by side), they often develop an
emotional bond as well, which normally results in the animals
being given a name and being treated as part of the family.
This close contact also allows the owner to observe the cows
personality. For those of us not lucky enough to know cows,
several writers have tried their best to reveal her ways.
Cowpeaceably is an adjective specically created by Sterchi
to describe the way cows stand placidly.17 They will normally be
ruminating, staring blankly into space and looking totally at
peace. Gilbert White describes this perfectly, in regard to the
cows instinct to seek out water in the heat of summer:

. . . that instinct by which in summer all the kine, whether

oxen, cows, calves, or heifers, retire constantly to the water
during the hotter hours; where, being more exempt from
flies, and inhaling the coolness of that element, some belly
deep, and some only to mid-leg, they ruminate and solace
themselves from about ten in the morning till four in the
afternoon, and then return to their feeding.18

80
 Obliviously
peaceful: Greek
bronze of a cow.

This state of total calmness when a cow appears withdrawn and

preoccupied is one to which humans sometimes aspire. Even
the presence of cows can soothe the most emotional characters:
the loathsome Mrs Skewton in Charles Dickenss Dombey and
Son (1867) loves cows, which to her represent the Nature she
wants to be surrounded by:

I am thrown away in society. Cows are my passion. What

I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to a Swiss farm,
and live entirely surrounded by cows and china . . . What
I want, is frankness, condence, less conventionality, and
freer play of soul. We are so dreadfully articial.19

D. H. Lawrence wrote at length about his relationship with

Susan, a black cow which he milked on a daily basis early in
the morning in 19245 on his ranch in Taos, New Mexico. He
comments on her cowy oblivion, her cow inertia, her cowy
passivity and her cowy peace;20 and he wonders where she
goes to when in her trances. But he believes there is always a
certain untouched chaos in her,21 which is never far away and
when her peace is broken, such as when the coyotes frighten her
at night, Lawrence writes that, there is something roaring in the
chaos of her universe.22

81
 Her personality has another side, one which he nds less
appealing: To me she is fractious, tiresome, and a faggot.23 This
is because she will deliberately do things to annoy him, such as
swinging her tail in his face during milking: So sometimes she
swings it, just on purpose: and looks at me out of the black
corner of her great, pure-black eye, when I yell at her.24 Another
flash point is when she is on heat, looking out for a bull:

Then when I call at her, and approach, she screws round

her tail and flings her sharp, elastic haunch in the air with
a kick and a flick, and plunges off like a buck rabbit, or
like a black demon among the pine trees, her udder
swinging like a chime of bells.25

Lawrence describes beautifully the joys and frustrations of

working or living with cows. Bringing in cows from the eld to
be milked can be pure pleasure on warm, sunny days, but also
incredibly frustrating when time is short, because cows naturally
move slowly. Whether this is to do with their bulk or their
obstinacy is questionable, but the phrase till the cows come
home is a tting metaphor for a long period of time.
A rather bedraggled line of cows being driven in from pasture
looks like a line of indolent children, or a band of slaves being
herded along. The poem Fetching Cows by Norman MacCaig
(19101996) gives the rear vantage point of a drover pushing on
cows. The line of cows, as in reality, is in a pecking order, which
rarely deviates:

The black one, last as usual, swings her head

And coils a black tongue around a grass-tuft. I
Watch her soft weight come down, her split feet spread.

82
 In front, the others swing and slough; they roll Pieter Bruegel the
Elder, The Return of
Their great Greek eyes and breathe out milky gusts the Herd, 1565, oil
From muzzles black and shiny as wet coal.26 on wood. In the
autumn villagers
bring their dairy
This extract also alludes to the beauty of the cow, particularly cattle down from
the summer
the young heifers. The Greek eyes is probably a reference to the pasture in the
heifer form into which Zeus turned the goddess Io, in an mountains to
house them in
attempt to hide her from his jealous wife, Hera. the village over
the winter.

love around the cows: dairymaids

The association of young girls and cows is deeply engrained in
European ideas of rural innocence and beauty. Dairymaids
were pure, homely and healthy. Well, that was the image por-
trayed: it was common knowledge in the eighteenth century

83
Milkmaid calling
out her wares for
Londons
inhabitants, an
18th-century
woodcut
published by
Andrew White
Tuer in Old London
Street Cries (1885).

that milkmaids had good skin, but this was partly because their
exposure to cowpox gave them immunity to smallpox. Hence
they did not have the pock-marked complexion common to
smallpox survivors.
In 1770s London cows were kept behind shops and grazed
on Hyde Park and Green Park, and part of the dairymaids work
involved selling their fresh milk to the town houses, in the tra-
ditional manner of advertising their wares: Milk below, Maids,
they would cry.
Visual depictions of these dairymaids were along traditional
lines. The artist Francis Wheatley (17471801) included them in
The Cries of London (1793), which sought to preserve images of
the few surviving indigenous groups of Londoners who were
keeping alive the warmth and picturesqueness of yesteryear.27
However, the urban reality, at least according to the English
journalist George August Sala, who recorded the sights of

84
London in 1859, was burly milk-women with mahogany faces 44 Idealized
image of the
handsomely veneered by wind and weather trekking the streets milkmaid, c. 1906,
selling milk of a decidedly metropolitan character.28 photograph.
But the gure of the sexually idealized rural dairymaid per-
sisted in the mind of the townspeople. She was chaste, modest
and clean, yet hard working; she provided the fresh milk and
cream for the urban population far removed from the diluted,
unhygienic product sold by urban milk-retailers.29
Probably the most well known ctional dairymaid is Tess
Durbeyeld, who nds peace and happiness on Dairyman
Cricks farm in Thomas Hardys novel Tess of the DUrbervilles: A
Pure Woman (1891). Her suitor, Angel Clare, describes her as
a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature.30 As is shown in the
following passage, Clare cannot help being overwhelmed by Tess
as she milks one of the red and dun cows, Old Pretty:

All the men, and some of the women, when milking, dug
their foreheads into the cows and gazed into the pail. But a
few mainly the younger ones rested their heads side-

85
 ways. This was Tess Durbeyelds habit, her temple press-
ing the milchers flank, her eyes xed on the far end of the
meadow with the quiet of one lost in meditation. She was
milking Old Pretty thus, and the sun chancing to be on the
milking-side it shone flat upon her pink-gowned form and
her white curtain-bonnet, and upon her prole, rendering
it keen as a cameo cut from the dun background of the cow.
She did not know that Clare had followed her round,
and that he sat under his cow watching her. The stillness of
her head and features was remarkable: she might have been
in a trance, her eyes open, yet unseeing. Nothing in the pic-
ture moved but Old Prettys tail and Tesss pink hands, the
latter so gently as to be a rhythmic pulsation only, as it they
were obeying a reflex stimulus, like a beating heart.31

cow art: alive and dead

Dairymaids and their charges were also prominent on canvas,
more so than in literature. Because of its everyday occurrence,
the cow became one of the most widespread images in rural
genre painting ordinary country people doing ordinary coun-
try things. Cows are shown being milked, lounging around in
the elds, chomping into grass pastures, being driven along dirt
tracks and knee-deep in watering pools or rivers. Generally they
are shown in a herd and the dairy cow is queen. But even
though cows are depicted doing normal cowy things, their por-
trayal reflected changing societal values.32
The genre of cattle painting developed in the mid-1600s, prin-
cipally in the Netherlands. Here, dairying and cattle rearing had
become the principal land use during this time because of land
reclamation programmes, and in turn became a source of
national income and pride. The dairy cow became an emblem

86
 Detail from Paulus
Potter, The Bull,
1647, oil on
canvas.

of Dutch prosperity and many natural cow paintings appeared.

Paulus Potter (16251654) was one of the rst to specialize in
the genre and he almost immediately created its epitome: The
Bull (1647). Many other painters aspired to the minutiae of the
bulls and cows coats, their wrinkles and muscle denition.
However, modern anatomical studies have shown that Potter
must have created the bull from drawings of several animals at
different ages.33

87
 Right up until the 1790s the images of cattle were mainly fac-
tual in that they represented the reality of working animals and
working peasants. Then came the romanticized image of the
countryside, and of the cow, which lasted well into the nineteenth
century. The notable artists of the time were Verboeckhoven in
Belgium, Thomas Sidney Cooper in England, Brascassat in France
and Voltz in Bavaria. They painted their landscapes and cows
through rose-tinted glasses; pastures were too lush and the cattle
too serene.
This mainstream style continued until the mid-1850s, when
a more realist objectivity gripped European painting. The cattle,
and the landscapes they stood in, looked more rugged and were
more natural and everyday, as influenced by the Barbizon
School in France and the Hague School in Holland.
But there is a saying, attributed to Paul Klee, that the more
horrible the world is, the more abstract art becomes.34 And the
cow featured in the work of several European artists who sought
to escape from the modern world and return to a primitive or
child-like state. I and the Village (1911) by the painter Marc
Chagall (18871985), for example, is an amalgamation of recol-
lections from his Belarusian/Russian childhood. Chagall looks
nostalgically back to a world lost to him; one in which the cow
and his family, or neighbours, were interdependent.
In contrast to the close relationship of humans and cow, the
German artist Franz Marc (18801916) envisioned a world free
from humans. His Yellow Cow (1911) is a joyous creature fully
immersed in her surroundings, moving freely and playfully, with
a soft dignity. The cow is a veiled representation of his wife,
Maria Franck, whom Marc had recently married, with the colour
yellow symbolizing femininity, sensuality and cheerfulness.35
Rather more macabre is the body of art whose subject is the
dead cow. The flesh or meat of the cow, and the dead cow itself,

88
has been employed by artists to convey different meanings. The Franz Marc, Yellow
Cow, 1911, oil on
carcass in Rembrandts Slaughtered Ox (1655) looks uncannily canvas.
like the Crucixion, with the flesh looking almost beautiful with
its opulent, lavish red hues. This painting inspired the work of
Belarusian Chaim Soutine (18931943), who obsessively paint-
ed beef carcasses for very personal reasons. Soutine would keep
a carcass in his studio and repeatedly daubed fresh blood on it
as it dried out. During this preparation time, before he started
to paint, Soutine would fast. He had a difcult relationship
with food, partly because of the hunger he experienced in his
youth and also because he was physiologically incapable of
eating meat. His Carcass of Beef (overleaf ) gives full rein to his
carnivorous desires.

89
 The physical appearance of meat has been used by Francis Chaim Soutine,
Carcass of Beef,
Bacon (19091992) as a metaphor for the horror of human pain c. 1925, oil on
and suffering experienced during the Second World War. canvas.

Carcasses hanging in the crucixion pose form the backdrop to

his monstrous protagonist in Painting 1946 (1946), where the
carcasses retain the appearance of living flesh; human flesh and
animal flesh are virtually indistinguishable.
On a more optimistic level, Damien Hirst (b. 1965) has used
the dead cow to show the process of death as a cycle of living.
Pregnant cows laterally spliced into twelve segments and dis-
played, out of sequence, in cabinets of formaldehyde form Some
Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Every-
thing (1996). As with Hirsts other animal works, the installation
allows the viewer to really look at the physical appearance of a
cow, internally and externally, and at rst glance the cows also
appear rather unnervingly alive.
Other cows in art include the Concrete Cows (and calves) of
Milton Keynes, created in the 1960s by the American sculptor
Liz Leyh. Symbolizing a lost countryside, the artist pokes fun at
the preconceived notion of the new city, such as that voiced by
the poet John Betjeman in Slough (1937):

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!

It isnt t for humans now,
There isnt grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!36

What better way to remind children growing up in Milton

Keynes what cows look like? The concrete cows have led rather
adventurous lives, having been kidnapped and held to ransom,
placed in compromising poses, pyjamas and bse grafti painted
on them they have even been beheaded (and then rebuilt).

91
Brian Calvin,
Cowccinella
Novemnotata (Nine
Spotted Lady Bug
Cow), exhibit for
Cows on Parade,
Chicago, 1999.

Similar eye-catching breglass cows have been invading and

taking over major cities in the world since 1998 in the interna-
tional public art exhibition CowParade. The cows are modelled
on the Brown Swiss breed, after the original exhibition in
Zurich, Switzerland. They are painted by artists of all ages and
displayed for several months in public places, such as stations,
town squares and parks. They are auctioned off at the end of the
exhibition for charity. But why cows? According to the
CowParade website,

Who can resist a cow? Theyre cute, sweet and universally

beloved animals and theyre a great surprise in major
urban centers. They also present a unique, three-dimen-

92
 sional, curvy canvas for artists. See for yourself: look at
one of the cows and try not to smile.37

humorous and loveable cows

Cows are amusing; there is no denying that. But humorous cows
on television and in storybooks are portrayed as being out-of-
the-ordinary cows; different to all other cows. It is as though
cows in reality are hiding a huge secret: they are all performers,
when humans are looking the other way.
The British childrens cartoon series Blue Cow, created by John
Olday, is one example. A blue cow lives in a eld of black-and-
white cows; in every episode she gets onto a bus which stops out-
side her eld and enjoys an adventure. When she returns in the
evening dying to tell her friends about her exciting day, they are
not interested and sigh heavily: Shes off again. Similarly, Cow in
the American cartoon series Cow and Chicken has an alter ego
called Supercow who can fly and speak Spanish. But, these are
not new phenomena: think of the nursery rhyme Hey diddle did-
dle, the cat and the ddle / The cow jumped over the moon.
Perhaps the most widely known comic cow is Ermintrude,
who appears in the British television series Magic Roundabout
and in lms of the same name. Created in 1963 by Serge Danot
in the original French version Le Mange Enchant as Azale, she
brings a touch of class to her friends drab lives, liking all classi-
cal music, architecture, singing and dance although she is a
terrible dancer.
In contrast to the decidedly saccharine image of literary
cows (see Hardys Tess above), novelist Stella Gibbons (1902
1989) created a quartet of less attractive Jersey girls in her comic
novel Cold Comfort Farm (1932): Graceless (whose leg happens
to fall off whilst she is being walked down a rutted lane),

93
Rices Beautiful
Evangeline poster
c. 1896: the comic
opera written by
Edward E. Rice
starred a dancing
two-man heifer
acting alongside
the human
Evangeline.

Pointless, Feckless and Aimless. They are aged, barren and

milked by an old man, Adam, who has gnarled ngers.
Other cows, real this time, in the public eye are usually Jersey
cows (they have the ah factor) either advertising stars, such
as Elsie the Cow (the face of the us Borden Dairy) or movie
stars, such as Brown Eyes, who starred alongside Buster Keaton
in the silent comedy Go West (1925). Keaton plays a character
called Friendless and has a touching relationship with his lead-
ing lady (on and off screen). Sentimentality abounds (he ties
horns to her head so that she can protect herself among the
herd) and they exchange knowing looks and touches. They
become inseparable, as portrayed in the lm, and more literally

94
as Keaton and Brown Eyes were physically linked together during
lming by a piece of black thread.38

not all milk and honey

Aside from the humour, in its less endearing form, especially
when used to describe a human female, the word cow conjures
negative images of stubbornness, arrogance, irritability and
pushiness: it is a verbal insult bounded about in society by both
sexes to describe women exhibiting cow-like behaviours. The
derogatory description ugly old cow may relate back to when
the aged family cow, probably barren and therefore unproduc-
tive, would be slaughtered for its meat and hide it was more
productive dead than alive. And this is where some societies
have felt discomfort about the cow, particularly Hindus: the
guilt of killing a cow, who has given her all.
Over time, cows have become symbols of stupidity, low spirits,
the downtrodden and agriculture all of which are covered in the
On a street in India:
even sacred oxen
have bad days.

95
Spanish lm Vacas (Cows, 1992). Three generations of cows
watch over the rivalries and loves of two families of Basque wood-
cutters. The cows just look on without judgement while the
humans are forced to confront the precariousness of their rural
existence.
In a similar vein, the Iranian lm Gav (The Cow, 1969),
shows a peasant being driven to despair and nally into madness
when his adored pregnant cow dies in his absence. He is left
alone, and without a livelihood. The villagers lie and tell him she
has disappeared, but eventually he identies so closely with his
cow that he begins to embody her in spirit and body. On a polit-
ical level, Gavs depiction of the futility of rural life stood in
direct contrast to the propaganda for the Shahs agrarian reform
policy and, at rst, earned the lm a government ban.
The image of the downtrodden woman, living in an urban
environment, is explored in Poor Cow (1967), the directorial
debut of the British lm-maker Ken Loach. Adapted from a
novel by Nell Dunn of the same name, the lm tells the story of
Joy (irony intended), a young girl living in 1960s London in a
grim flat with her young son, Johnny. Her abusive husband is in
jail for violent robbery, as is the man she loves and waits for.
Her daily life is lled with grime and squalor, and while she
struggles to create something better Joy inevitably chooses the
wrong options. The only positive thing in her life is Johnny
much like the cow and calf, they have each other. Joys nal
lyrical lines in Dunns novel highlight societys view of her:

To think when I was a kid I planned to conquer the world

and if anyone saw me now theyd say, Shes had a rough
night, poor cow. 39

96
4 Toiling the Fields and a
Cattle Complex

Having looked at the cultural history of the bull and the cow,
there is one more version of Bos which has left a permanent
mark on our society, and continues to do so today in developing
countries. The ox, a castrated male, was not invented until
man began to take a second look at the aurochs they had
domesticated, to see if they could be of more use while they
were alive, rather than dead. By inventing the plough and the
ox-cart in about 3200 bc, early Mesopotamians could harness
the strength of their newly tamed cattle. The other innovation
was the regular milking of the cow, possibly at a similar time.
These newly exploited qualities of cattle led to the formation
of two distinct societies and subsistence systems: the plough-
using agriculturalists, who cultivated marginal soils and built
permanent homes, and the pastoralists, who relied on milk to
provide a continuous flow of food without having to slaughter
their stock (best illustrated in past and present Africa).1

the plough and the ox

Before the plough was invented Neolithic agriculturalists used
digging sticks and hoes to cultivate soils. But these implements
were not ploughs as we know them today, but rather scratch tools
or scrapers. Growing populations found themselves having to

97
Han Huang, Wu cultivate more marginal soils, which required tremendous work;
niu tu (The Five
Oxen), Tang
animal power was needed and cattle were the obvious candidates.
period, ink and The bull had long played a part in fertility rites, where he
colour on silk.
ploughed a ceremonial furrow or trampled grain into cultivated
land. But his temperament was problematic; he was too wilful
and downright dangerous to have in an open eld for long
periods. A more submissive animal was needed, so the bulls
were castrated to calm them.
The hormonal transformation of the bull to ox is explained
by Spanish veterinary surgeon, Sanz Egana:

castration causes profound cellular changes of the pituitary

gland with an influence on psychological activity; castration
is practised on many animals precisely in order to make
them more manageable; the ox displays a calm, tranquil
and denitely peaceful temperament, lacking in aggressive-
ness, with slow reactions, submissive and easily scared.2

98
 This two-handled
plough, with a
sowing funnel, was
attached directly
to the oxs horns,
which were a
symbol of fertility
southern
Mesopotamia,
c. 2300 bc.

The ox, with all the strength of the bull, but with a docile tem-
perament, could be trained to pull the plough and also ox-carts,
which made transportation of bulky goods easier and quicker.
Although there is plenty of pictorial evidence for the use of
oxen, there is little written evidence to explain how the oxen
were trained to the yoke. The early Greek poet Hesiod (c. 700
bc) writes in his poem Works and Days that acquiring oxen is
the rst job for a young farmer, but there is no mention of
their training, only instructions for building the plough. Hesiod
states that the ideal horn-curved oxen are nine-year-old males,

. . . for their strength

will be undiminished
and they in full maturity, at their best to work with,
for such a pair will not ght as they drive
the furrow, and shatter
the plow, thus leaving all the work done
gone for nothing.3

He adds that the most auspicious day to yoke oxen is the

twenty-seventh of the month.4 Later, Virgil the cattle-farmers
son describes in his poem on the art of agriculture, The Georgics,

99
the professional way of training oxen starting from when they
are calves:

Turn loose the other calves to graze as they will;

But begin at once the training of those you keep
To work the land; set them on the right road early
While youth still makes them amenable, ready to learn.
Bind a circlet of withy loose around their necks
And when they are used to this separate constraint,
Join them to one another by tying their collars,
Matching like to like, and make them walk in pairs.
First let them practise pulling unloaded wagons,
Their light tread scarcely marking the dusty ground,
Then weigh the beechen axle till it creaks and strains
As they haul the bronze shaft and the wheels ride forward.
You may feed them on grass and the willows slender leaves
And marshy sedge, but while they are still unbroken
Gather corn in the blade for them. 5

Reatinus Varro adds that if buying-in cattle they should be

unbroken, aged between three and four years old, and prefer-
ably black in colour with wide black horns, broad foreheads,
flat noses, broad chests and well furnished quarters.6
As with the training of oxen, humans also learnt with
experience how to harness the most power from them. Early
civilizations never really efciently exploited their beasts.
Generally, the ropes, which were attached to the plough, were
tied directly to the oxens horns, or to a bar attached to the
horns the horns were thought to contain the magical fertiliz-
ing powers of the lunar gods and goddesses. Around 3000 bc
the advent of yokes, which oxen wore around their necks,
allowed them to exert far greater draught to pull the plough or

100
carts, by using their whole body rather than just their horns.
Different breeds of oxen were also reared to cope with dif-
ferent soil qualities and environments, and those of Italy, as
described in Columellas De Re Rustica (On Agriculture),
spread with the Romans throughout their empire:

Campania generally produces small, white oxen, which

are, however, well suited for their work and for the culti-
vation of their native soil. Umbria breeds huge white
oxen, but it also produces red oxen, esteemed not less for
their spirit than for their bodily strength. Etruria and
Latium breed oxen which are thick-set but powerful as
workers. The oxen bred in the Apennines are very tough
and able to endure every kind of hardship but not comely
to look upon.7

These oxen were employed throughout the year, rather than

just during the sowing and harvest seasons, just as oxen are
used today on subsistence farming systems. They are used for
goods haulage, water-raising, logging, milling and road build-
ing and, in most cases, it would not be economically sound for
India or African countries to replace their working oxen with
mechanized farming.

subsistence farming: africa

Although oxen were used in Egypt to thresh cereals, pull
ploughs and as pack animals, before the colonial period it was
unusual to use oxen in the rest of Africa the Europeans brought
their technology with them.8 From the seventeenth to the nine-
teenth centuries, ox carts were introduced to the ports and
islands of Africa. In South Africa indigenous cattle were traded

101
Medieval oxen trained to the plough in England: from The Luttrell Psalter, c. 1340.
 Blinkered ox put
to work raising
water in Egypt,
c. 1908.

for Dutch goods. The settlers used the cattle to pull carts, laden
with goods and materials, to and from the ships to the settle-
ments. Later, the semi-nomadic Dutch settlers, the trekboers,
travelled in four-wheeled kakebeen wagons pulled by at least ten
Afrikaner oxen into the hinterland of the Cape and, before the
development of the railways, all traders, miners, missionaries,
administrative and military authorities trekking through Africa
used ox-drawn wagons.
From 1900 to 1960, the colonial authorities introduced ox
labour into many sub-Saharan countries, through pilot farm
projects and training sessions for small-scale farmers. But suc-
cess was localized to areas where crops for export were grown,
and where the services of animal health care, nancial aid and
training were also available.
After gaining independence, most sub-Saharan states tried
to tractorize their cultivations but, because of high oil prices
and hire programmes failing, a revival of ox labour was seen

103
A screenshot from
the film The Big
Trail (1930) shows
oxen pulling the
pioneers wagons
on the Oregon
Trail in the 1840s;
similar to the
transport used by
the trekboers as
they explored the
Cape from the
1690s onwards.

Oxen employed to
thresh the harvest
in Palestine,
c. 1900. Notice the
oxen are muzzled
to prevent them
eating the fruits
of their labour.
 A reconstructed
terracotta model of
an ancient ox-cart
pulled by two
zebu oxen, found
in Mohenjo-daro.
Its design is
surprisingly similar
to the carts found
in India and
Pakistan today.

during the 1970s and 1980s via donor-supported development

projects.
Today in Africa, as in medieval Europe, oxen and imple-
ments are shared between families, and the richer landowners
distribute credit and employment to poorer neighbours. Cows
are also increasingly taking the place of oxen, particularly in
areas where oxen are in short supply, or where feed resources
are stretched, making double cattle ownership impossible.
Oxen are also still widely used in India and Nepal. In these
countries, where the cow is a sacred animal, and the bull is con-
sidered holy due to its association with Shiva, the zebu oxen
assumes the role of the beast of burden and pulls the plough.
This has been the case for millennia: rather spacious thorough-
fares in the ancient Indus town at Mohenjo-daro suggest ox-
carts were used, and crude terracotta models of bullock carts
have been found there, dating back to about 2400 bc.

105
Ploughing a paddy hard yet phlegmatic worker
field with oxen,
Bali, Indonesia. Compared with the bull and the cow, the ox has not inspired
outpourings of emotion or adulation. Being relatively androgy-
nous, he is rather difcult to categorize. He is admired for his
strength and his work ethic the plain beast relentlessly toiling
in the elds for human benet. With his own steady gait he has
plodded through history.
Accompanying the oxen is the peasant they work so closely
together that their behaviours became similar. This idea can be
seen in the later writings of John Lockwood Kipling (18371911),
the father of Rudyard, who describes the consequence of Indians
working with oxen:

The lagging, measured step may compel the mind to its

cadence, and the anodyne of monotony may soothe and

106
 still the temper . . . it is certain that the Indian cultivator is
very like the ox . . . He is patient, and bears all that drought,
flood, storm and murrain can do with the same equanimi-
ty with which the ox bears blows. When the oxen chew the
cud and their masters take their nooning, the jaws of man
and beast move in exactly the same manner.9

The work ethic of oxen puts them into a different league to

other domestic animals. Their plodding nature makes them
ideal draught animals in difcult conditions, particularly when
breaking up soil full of tree and bush roots. For example, the
New England colonists used oxen in preference to horses, because
whereas the oxen would pull steadily when they met resistance
in the soil, horses stand still, or with a start break the harness
into pieces.10
In the Domesday Book of 1086, the non-working cows and
bulls were rarely mentioned, compared with the plough-oxen.11
The unit of measurement used in the Domesday Book was the
hide, usually 120 acres, which was the amount of land that could
be ploughed by a team of eight oxen in a year.12 The Bestiaries
(medieval illustrated descriptions of various animals) portrayed
the ox as a strong beast that can predict the weather, this
mystic ability being usually attributed to cattle in general, as
they are said to lie down when rain is approaching.13
Similarly, Aesop uses the distinction of the heifer and the ox
in one of his fables to moralize about the dangers which lie in
wait for the idle. A heifer expresses her sympathy to an ox she
spies at work in the elds. But, at that moment, a religious pro-
cession passes by and the ox is unyoked, but the heifer is seized
by men who prepare her for sacrice. At this sight, the ox smiles
to himself and says: Oh, heifer, that is why you have no work to
do for you are bred to be sacriced.14

107
 The ox was so useful to man that he was never killed for meat
until he had nished his working life. Anyone who did kill an ox
paid a heavy penalty (see chapter One). The Greeks even played
out a ritual called the bouphonia or the ox-murder, which
seemed to indicate the guilt they felt about sacricing an ox; even
if it was for Zeus, the god of sky and rain.
During the ritual, as described by James Frazer,15 several oxen
were let into a room with an altar, on which offerings had been
placed the rst ox to eat these offerings thereby volunteered
itself for sacrice. After the ox was killed, its slayer was considered
guilty of a crime and a trial was held to establish responsibility.
All those involved in the ceremony were accused, but the actual
killer had, by this time, fled. Finally, the knife that slashed the oxs
throat was accused; because it could not defend itself. As its pun-
ishment it is thrown into the sea, and the hide of the ox is stuffed
and yoked to a plough, to symbolize the oxs regeneration.
But despite all their hard work, and probably because of all
their hard work, the ox is often described in various desultory
ways. It seems that man sometimes pushed the gentle ox to
the boundaries of its patience, as seen in the writings of the
travel guru of the nineteenth century Sir Francis Galton
(18221911). He describes oxen as coarse, gross, and phleg-
matic beasts,16 whose behaviour switches between sulky and
ferocious.17 This behaviour can probably be excused when one
considers that Galton used oxen as pack animals and mounts,
and insists that the way to make a stubborn ox stand up was to
set about twisting or biting his tail . . . or making a blaze with
grass and a few sticks under his nostrils. The stubbornness of a
half-broken ox, he adds, is sometimes beyond conception.18
Galton also provides an insight into the extreme usefulness of
the oxen for the foreign explorer. Amongst their repertoire, they
acted as a life-saver in the desert, where one could slice off a piece

108
 61 Fully loaded
with firewood,
this ox looks rather
disgruntled.
Korea, c. 1904.

of flesh from the live ox, patch up the wound and continue on
(the Abyssinians were seen doing this by the explorer James
Bruce in 1769), or as a shield for a sportsman while stalking
prey. Apparently the ox is

said to enter into the spirit of the thing; and to show won-
derful craft, walking round and round the object [the prey]
in narrowing circles, and stopping to graze unconcernedly,
on witnessing the least sign of alarm. Oxen are taught to
obey a touch on the horn: the common but cruel way of
training them is to hammer and batter the horns for

109
 hours together, and on many days successively: they then
become inflamed at the root and are highly sensitive.19

Here, briefly, we see evidence of the unpleasant and, some-

times, overtly cruel physical training which oxen have been
subjected to. But whereas the ox has been moulded by humans
into submission, the cow has been able to retain much of her
dignity as humans have had to resort to subterfuge and guile
in order to get milk from her, as seen in the second society
of interest in this chapter: the pastoralists, particularly those
of Africa.

milking and african pastoralists

Pasturalists adopt a transhumance lifestyle that involves mov-
ing their livestock cattle in this case between seasonal graz-
ing areas throughout the year. The cattle are able to graze and
digest the scant vegetation on marginal lands and, in turn, con-
vert it into a protein source for humans. This is one of few ways
to eke out an existence on land that receives little rainfall.
The main foodstuffs for African pastoralists are cows milk
and blood. The latter is relatively easy to collect from cattle. In
Kenya and Tanzania, the Maasai shoot an arrow or dart at close
range into the cows jugular vein, then collect the spilled blood
in a gourd. The blood is then either boiled to give a meat
flavouring to porridge, or left to stand until it coagulates, then
roasted in the embers of a re or mixed with milk for a protein-
rich meal. The cows wound is not fatal and is patched up after-
wards with clay and grasses. Ancient civilizations soon realized
the main problems with cows milk in the human diet: getting
milk from the cow in the rst place, and then adapting physio-
logically to be able to digest the lactose in raw milk.

110
 Firstly, to get as much milk for themselves as possible they
had to keep the calves away from their mothers during the day
so they could not suckle all the supply (which compared to
modern Western dairy cows, was meagre anyway). Then they
had to collect the milk. This might seem simple, but the cow
will only let down her milk if a calf is present. In modern dairy
milking parlours, where the calf is absent, the substitute stimulus
for let down is quiet handling, feeding and cleaning of the teats
before attaching the milking clusters.
Pastoral peoples used, and still use, one particular method
to trick cows into milking if there is no calf present; particular-
ly if her calf has died. They will rst try to deceive the cow that
her calf is near her. This can be achieved by draping the dead
calf s skin, scented with the calf s urine, over a persons back or
an object, such as a pumpkin, or by stufng the skin with straw.
Once the cow begins to lick the fake calf she will usually let
down her milk. But if not, her hind legs are tied together (to
stop her kicking) and then air is blown, using a special tube,
into her vagina or rectum. This is done in short bursts until the
The milking of
a cow, in the
absence of a calf,
often requires
both teamwork
and deception
to encourage her
to let go of her
milk (here, the
Khoikhoi of South
Africa).

111
vagina remains fully distended with air. This induces her to
stand still and let down her milk.
Having collected the milk, early humans would have then
realized that their digestive systems were not set up to absorb
the milk-sugar, lactose, which is present in raw cows milk. They
would have experienced symptoms that would probably have
put them off drinking the milk they had worked so hard to collect
diarrhoea, bloating, flatulence and stomach cramps.
But over time, with persistent drinking of raw milk, their
digestive system adapted and lactose tolerance evolved in
milk-drinking cultures. Pastoralists, unlike many Mediterranean
peoples and the Chinese, have the ability to drink raw milk with-
out having to turn it into butter or cheese.

cattle: the basis of society

Pastoralists do not just use cattle as a source of sustenance, as
seen in the travel writings of Georg Schweinfurth, who travelled
in 1868 from Khartoum to Fashoda. He describes, in derogatory
terms, the traditional Shilluk herdsmen whom he encountered
on route:

The men were quite naked, their lean, bony bodies plas-
tered with the ashes . . . of cow dung, [to protect against
biting insects] which gave their skins a rust-red tint . . .
They wore their hair in fantastic shapes which were
maintained by the repeated application of clay, gum, cow
urine and dung. In consequence they smelled abom-
inably; and since they also used cow urine for washing
their milk vessels to compensate for the lack of salt, the
strangers did not relish drinking with them.20

112
 The Surma
(the collective
name of three
pastoralist peoples
in Ethiopia) collect
blood from their
cows, like the
Maasai.

Yet there is a far deeper relationship between the African

pastoralists and their cattle that goes way beyond the products
of the cow. Cattle are the moveable wealth of the pastoralists
and their ancestral heritage and, as such, they are treated with
care and compassion. The number of cattle owned by a family,
regardless of their quality, determines the familys size and their

113
Dinka village,
southern Sudan,
1873, from
G. Schweinfurth,
The Heart of Africa.
Note the men on
the left burning
cattle dung to
ward off biting
insects and that
each animal is
tethered by a
leather collar to
its own wooden
peg.

social standing and/or political power in the community.

Therefore, cattle accumulation is the primary goal of the pastoral-
ists and this, traditionally, involves cattle-raiding and blood-
shed between neighbouring tribes.
The Nuer of East Africa have a myth which explains why
more people have died for the sake of a cow than any other
cause: Man slew the mother of Cow and Buffalo. Buffalo said she
would avenge her mother by attacking and killing man in the
bush, while Cow said that she would remain living with man.
However, she would avenge her mother by causing endless dis-
putes about debts, bride-wealth and adultery, which would lead
to ghting and deaths amongst the people.21
Inevitably, being this reliant on cattle, disaster can easily befall
families in times of drought and cattle disease: the pastoralists
existence is a precarious one. But although cattle acquisition is all-
important, even the purist pastoralists will trade or exchange their
cattle with neighbouring tribes for millet, sorghum or maize dur-
ing times of famine and drought, and they will sell off surplus cat-
tle for cash to pay for school fees or taxes, or to buy other livestock.

114
 The anthropologist Melville Herskovits (18951963)
described the culture of the East African pastoralists as being
dictated by the Cattle Complex. This manifests itself in the
peoples strong attachment to their cattle, their love for, and
identication with the animals, and a dislike of killing them,
except in a ritual context.22 Although the Eastern tribes were
singled out for particular attention, it seems as though the same
complex can be identied throughout Africa.

east african pastoralists: cattle as ancestors

The ownership of cattle passes through the paternal side of
the family. Therefore, although children are gradually intro-
duced through play then labour tasks to the families cattle, it
is the males who inherit. Throughout their lives they take on
more and more responsibility for the cattle and their manage-
ment, while the girls are generally given milking rights over
certain cows.
During their cattle education, the children will learn how to
describe the visual appearance of each cow in their herd. The
Nuer mainly identify cattle based on their colour(s) and how
these colours are distributed on the body. They recognize ten
principal colours, and mixes of white and another colour can be
labelled in twelve different patterns, which leads to several
hundred colour permutations.
It is during their initiation that pastoralist boys symbolically
begin to take over ownership of their fathers cattle. The father
presents his son with an ox that becomes his personal animal.
This ox shapes the sons identity as he takes on a name that is
linked to either the oxs coat colour and pattern, its horn shape
and size, or other attributes. He will chant this ox-name as he
dances before potential brides or when he takes part in sports

115
Pastoralist children
interact with cattle
through play and
work.
or duels and, in the past, he would have shouted the name as he Ethiopians killing
a special cow for
hurled his spear at enemies or game.23 ritual purposes or
Apart from identifying with the ox, the son will also com- a special feast; from
an 18th-century
pose an ox-song which praises his beast. This is typical of manuscript.
pastoralist tribes, where the ownership of cattle is celebrated in
song and dance. Included in these songs are references to the
cattles ancestors, and even the places where cattle graze. Cattle
are represented in the dances by raised arms which resemble
the large-horned animals, and in certain cases, a man will crouch
on all fours, scraping his feet to raise dust, while a woman
dances around him keeping a hand on his head to control
him.24 These dances and songs celebrate the cattle them-
selves, but pastoralists are also celebrating their ancestors,
nature spirits or high gods: an instance of cowmania but not
cowdolatry.25
Cattle act as a vehicle for contacting ghosts and spirits
because of their ownership by family lineages. The Nuer rub ash
along the back of a cow or ox to get in touch with the spirit or
ghost associated with it. Another way of communicating with,
honouring or pleasing the ancestors and spirits is through

117
the sacrice of an oxen or barren cow (although mortuary
rights require a fertile cow). The ritual of sacrifice also plays an
important role in the ceremonies.26
When a Maasai child is born, it is immediately washed in
cow-dung and the father offers a cow as sacrice. The mother
takes tail hairs from her special cow (which is given to her by
her father on her marriage) and makes a necklace charm, which
protects the child from evil and brings good luck.27 On death,
most pastoralist communities will slaughter a special cow from
the bereaved familys herd. They wrap the deceaseds body in
cow-hide before burial and then partake of a funeral feast, which
includes this special cow.
According to Frazer, each Dinka family possesses a sacred
cow. When the country is threatened with war, famine, or any
other calamity, the chiefs of the village order a particular family
to surrender their sacred cow to serve as a scapegoat. The cow is
driven by the women of the village (an unnatural act, as herding
is done by men) to the river and across to the other bank. Here
it is left to wander in the wilds and fall prey to ravening beasts.
The women return to the village without looking back at the
cow; if they do, they believe the ceremony will be ineffectual.28
The ritual killing of a white bull marks the passing of the
young Maasai warriors into adulthood, during a ceremony held
every ve to ten years. The bull is led to a prepared area of
ground and fed a numbing mix of alcoholic mead and narcotic
leaves, until it becomes drowsy. Then, nally, its nostrils are
stuffed with leaves and it slumps to the ground, without a hint
of pain. The warriors will drink the bulls blood, mixed with
mead and milk, and will be fed a piece of the cooked flesh,
which they themselves cannot touch with their hands. Finally,
each warrior is given a ring for his nger made from the
sacriced bulls hide.29

118
moveable wealth Bull-leaping by the
Hamar people of
The next rite of passage for males is to get married. But this can the Omo Valley,
only happen once the family has accumulated enough cattle. Ethiopia. Young
men must
The traditional form of marriage arrangement is the payment successfully cross
of bride-wealth to a girls family in the form of cows. Cattle are the backs of the
lined up cattle four
in constant circulation between families, and each family will times to complete
experience times of prosperity as their daughters marry, and their initiation,
allowing them to
times of relative poverty when their sons marry. The number of marry, to start their
cattle for bride-wealth is negotiated between the families, and own cattle herd
and vote on tribal
they are often paid in instalments. In most cases, the quantity issues.
of the cattle is more important than their quality.
Many groups justify the practice of exchanging girls for
cattle by claiming that the wealth received compensates them
for the time and trouble taken to raise a daughter a thank-you,
in effect, from the ancs family for bringing up their future
daughter-in-law. Others view bride-wealth as compensation for

119
the loss of a daughters economic services, or as payment for the
children she adds to her new family.
However, the cattle handed over to the girls family cannot
be disposed of. If their daughter fails to bear children, has an
affair outside of marriage or divorces, the father must return
the bride-wealth. Therefore cattle determine the size of a family,
as the more cattle owned the more wives can be bought, and
the more children will be produced to help with the care of the
cattle. On the other hand, a wealthy patriarch might own lots of
cattle but he will not be seen as a man of importance and status
unless he has extensive cattle-related social relations. For example,
in Botswana the loaning of cattle is known as mahisa. There is
no time restriction on the loan, but the owners generally get the
cows calves, while the cow can be used by the holder for milking
and draught work. By loaning out cattle, the owner is minimizing
the risks to his stock and in an emergency, such as theft or dis-
ease, he can call the animals back in.30
The ownership of cattle creates a division between rich and
poor families; just as it did back in ad 1200 in the state of Great
Zimbabwe. Here, the wealthy cattle owners lived on the hilltops
within walls, which also enclosed their cattle kraals. The poor
lived in the valleys, and herded the cattle during the day.
Another system of extreme inequality, whose history is rooted
in cattle ownership, has resulted in inter-ethnic bloodshed in
post-independent Rwanda. In the 1880s a military aristocracy
of pastoralists developed in Rwanda where the Hutu cultivators
had their chiefdoms inltrated by Tutsi pastoralists. The minor-
ity Tutsi controlled the cattle and they distributed them to the
majority Hutu farming families in return for their allegiance.
The Tutsi king had the monopoly on land, cattle and royal pre-
rogatives the cattle were considered as evidence of, and as an
emblem of, power, wealth and grace.

120
 The Cattle of Kings
or Ankole cattle,
belonging to the
Tutsi people,
were highly prized
as status symbols
and played an
important
ceremonial role.

Under colonial rule, rst by the Germans then by the

Belgians, more rigid denitions of ethnicity were imposed. In
the 1920s the Belgians introduced a system of identity cards
specifying the tribe to which the holder belonged. A simple
formula was applied to borderline cases: those with ten cows
or more were Tutsi; those with fewer were Hutu.31 This ethnic
obsession grew to violent proportions when the long-oppressed

121
 majority Hutu nally took political control at independence in
1962 and retaliated against the Tutsis past socio-economic
dominance, culminating in the Rwandan genocide of April 6 to
17 July 1994 when over a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were
killed by extremist Hutu military groups.

no cattle = no society
Disputes over cattle have been, and still are, responsible for
A young Afar man much misery and bloodshed in Africa, particularly between
from Ethiopia
returns to camp the tribes living in north-west Kenya, north-east Uganda and
after grazing his
cattle in the bush
southern Sudan: Cattle bring us to our enemies is a saying
all day. He wears of the Turkana tribe,32 while the Nuer have a myth that the
a knife for pro-
tection against
Dinka once obtained a cow by deceit, which legitimizes the
cattle raiders. Nuers raiding of Dinka cattle.

122
 There are several reasons behind the need to raid, counter- Tanzanians herding
cattle into Lake
raid and engage in outright warfare over cattle. One traditional Victoria for their
reason is that young men regard cattle raiding as a rite of pas- daily drink and a
cooling bath.
sage and as a way to acquire bride-wealth. One of the main roles
of the initiated Maasai man is to be a warrior and herdsman.
This means that they will defend their grazing land and cattle
from raiding neighbours, and also undertake raids to gain cat-
tle and expand their grazing. Their justication for aggressive
raiding is also held in myth: their Rain god Ngai granted all cat-
tle to them for safe keeping when the Earth and the Sky split.
Whatever the reason or justication, cattle raids have dis-
rupted the lives of African tribes for centuries, but they are now
more deadly thanks to the introduction of guns in the 1970s.
The high mortality of both cattle and humans, and the closure
of trade and medical supply routes, had led to crops being neg-

123
Piles of cattle lected, subsequent food shortages, disease outbreaks and fur-
carcasses in Niger,
2005: cattle died
ther cattle losses.33
because of poor Apart from cattle raiding, there are many other natural and
fodder crops due
to drought and
man-made disasters which have wiped out cattle populations.
locusts, threaten- Of particular note are the rinderpest (cattle plague) epidemics
ing the livelihoods
of tribes such as of 188090, bought to Africa by the European colonists.
the Tuareg and Rinderpest spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa, often killing
Fulani.
90 per cent of cattle.34 There were severe repercussions for the
pastoralists who depended on cattle, not only for their tradi-
tional ancestral worship and bride-wealth, but also their exis-
tence: many pastoralists starved.35
Rinderpest was not the only disaster to hit Africa in the nine-
teenth century: there was also smallpox, brought in from Europe,
a plague of jigger flies, the wars of pacication and severe

124
droughts. The combined effect of these calamities was the oblit-
eration of stock, harvest failures and population collapse. All of
these factors resulted in bush regeneration, which produced ideal
living conditions for the return and spread of the tsetse fly.
The tsetse fly is the faunal nemesis of cattle in Africa. This
rather innocuous-looking fly halted the progress of cattle
through the West African forest zone in the middle of the sec-
ond millennium bc for about two thousand years. The tsetse
sucks the cows blood and while feeding can transmit a minute
blood-parasite to its host. This parasite triggers the fatal disease
known as nagana or cattle sickness, which ultimately causes
inflammation of the brain. It was not until ad 1200, when
some cattle (the Ndama breed and the dwarf Shorthorn) even-
tually acquired immunity to the parasite that cattle nally
reached South Africa.36
It was, therefore, disastrous for the pastoralists when the
tsetse fly returned due to bush regeneration. It was believed in
the late 1800s that game animals acted as vectors for nagana
and also the human form of the disease the equally deadly
sleeping sickness or trypanosomiasis.
Although black Africans were succumbing to the latter, it
was not until the Europeans cattle came down with nagana that
the colonists began to investigate the disease and what action
they should take. In 1911 a commission led by Sir David Bruce
concluded, arguably wrongly, that all large game, particularly
antelope, should be culled to stop the spread of tsetse. From the
1920s through to the 1960s this was done, albeit in a rather
indiscriminate way.
It was only in Southern Rhodesia, where there were large
and influential settlements of white farmers whose cattle were
threatened, that the culling policy appeared to succeed. From
1948 to 1951 the 987 African hunters employed managed to kill

125
102,025 head of game to the rage of the preservationists who
battled against the extermination.37
Cattle, it seems, have caused all kinds of trouble for Africans
and African wildlife. But whatever the cause of cattle death it is
the reliance on cattle which puts pastoral societies in most
peril, wherever they are on the globe. For example, the nomadic
herders of Inner Mongolia, China, were close to starvation
during the harsh winters of 1999/2000 and 2000/2001, when
the dzud occurred. This literally means lack of grazing, but is
also translated as starvation due to fodder shortage the
cattle cannot reach the grass which is sheathed in a lm of ice.
The Red Cross estimated that the 2000/2001 dzud killed
220,000 cattle and caused the deaths of nearly 40 people, as
they were unable to trade their cattle for food and fodder in
the towns.38

126
5 Cattle Stars and Romantic
Associations

In total contrast to the pastoralists who still struggle to rely on the

live cow for their livelihood, Western civilizations have reverted
to being reliant mainly on the dead cow for meat and leather.
While the pastoralists are still able to retain their relationships
with cattle, Europe and North America have pushed cattle to the
fringes of society. But in the process of severing the intimate bond
with cattle, North America built a whole culture based around
the Texan Longhorn, which still retains its romantic associations,
and Britain became the birthplace of selective cattle breeding.
Even though these cultural legacies serve to remind us of
the importance of the dead cow to Western societies, they do at
least reserve cattle a place in our cultural histories.

britain: beef cattle

During the cows millennia of servitude to British farmers, and
the public, they were never glamorized or celebrated in public
life or culture before the eighteenth century. In medieval and
early modern England, cattle lived alongside the rural popula-
tions, providing milk, labour and eventually meat, when they
were too old or exhausted to be of use.
By the beginning of the 1500s enclosure of land enabled
dairying and beef fattening to become fledgling industries, and

127
Medieval British those who could afford the luxury of meat ideally chose beef. In
cattle were small
and provided
fact, by the seventeenth century the English were renowned as
tough beef, beef-eaters. In his journals of 1698 the French traveller Henri
because they were
not slaughtered
Misson reported that
until they were
old and exhausted.
From Queen Marys
it is common Practice, even among People of good
Psalter. Substance, to have a huge Piece of Roast-Beef on Sundays,
of which they stuff till they can swallow no more, and eat
the rest cold, without any other Victuals, the other six
Days of the Week.1

To meet the demand for beef, particularly in London which

experienced expotential population growth during the 1700s,
drovers brought large herds of Scottish and Welsh cattle and
cattle from northern England southwards on foot. These cattle,
having lost weight on the journey, would need to be fattened up
by farmers in the Midlands, East Anglia, the Home Counties

128
 Highland cattle
being driven by
drovers down
to the southern
markets, a sketch
by James Howe,
sketch, c. 1830.

and the coastal marshes from Hampshire to Kent before they

were sold at Londons great Smitheld cattle market.
In 1732, 76,210 cattle passed through Smitheld market.2 At
this time the British cattle population was a rag-bag of assorted
local types, rather than breeds as we know today. Each county,
and almost each valley in those counties, had produced cattle
ideally adapted to local conditions and requirements. The
breeder and farmer George Culley described in his Observations
on Livestock (1786) the kind of cattle most prized: large, long-

Smithfield Market,
London, 1811: the
destination of
many British beef
cattle.

129
Before improve-
ment: British cattle
reproduced by
James Lambert in
his Countrymans
Treasure, 1683.

bodied, big-boned, coarse, gummy, flat-sided . . . and often

lyery or black-fleshed.3 The problem was that there was just not
enough meat on these animals to feed the growing, more afflu-
ent population; neither was there enough fat on them to pro-
duce the necessary quantities of tallow, which was used to light
urban homes. The only way to meet demand was to improve the
quality of the national herd, which had to begin with superior
breeding animals.
These cattle had to grow quickly, on the least amount of
food, and produce a carcass that contained as much usable flesh
and fat as possible. And these qualities they had to pass on to
their offspring.
It was a task for the professional breeders, led by the
Leicestershire tenant farmer Robert Bakewell, affectionately
known as the father of animal breeding. From the 1750s,
Bakewell had taken traditional white-backed, long-horned ani-
mals and selectively in-bred for characteristics he required all
is useless that is not beef was one of his sayings.4 He demon-
strated that animals of close relationship could be mated, and if
rigid culling was practiced, desirable characteristics could be
xed much more rapidly than by mating unrelated animals.
By the 1780s, Bakewell had created the Improved Longhorn
or New Leicester cattle breed, which according to Culley was

130
 . . . clean-boned, round, short-carcassed, kindly-looking The Fat Long-
Horned Ox, bred
and inclined to be fat; and it is a fact, that these will both at Dishley Farm
eat less food in proportion, and make themselves sooner by Honeyborn,
successor of
fat than the others . . .5 Robert Bakewell:
etching by George
Garrard, an artist
Bakewells foundation bulls were then hired out to ordinary who made small
farmers so they also could improve their herds. Once the basics plaster models
of the main cattle
of selective breeding were established, it was not long before the breeds, which
breeding of cattle became a fashionable hobby among aristo- were later dis-
played in Londons
cratic landowners. They had the time, space and money to lavish Natural History
upon their cattle. Museum.

The fact that men of the highest rank and fortune had
become interested in rural concerns was nationally advanta-
geous and conducive to the happiness of thousands, wrote the
Revd Arthur Young in his General View of the Agriculture of the
County of Sussex (1813). He added that as a consequence of
Bakewells extraordinary exertions, the whole country was
electried with a desire to improve the genetic merit of cattle.6
But, not everyone was as enthusiastic as Young. Some were
concerned that the purity of the breeds would be compromised,
and others voiced concerns that breeders would care more

131
Revolution or
Johnny Bull in
France, 1789,
etching.

about the appearance of their cattle, over the animals economic

performance and productivity.

patriotic beef
The wealthy landowners claimed they were breeding improved
cattle so that England could be self-sufcient in beef it was
their patriotic duty. Beef, as previously mentioned, was a luxury
food that the English were very fond of. But in a time when
England was threatened with foreign invasion and, in turn, with
foreign attitudes and ideals, the English particularly took beef
to their hearts. Beef came to have social and cultural connota-
tions; it became a patriotic symbol.7
Ironically, although the word beef comes from the Old
French boef or ox, the main target of English beef patriotism were
the French, who were threatening to invade Britain during the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (17921815).

132
 It was a popular belief that the red meat fed to the British
forces (salted beef was a staple) produced strong ghters, who
could easily defeat puny, snivelling Frenchmen fed on
Continental fare. The rst stanza of the patriotic ballad The
Roast Beef of Old England (originally written by Henry Fielding,
but reworked and adapted many times) makes reference to this
belief:

When mighty roast beef was the Englishmans food,

It ennobled our hears, and enriched our blood,
Our soldiers were brave,
Our courtiers were good
Oh the roast beef of England
And old Englands roast beef!

Beef was also linked with the honest and hard-working yeo-
man class of English society, through the allegorical character of
John Bull. He was employed by the political satirists of the day
to represent the British people who were at the mercy of those
abroad, as well as their own government. John Bull was often
portrayed gorging himself on roast beef and those other quint-
essential British foods plum pudding and ale.

cattle stars
So with the pride of Britain at stake, the wealthy landowners set
about changing the make-up of the national herd and creating
cattle celebrities. Bakewells Longhorns were soon superseded
by the dual-purpose (providing milk and meat), roan-coloured
Shorthorns, which evolved from the Teeswater and Durham
cattle. The latter were improved by the farming Colling brothers,
Robert and Charles. They established their herd in 1783 with

133
The famous four cows Duchess, Cherry, Strawberry, and Old Favourite
Durham Ox,
born in 1796, was
and a bull called Hubback.8
a much-travelled One of the herds offspring was the super-sized superstar
animal, and his
portrait adorned
The Durham Ox, who toured throughout England and
many drawing- Scotland for over six years in a specially designed carriage,
room walls. He
had three owners; pulled by four or six horses. He was advertised as standing 5 ft
the last, Mr John 6 inches tall and weighing 3,210 lbs (1456 kg). He, and another
Day, was offered
2,000 for him Colling-reared monster, The White Heifer Who Traveled, did
in 1801: the offer much for the advertising of the newly founded breed. So much
was refused.
so, that when the Collings herd of Shorthorns were nally dis-
persed in 1810, the cattle fetched outrageously high prices. The
best bull, Comet, was the rst bull ever to fetch 1,000 guineas,
while the best cow, Lily, fetched 410 guineas.
Many other breeds were improved and championed by cer-
tain families, such as Francis Quartly and his family, who worked
on the Devon draught and beef animals. By the end of the nine-
teenth century, the Devon was second only in number to the
Shorthorn. The breed was further improved by Thomas Coke
(17541842) at his estate at Holkham in Norfolk: his Devons were
considered to have reached breed perfection.

134
 The improvers of each breed clubbed together to form breed
societies. Their job was to promote the breed and to register the
births and ancestry of all pedigree cattle to maintain the purity,
and foster the improvement, of the breed. Several of the societies
enjoyed royal patronage, such as the Hereford Herd Book Society,
whose patron from 1878 was Queen Victoria.
The different breed societies worked together under the
umbrella of local and national agricultural societies, of which
there were at least 32 by 1803. These were established to promote
the most protable cattle and sheep breeds to the ordinary
farmers. Each society held an annual show, but the rst to do this
was the Smitheld Club in London, which organized a Christmas
exhibition in 1799. This event, known as the Smitheld Club
Cattle Show, was the wider farming publics rst glimpse of the
new breed improvements. For the breeders themselves, it was
an opportunity to establish quality standards and compare each
others breeding achievements. The event became a longstand-
ing highlight of the London social calendar, being visited by the
nobility and the royal family, but was also the highlight of the
ordinary farmers year.
Until the mid-1800s the show cattle were cruelly fattened
to gargantuan sizes, such as the Great Herefordshire Ox, who
stood at 6 ft 4 inches high, was 10 ft round and weighed 5,140
lbs (2,331 kg). Butchers queued up at the end of Smitheld
Shows to buy the carcasses of the prize-winning cattle. The
public would then gawp at the extremely fatty cuts displayed in
the butchers windows, and wealthy customers would pay over
the odds to buy the meat. They could then impress their guests
at Christmas by giving the show name of the roast beef set
before them.
However, it can only be guessed what response the follow-
ing extract from the Quarterly Review of Agriculture (18356)

135
Inspecting the
humungous cattle
at The Smithfield
Club Show was
a social highlight
of the London
Season, as seen
in the Illustrated
London News, 1851.

would have got from ordinary farmers sitting around their

kitchen tables. Shorthorns were described as

Irresistibly attractive . . . the exquisitely symmetrical form

of the body . . . bedecked with the skin of the richest hues
. . . ornamented with a small . . . head [and] prominent
mildly beaming eyes.9

This glorication of the aesthetics of the animal seems to

suggest that the original impetus to improve British cattle had
got lost amongst the wealthy landowners need for a societal
hobby. The result was grossly overweight cattle, whose spindly
legs could hardly hold up their gigantic bodies, and who suf-
fered from infertility and susceptibility to disease.10

136
 The proud owners
of pedigree cattle
often asked artists
to add on more
flesh and height
to their animals
portrait: J. H.
Carter, Sir Charles
Morgan, Bt, Present-
ing his Prize Bull
to King William iv,
painted in the
1830s.

The owners were so proud of their animals that they brought

in artists to record their creations for posterity, encouraging
the artists to exaggerate muscle and fat reserves. The famous
engraver Thomas Bewick (17531828) wrote that when he was a
young artist there had been a

rage for fat cattle, fed up to so great a weight and bulk as

it was possible for feeding to make them; but this was not
enough; they were to be gured monstrously fat before
the owners of them could be pleased.11

The recording of bloodlines also became an obsession for

breeders: just as their own ancestry was recorded in Debretts
Peerage and Baronetage. They recorded the parentage of each of
their animals and the most importance consideration was the
length of time there had been a succession of best blood, without
any inferior blood intervening.12 Eventually, George Coats

137
produced the rst detailed list of every pedigree Shorthorn
going back to 1734 in the General Short-Horned Herd Book (1822).
It contained the records of 710 bulls and 850 cows many of
whose genetics would later be used in the foundation of 40 dif-
ferent breeds worldwide, such as the American Santa Gertudis
and the Australian Droughtmaster.
After this publication, which became as popular as the Bible
on many farmhouse tables, each championed breed gained a
herd book. Rumours of inaccurate pedigrees in 1874 incited
Shorthorn breeders to form the Shorthorn Society, which was the
rst breed society of its kind, and this organization took over the
herd book.
Despite the pomp and ceremony surrounding these pedigree
animals, their genetics were, in time, spread throughout the
commercial cattle of Britain. And, in Scotland, the Scottish
Highland, Galloway and Aberdeen Angus breeds gained reputa-
tions for producing beef to match their southern counterparts.
By 1830, the numbers of cattle going through Smitheld per
year had increased to 159,907,13 and they were larger and heavier.
The domestic and global beef industries were assured, thanks to
the genetics of the beef-stars.
But, while selective breeding of cattle, and its advantages,
were being celebrated and put into good use in Britain, the
fledgling Texan beef industry in America was concentrating on
their wiry and lean Longhorn cattle. It was not until the 1880s
that the improved British breeds really began to make an impact
in North America.

us cattle: the nal great cattle culture

It was not only a beef industry that grew up around the Texan
Longhorns, but also a culture. Their ancestors were the Spanish

138
 The centre
of the American
cattle boom
during the 1860s
and 1870s: the
Union Stockyard
in Chicago.

Criollo type, which had themselves evolved from the Iberian

Peninsula cattle originally imported into mainland America by
the Spanish conquistadors in the early 1500s.
These Longhorns were wiry, tough, aggressive and resilient.14
However, as with the unimproved cattle of Britain, there was
very little meat on them. Butchers derided the Longhorn as
eight pounds of hamburger on 800 pounds of bone and
horn.15 However, these semi-wild cattle living in huge numbers
on the coastal plains of Texas were to become the stars of
Americans open range cattle industry an industry which, in

139
fact, only lasted for twenty years, but which has, and will, last in
legend for many more.
In the 1830s, although the Longhorn cattle outnumbered
Texans by six to one, there was no real beef industry; only a
trade in hides and tallow for candles, which meant carcasses
were left to rot where cattle had been slaughtered. The cattle
belonged to whoever cared to claim them. In the 1850s some
cattle were driven outside Texas to supply fresh beef for
prospectors during the Californian Gold Rush, to New Orleans
and Chicago, and in 1854 the rst Longhorns arrived in New
York. However, these early movements of cattle were perilous
and time-consuming for the ranchers and, much to the outrage
of other states, the Texan cattle spread fatal tick fever to cattle
en route (Texan cattle were immune to the ticks they carried).
The resulting quarantine laws banned the passage of Texan cattle
northwards, and the Civil War of 186165 temporarily halted the
Longhorns progress anywhere.
When the Texan ranchers returned home after the Civil War,
they found ve million head of cattle roaming freely, unbranded
and worthless, without a paying market. They paid little or no
attention to their herds, until the railroads extended westwards
in the form of the Union Pacic Eastern Division (begun in 1863
and later renamed as the Kansas Pacic Railroad). This rail link
allowed them to export their worthless cattle, via the Union
Stockyard in Chicago, to the burgeoning and lucrative markets in
the north-east, and to the east where immigrants were arriving
from Europe. The stockyards of Chicago opened in 1865 and cov-
ered a 345-acre site where nine railroads converged. At its peak,
the yards were capable of handling 21,000 cattle a day and
Chicago became known as The Great Bovine City of the World.16
It was easy for the Texan ranchers to create a herd of
Longhorns. Most just found themselves a watering place on

140
their range, adopted a brand and hunted down all the maver-
icks (unbranded cattle) within the area and claimed them.

the long drive

The days of the cattle drive, or long drive began in earnest in
1867 when Texan cattle were driven along the Chisholm Trail,
which snaked through Texas and into Kansas, to the railhead at
Abilene. It was here that the enterprising Joseph G. McCoy had
built the rst cattle town the previous year, where southern
drovers and northern buyers could meet and, importantly, the
Texan ticks were killed off following the hard winter frosts.
During the summer of 1867, an estimated 35,000 cattle came
up the Chisholm Trail, were fattened over the winter on the
grassy, well-watered plains surrounding Abilene, and then sent,
tick-free, eastward by rail in open pens. Over the next twenty
years the cow towns had to move further west to accommodate
the westerly movement of farmers who lobbied against the
damage caused to their crops by the tick-ridden Texan cattle.
The first
representation
of a cattle drive
in an American
magazine: A
Drove of Texas
Cattle Crossing
a Stream; wood-
engraving after
A. R. Ward, in
Harpers Weekly,
19 October 1867.

141
Abilene and the subsequent Kansas cattle towns of Ellsworth,
Dodge City and Hays received in total two million Texan cattle.
In addition to the railroads, Texan cattle were also being
driven further north to the Great Plains following the Goodnight-
Loving Trail, named after the pioneering Texans Charles
Goodnight and his partner Oliver Loving, who sold cattle to
J. W. Iliff, the rst of Colorados cattle kings.
Iliff had discovered that cattle could live and thrive on the
scanty-looking bunchgrass which covered the Great Plains. He
began buying lame, old and ill cattle from goldseekers and trav-
ellers on the Oregon Trail. Then he, and the many ranchers who
settled on this free public grass, sold their fattened cattle to the
Rocky Mountain miners and the Native Indians who had been
forced into government reserves.
From 1867 to 1886 there were about six to nine million Texas
Longhorns driven to the railheads and the plains. The 500-mile
drive to the Kansas railheads took around three months, while
drives to Montana or Dakota took six months.
After over-wintering, the next journey for Longhorns in the
1860s and early 1870s was on the railroads to the Union Stock
Yards in Chicago. Butchers from the north and east would gather
there to buy the cattle and, before refrigeration was introduced
in the 1860s, the cattle were shipped on to the east for butcher-
ing at local slaughterhouses.

cattle and cowboys

The icons of the American West were, and still are, the cowboys
who drove these cattle. The cowboy, or cowpuncher, was
employed by the Texan ranchers to round up the cattle and then
accompany them on the drive. They are depicted in a romantic,
mythical way in countless movies and novels of the Western

142
genre, with no regard for the real cowboys understanding of
cattle behaviour and their empathy with the cow. The best cow-
boys, such as trail driver Ab Blocker, knew their cows: he savies
[sic] the cow cow psychology, cow anatomy, cow dietetics
cow nature in general and cow nature in particular.17
The persistent image is of a white, rugged, spotlessly attired,
free and independent, gun-slinging man, who ghts marauding
Indians and cattle rustlers, and when required, rescues maidens
in distress along the way. Filmmakers and novelists of the
American West have, in the main, neglected the actual cattle, Cattle rarely get
any poster space
even though they were the reason for the cowboys existence. on Western film
Few lm posters feature cattle, and Owen Wisters cowboy The advertising. Even
the video cover for
Virginian (1902) has been labelled the cowboy without cattle.18 the first episode of
Those cowboys literate enough have tried to redress the bal- tv series Rawhide
makes do with
ance by showing the public a very different lifestyle, such as painted Longhorns.
Andy Adams, whose ctional memoirs The Log of a Cowboy: A
Narrative of the Old Trail Days (1903) records a distinctly
unglamorous, dangerous and exhausting life. Cowboys were
generally young Southerners, blacks, Mexicans and Indians: they
were mainly cheap, itinerant labour, and their dress, language
and equipment were all borrowed from the Mexican vaqueros
who trailed after the freely roaming Criollos.
The rst spring roundup or rodeo saw all the cattle gath-
ered up from around the ranges. Over an area of 4,000 square
miles, this may involve nding 10,000 cattle, which could take
up to three months. The cowboys would be sent out in different
directions around a central point and would return, slowly and
patiently, herding the cattle and calves they found, which were
sometimes stuck in bogs or hiding in bushes. From the collected
herd, the best were selected for market, while immature animals
were cut out and returned to the range. The cowboys per-
formed other tasks at this time, such as dehorning if the horns

143
Branding the
mavericks: each
cattle ranch had
(and still has) its
own brand mark,
which was used to
claim, or identify,
unmarked cattle
or calves.

were too long or too sharp, branding mavericks with the

owners mark and castrating the male calves.
After the spring round-up, around two-thirds of the cowboys
would be laid off; the favoured few would be retained on the
ranch for odd jobs or given the task of taking the cattle to mar-
ket. A trail boss and ten cowpunchers, with 100150 horses,
would accompany an average drive of 1,500 head of cattle.
At the beginning of the trail the cattle were jittery and had
to be pushed briskly along to stop them breaking for home,
but after a few days they took up a natural pecking order and
marched along at a good pace. They were able to cover up to
fteen miles a day. The cattle were grazed three times a day,
while the cowboys had their meals. At sunset, the cattle were
rounded up tightly and several cowboys would ride around
them all night long, singing or whistling continuously, so that
the sleeping herd may know that a friend and not an enemy is
keeping vigil over their dreams.19

144
 On top of the short rations, choking dust, rain, mosquitoes,
heat and fourteen-hour days in the saddle which the cowboys
had to endure, there was also the constant risk of dangerous
cattle stampedes and the risks associated with crossing the
seven rivers en route to Kansas. Yet the number one enemy of
the Longhorn was the heel fly, which would often cause the herd
to bolt. To escape the fly, if there was water nearby the cattle
would go and stand in it, or they would squat down in the brush
in an attempt to cover their ankles.
The animals were also particularly susceptible to being
spooked at night, and stampedes were a constant worry, espe-
cially during thunder and lightning. Rather romanticized lm
depictions of stampedes are found in Red River (1948), Cowboy
(1958) and City Slickers (1991). But in reality, stampedes usually
ended in grisly circumstances, such as the report of a stampede
in Idaho in 1889 which killed 341 cattle, two horses and one cow-
boy, who was mangled to sausage meat.20 It took days, or even
weeks, to round up the herd again.
During the spring, the rivers, which were usually wide, slow
and muddy, became raging torrents. Several things could go
wrong: cattle drives might pile up waiting to cross the swollen

Frederic Remington
The Stampede,
sculpture, c. 1910.
A stampede was
one of the night-
mare situations
facing cowboys
during the cattle
drive.

145
Cattle roaming rivers, thirst-maddened cattle could stampede, or if the leading
free on the Great
Plains of Montana,
cattle were spooked and attempted to turn around while in the
c. 1911. river, it would cause the followers to mill around, become
exhausted and drift downstream to be drowned. Occasionally
the cattle could not even be persuaded to cross the rivers, as the
heart-breaking diary of cowpuncher George C. Dufeld shows:

June 23: Worked all day hard in the river trying to make
the beeves swim and did not get one over. Had to go back
to prairie sick and discouraged. Have not got the Blues but
am in Hel of a Fix.21

Unlike the movies, it was rare for the drives to be attacked by

Indians or rustlers. More likely, Indians would stop the drive to

146
demand money for the cattle to cross their land or they would
beg for food. The trail boss would also have to deal with irate
farmers if cattle strayed on to their crops.

cattle boom
The boom time of the American cattle business was in the late
1870s and early 1880s a time when American ranchers and
American and European investors joined forces to create cattle
fortunes.
Investors looked to the free grass on the Great Plains. This
land, which had been opened up by the mass slaughter of buf-
falo and subsequent removal of the Native Indians into govern-
ment reserves, was there for the taking.22 Investment in the
ranching business became a mania in America and Europe, fol-
lowing tales of enormous prots and guaranteed home-grown
markets (especially government contracts to feed the reserva-
tion Indians). Export markets were also booming, with every
transcontinental steamship equipped with refrigeration by
1880, which meant chilled beef could reach Britain and Europe
in perfect condition.
It was hard not to be tempted by the eulogizing of
Connecticuts Judge Sherwood, who wrote in a letter to poten-
tial backers:

The prots are enormous. There is no business like it in the

world, and the whole secret is, it costs nothing to feed the
cattle. They grow without eating your money. They literally
raise themselves.23

Specic examples of those who had made money in the

cattle business were cited in James S. Brisbins pamphlet, the

147
plain-speaking The Beef Bonanza, or How to Get Rich on the Plains
(1881), where annual prots of 25 per cent were regularly cited:
an initial investment of $25,000 would yield a net prot of
$36,500 in ve years.24 With propaganda that persuasive, it was
not surprising that thousands of acres of Montana, Texas and
Wyoming were bought up by cattle companies based in London
and Edinburgh. From 1880 to 1885, the British and Scottish
investors poured $40 million into ranching, and by then a
government report stated that 1,365,000 square miles, or 44 per
cent of us land, was devoted to raising cattle.25
During the summer of 1883 so many trail herds came up
from Texas that cowpuncher Teddy Blue Abbott remarked in
his memoirs that all the cattle in the world were coming up
from Texas.26 Over a rise near the North Platte he saw seven
trails grazing behind him, eight herds ahead and across the
river he could see the trail dust from thirteen other herds.
But the boom was not to last. Overstocking of the ranges,
tumbling prices, range wars and blizzards all played their part in
bringing the cattle bonanza to an end. However, it was the exten-
sion of the railways further west (which made it unprotable to
drive cattle up from Texas) and the erection of barbed-wire
fences which killed off the Longhorn cattle culture.

barbed wire
When in 1873 Illinois farmer Joseph F. Glidden patented the
barbed wire which was to become the most commonly used in
the American West, he had no idea of the consequences it
would have on the Longhorn cattle. At rst, this new technology
was opposed by many large Texan ranchers, who called it the
Devils Rope. They regarded it as cruel and dangerous to their
cattle, and totally against the culture of open range ranching,

148
where the Longhorns could drift uncontrolled across the range
in search of water, grazing and shelter. It was during round-
ups that cattle from neighbouring ranches could be sorted
and driven back to their home grazing: there was no need for
fencing.
However, after being convinced that the barbed wire would
not harm their cattle, most north Texan ranchers made a con-
cession and in 1881 began building fences to stop their cattle
drifting further north in the winter. Their use of barbed wire
escalated when new industry entrants (or range pirates as the
established rangers called them) started trying to claim free
range. The established ranchers did not want to have to buy or
lease land that they felt was theirs by rights. So to protect their
grass, cattle and wealth from being swallowed up, they used
barbed wire to fence off streams and waterholes on their land.
Under the 1862 Homestead Act settlers could le claims of
ownership to range land by securing water rights.
It was not until the drought of 1883, when the pirates real-
ized that their traditional water points, which had always been
open to all, were now enclosed. They responded by cutting the
fences and the notorious barbed wire wars ensued. The
disputes between the cattle barons and the incomers grew
increasingly bitter and soon violence erupted amid accusations
of cattle rustling, leaving three people dead.

the end of the longhorns

Although human lives were lost as a consequence of the fencing
of the open range, this was nothing compared to the loss of
Longhorns during the winters of 18845 and 18867: the worst
recorded in the West. Cattle could not penetrate the deep snow
to reach grazing, and in an attempt to drift before the storms,

149
 they piled into the barbed wire fences and died in their thou-
sands, frozen and starving.
In Wyoming, one rancher recovered only 100 cattle from a
herd of 5,500 head that he had turned on to the range in the
autumn. The Montana rancher Granville Stuart was heartbroken
by the sight of the suffering of the dead and dying cattle on his
ranges, and swore never again to own an animal that he could
not feed and shelter. This meant ranchers had to fence their
land, restrict the head of cattle they owned and provide winter
feed for them.27
The era of long drives, cowboys and open range ranching
was over. Many ranchers went bust and by 1887 5,0007,000
head of cattle were arriving every day for sale in Chicago.
The days of Longhorn domination were also over. As the sur-
viving ranchers reorganized themselves, they took advantage of
the improved breeds of British cattle that were being imported
into Texas by the thousand. The Shorthorn, Aberdeen Angus
and Devon breeds were experimented with rst, but it was the
Hereford that became the Longhorns successor. As well as being
able to survive the rough ranching conditions, the Herefords
grew faster and produced higher beef yields there was more

Charles M. Russell,
Waiting for a
Chinook, 1886:
Longhorns had
their numbers
drastically reduced
by the harsh
winter weather.

150
 Albert the Hereford
Bull stands in
Audubon, Iowa,
as a monument to
the national beef
industry: he is
claimed to be the
largest bull in the
world, weighing
in at 45 tonnes
and standing over
9 metres high.

prot in Herefords than in the scrub cattle. In 1880 200 head

were imported, but in the following nine years, 3,500 head were
sent to the United States.
Soon the Longhorns became an endangered species, and by
the 1920s only a few small herds remained. Luckily, in 1927 the
Forest Service stepped in and established a herd in the Wichita
Mountains Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma, which grew to several
hundred head. The Longhorn is also once again established in
Texas.28

south america and australia

With the collapse of the cattle market in North America, cattle
investors looked south to Argentina for their next business
opportunity. They took over the abattoirs and freezing plants
(frigoricos) that lined the rivers Plate and Parana in the early
1900s, supplying chilled beef to Europe. By this time the beef
industry was booming, with cattle being reared inland on

151
Cattle and
huasos (Chilean
cowboys) after
a round-up, a
photo taken
sometime
between 1890
and 1923.

extensive ranches (estancias), and then transported by rail to

the factories.29
The Argentine industry had come a long way from very
humble beginnings. Coming in the wake of Spanish colonists,
in 1552 initial imports of Spanish Criollo cattle to the country
numbered only seven cows and one bull.30 As the colonies grew
a further 4,000 head of cattle were imported to provided all the
hides and meat required. However, the ideal conditions on the
Pampas plains of Argentina meant that cattle thrived. By about
1615, surplus hides were being sold to Spain and Brazil, and a
large salting works was built at Buenos Aires in 1717 to take
advantage of the export market for salted beef, which comple-
mented jerked (dried) beef production.

152
 As occurred in North America, the native cattle had to be
genetically improved to meet demand. In 1865 the rst
Shorthorn cattle arrived and the formation of the Argentine
Rural Society soon followed, aiming to develop a well-organized
cattle industry. Shipments of live cattle arrived in Britain from
Argentina, where they were disembarked and slaughtered near
London at Deptford on the south bank of the River Thames; over
one million head of cattle were imported by 1879. But this indus-
try was fairly short-lived as in 1900 an embargo was placed on
Argentine cattle for three years after they brought foot-and-mouth
disease into the country. An alternative to live exports had to be
found, and the solution was chilled beef.
Early investors had seen the potential of refrigeration to
open up export markets, as witnessed at Campana on the River
Parana, where The River Plate Fresh Meat Co. built a freezing
works in 1882. But by 1901 technological advances allowed chilled
rather than frozen beef to be shipped across to Britain within
three weeks. The ranch owners, with no live export market, had
the opportunity to supply their best quality beef to this chilled
market, while lower grade meat was frozen.
The South American cattle culture is no longer concentrated
in Argentina, but in Brazil (see next chapter), where there are
36.5 million beef cattle, compared with 14.4 million of them in
Argentina.31
Australia is the other major exporter of beef cattle today (with
8.8 million beef cattle), but the beginnings of its industry were
even more inauspicious than that of Argentina. Along with the
rst shipment of 737 English convicts to Port Jackson, New South
Wales, on 26 January 1788 came two Afrikaner bulls and ve
cows, which had been purchased en route in Cape Town. Of these
cattle, the prize-bull Gorgon and four of the ve cows strayed into
the scrub and were lost in August of the same year.32 They were

153
Brahman bull:
specially bred in
America from four
different Indian
zebu breeds, the
Brahman was
imported into
Australia in large
numbers in 1933.
Since then,
Brahman genetics
are said to be in
over 50 per cent
of Australian cattle
and the breed
is credited with
saving the
Australian cattle
industry from
collapse, as they
are able to tolerate
the Northern
humid tropical
conditions, as well
as thriving in dry
sub-tropical areas.

eventually found again in 1795 (completely feral), having travelled

70 kilometres in a south-westerly direction to nd tastier grazing,
settling in an area later known as Cow Pastures. By this time
their numbers had grown to sixty-one.
Initially, the colonists had great difculty coping with the
extremes of the Australian climate, especially the droughts. It was
not until better grazing was found inland that sheep-raising,

154
and subsequently cattle-raising, became tenable. The cattle
population was later boosted by imports of Shorthorns in 1825,
and a year later by imported Herefords.
To meet the British demand for beef, the colony of Australia
pioneered the production of tinned beef, as featured in the
Great Exhibition of 1851. The product was mostly used as ship
rations, but then reached the English market in 1867 as corned
beef. The real breakthrough for the Australian beef industry
came in 1880 when 40 tons of frozen beef were successfully
shipped to London on the Strathleven, leading to the establish-
ment of an export industry, which was worth more than 1m by
1890 (also including mutton exports).33 These markets acted as
a catalyst for larger-scale cattle stations to be established in the
north of the country, especially in Queensland, which became,
and still is, the main beef state.

155
6 Poor Cow: Pushing the
Boundaries

So far, we have seen how humans have progressively harnessed

the natural abilities of cattle to provide enough meat, milk and
power to meet demand. But in the West, and in the emerging
economies in the Far East, we have now entered into a new era
in the history of cow/human relations, where mass production
has demeaned cattle to objects, with little or no human contact.
While beef cattle are still reared on the grass ranges of North
America, they are usually destined to end up in beef-lots, where
they are fattened on cereals before slaughter. The American
consumer market now demands more tender and, therefore,
fattier beef than the grass-fed Longhorns could ever produce.
As such, the production of beef has had to change, using tech-
nology and science to push cattle beyond their natural abilities.
The dairy cow has been subjected to the same exploitation.
However, humans are nding to their cost that there are con-
sequences to this forced, unnatural production in terms of public
health and environmental damage, and the negative effects on
cattle welfare are pricking the global conscience.

unnatural production
Product advertising bombards us with images of laughing,
dancing cows, relaxing in the sun, willingly giving us control

156
over their bodies. But all of these portraits hide the truth of inten- Mid-1950s Soviet
poster promoting
sive milk, beef and veal production. The Canadian documentary- the cattle industry:
maker Jennifer Abbott recently juxtaposed product advertising the dairy cow
contentedly pro-
with the reality of production and slaughter in A Cow at My viding humanity
Table (1998). Screen shots of meat industry promotions show a with her milk . . . ?
cow wearing sunglasses, leaning back on a haystack with one
arm behind her head, while feeding herself hay with the other,
and a smiling cow sitting upright in the back of a pickup truck
on its way to slaughter.
The public should know how cattle are raised, because with
the advances of technology and science, many everyday items are
made from the cow, ranging from household goods to industrial
products and pharmaceuticals. While 54 per cent of a slaugh-
tered cow is used as beef products for human and pet consump-
tion, the rest of the carcass (fat, bones, viscera and hide) is broken

157
Embryos from a
pedigree cow can
be transplanted
into a number of
carrier cows, who
act as surrogate
mothers to
supercow calves.

down by renderers into a range of other substances. For example,

beef fat and fatty acids are used in shoe creams, crayons, floor wax,
margarine, cosmetics, deodorants, detergents, soaps, perfumes,
insecticides, linoleum, insulation and refrigerants.1
Viewed as a set of end products, the cow loses all of its indi-
viduality and personality. It is easy to understand how the exec-
utives of fast-food companies and the supermarkets dictate to
cattle farmers what animal units they require for their product
ranges. And while it would be relatively easy to nd out how
beef and milk are produced by looking at the farming press and
Internet sites, how many people feel compelled to do so?
Several key points highlight the extreme demands now
placed on many dairy cattle, especially in America, where the
population of just over nine million dairy cows produce 80.2
million tonnes of milk annually.2
In what could be considered as another step forward in the
domestication of cattle, the articial insemination method is
used to breed genetically superior production cows and bulls to
create supercows for achieving high milk yields. Production

158
gures for Britain show that average milk yields have risen con-
tinuously, while the number of cows has fallen. In 1970 a cow
produced an average of 3,750 litres (6,600 pints) of milk every
year; in 1998 this gure was 5,790 litres and for the 2005/6
production year the milk yields increased to 6,787 litres (over
10,000 pints) a year.3
But while Robert Bakewell might look on with awe and pride
at the advances in genetic selection, there are many who feel
the cows future is being put at risk. The geneticist Steve Jones
argues that the reliance on a small number of bulls from a few
breeds to sire the worlds cows has meant that the genes of
untold others have been lost. Jones cites a Dutch bull called
Sunny Boy, who died in 1997 after siring his two-millionth calf.4
And, although the Ancients, who worshipped the bull for his
fecundity and vigour, would be impressed with these gures, it
leaves the cow in a precarious position if disease hits, market
demands change or the environment alters drastically.
There is also a physical cost to these high milk yields the
cows have to work hard to synthesize milk from their feed

A cowhide-
covered frame-
work is used to
collect a bulls
semen. His semen
is then destined
to impregnate
thousands of real
cows, without any
physical contact
involved.

159
intake. The daily work rate of a cow producing a peak yield of 35
litres (61 pints) of milk each day, has been compared to a man
jogging for six hours every day of the week.5 In as little as three
years, milking cows become worn out, and when their milk
yields fall they are slaughtered and enter the food chain. Even
though the majority of farmers work extremely hard to maintain
the health of their cattle, when cows are conned in unnatural,
man-made environments and rely totally on humans for their
survival (particularly during winter housing or in all-year-round
housing systems), there are bound to be adverse effects on these
cows. The most common health problems are infertility, mastitis,
lameness and metabolic disorders, caused by inadequate feeding
and housing, faulty milking equipment or poor hygiene. For
example, each year 2555 per cent of dairy cattle in England and
Wales experience some form of lameness and 1520 per cent of
dairy cattle have their udder infected with sub-clinical masti-
tis.6 The dairy cow is also subject to a continuous cycle of
calving, milking and impregnation, enabling her to lactate for
about 305 days of the year. She will calve, and nearly three
months later become pregnant again, so she is pregnant and
milking for eight months, then she is dried off (not milked) for
two months before calving again.
Just as a further pressure on American milkers, their milk
yields can be further boosted by at least 1015 per cent by being
injected with a genetically engineered bovine growth hormone
called recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbst). Although this
hormone has been commercially used in the us since 1994,
its use has been banned in the eu since 1990, primarily for
economic reasons, rather than welfare reasons, because the extra
milk yields would upset milk prices.

160
fast food farming: human health

While we are pushing the dairy cow to produce about ten times
the amount of milk which she would normally produce for a
calf, the life of an intensive beef cow is generally regarded as
less harmful to the cow. Exposs of American beef-lots by cam-
paigners and journalists tend to concentrate on the fact that
the cattle live in a barren environment that is uninteresting for
them, especially after living on the grass ranges.
The main issue for the general public, however, is the per-
ceived threat to human health from producing meat under beef-
lot conditions, particularly the spread of E. coli 0157:7. Eric
Schlossers expos of the ways modern beef production meets the
demands of the fast-food consumer caused uproar in 2001 when
the book Fast Food Nation was rst published (subsequently
repackaged and republished for the teenage market in 2006 as
Chew on This).
He visits two enormous beef-lots at Greeley, Colorado, which
are owned by ConAgra Beef Company, one of the major suppliers
to fast-food companies. Each feed-lot can accommodate 100,000
cattle. The cows are crowded so closely together that it looks like
a sea of cattle, a mooing, moving mass of brown and white fur that
goes on for acres.7
Feed-lots are essentially fenced concrete standings with feed-
ing troughs running along the length of one side, into which
their fattening diet of grains and other by-products are mechan-
ically delivered. The cattle have come from the ranges into this
unnatural environment, where they are crowded and unable to
have proper exercise. Schlosser describes them as standing in
pools of mud and manure, which often gets into the feed and
water supplies.
The Toronto-based food writer and restaurant critic Gina

161
One of the Mallet adds to the list of horrors which can enter into the beef
shittiest places
in America: The
cattles diet:
stench from the
packed beef-lots
on the road Cattle are given antibiotics against disease and to spur
between Bovina growth; and they are bulked up with an fda-approved [us
and Hereford,
Texas, is totally Food and Drug Administration] protein mix of restaurant
overpowering. leftovers, out-of-date pet food and chicken litter. Spray-
dried cows and pigs blood is mixed into the cattles drink-
ing water.8

Its enough to put anyone off eating beef burgers . . . or is it?

These concerns about the safety of eating processed beef are
nothing new. A former slaughterhouse employee was quoted in

162
1898, saying that he had seen thousands of sick, lame, aged,
and repulsive-looking animals driven in for slaughter . . . such
beef was boiled and canned as corned beef .9
But there is mounting pressure on the American cattle indus-
try to instigate a complete ban on feeding cattle animal by-prod-
ucts, mainly as a result of the appearance of bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (bse) the same disease which in 1996 stopped
British beef exports in their tracks.
Cattle were
The cause of the disease outbreak in Britain was traced to incinerated in 1996
a meat-and-bonemeal compound, made out of unsaleable in an effort to
remove any
sheep carcasses, which was being fed to cattle as a cheap potential risk of
source of protein. Unknown to farmers, the process to render bse entering the
human food chain,
these carcasses was changed in 1982, due to cost-cutting.10 after the first cases
of vcjd came to
This allowed abnormal or infectious proteins (prions) to sur- the publics
vive in the feed, and once inside the cow they set off a chain attention.

163
reaction that transformed native proteins into harmful ones,
which multiplied and clogged up the brain: the Mad Cow
had arrived.
bse was rst identied in cattle in 1986 and within two years
over a thousand cases were reported in over 200 herds. By 1996,
ofcial gures suggested a total of 168,317 cases of bse had been
conrmed, but in reality the total may have been over 700,000
sick cattle within the uk.11 Conspiracy theorists have claimed
that the government wanted to cover up the real number of sick
cattle because in 1996 it became obvious that humans were
becoming sick and dying from eating infected beef: variant
Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (vcjd) had followed.
The public panic and outrage was enormous. The media cover-
age turned from the pitiful images of staggering dairy cows to the
incineration of all cattle diagnosed with bse, and those animals
over 30 months old who were at risk of developing the disease.
Unfortunately for the cow, purely as a result of human inter-
vention in their diet, they experienced their rst major public
relations disaster: in over a decade, vcjd has claimed 158 human
lives in Britain.12 And because of the long incubation period of
vcjd, and its reported ability to be passed on through blood
transfusions and surgical instruments, it is likely that humans
will live with the threat of the disease long after bse has been
eradicated from cattle.

environment: hoofed locusts and mass polluters

Environmentalists have also demonized beef farmers and their
cattle for turning virgin Latin American rainforest into an eroded
wasteland. The Food and Agriculture Organization (fao) esti-
mates that in Central America the forest area has been reduced
by almost 40 per cent over the past 40 years, while pasture area

164
Nelore cattle pasturing on land which was once part of the Atlantic Coastal
Rainforest in southeast Brazil. The cattle are waiting to be being vaccinated
against foot-and-mouth disease.
has been rapidly increasing for the growing cattle population.
Studies predict that, by the year 2010, cattle will be grazing on
more than 24 million hectares of land that was forest in the year
2000, and that nearly two-thirds of the deforested land will be
converted to pasture.13
Environmentalists also condemn the wasteful use of cereals
being fed to beef animals when people are starving in the world,
and the treatment of manure, which if not properly managed
causes air, soil and water pollution.
Schlosser quotes that a typical steer consumes more than
3,000 lbs of grain during their three-month stay in the beef-lot
to gain 400 lbs in weight. The waste produced is 50 lbs of urine
and manure a day, which is left untreated in lagoons.14

concerns for cattle

Although the general public rarely get concerned about the
welfare of cattle in intensive farming systems (except when human
life is threatened), for many people the intensive production of
veal causes revulsion. The aim of intensive veal producers around
the world is to put young calves (usually dairy-bred males, as they
are surplus to requirement) into crates so that they cannot
expend any energy or develop any muscles, in order to keep their
flesh tender. Calves are denied fresh water, and instead are fed a
milk substitute in large quantities. They are also denied access
to brous food so that their flesh remains white (forage is rich
in iron, which darkens the flesh). The calves are kept for up to
sixteen weeks in this connement, sometimes in darkness.
Veal production was rst developed in Holland, but soon
spread throughout Europe. High-prole writers, such as Mrs
Beeton in her Book of Household Management (1861), highlight-
ed the practices employed in England to retain the whiteness of

166
the calves flesh. She described as inhuman and disgraceful Veal crates, like
these photographed
the daily bleeding of the Staggering Bobs to ensure that they in 1995 in France
remained anaemic to please the epicurean taste of vitiated (the calves were
shipped from
appetites.15 Britain), are now
The same abhorrence is seen later in the rst expos of banned throughout
the European Union
British factory farming in Ruth Harrisons Animal Machines and also in the state
(1964), although calves were no longer bled. She documented of Arizona.

the plight of the defenceless, brown-eyed bobby calf conned

to a small dark crate. And Peter Singer, the Australian philo-
sopher, nominated the quality veal industry as the most morally
repugnant of all factory farming:

. . . it represents an extreme, both in the degree of

exploitation to which it subjects the animals and in its

167
 absurd inefciency as a method of providing people with
nourishment.16

In England, animal rights campaigns encouraged emotions to

run particularly high during 1995 when, although veal crates had
been banned in the uk in 1990, 426,000 British calves a year were
being shipped to Holland and France. A middle-aged librarian
from Brighton recorded her reaction to seeing calves arriving in
trucks at Seaford ferry terminal in Sussex: It makes me think
with a shudder of the Nazi cattle trucks,17 and in January 1995 a
woman was crushed to death by a lorry delivering calves to
Baginton Airport, near Coventry, destined for the Netherlands.
Its understandable that calves provoke such emotion in our
civilized and cultured society; their dark, liquid eyes resemble
those of sad, human children, and child protesters at the ferry
ports held homemade banners of calves with the slogan I want
my Mummy.18

transport: the secret, dark side

It is not just calves that have provoked calls for compassion,
but cattle being transported and slaughtered in general. At
such times cattle are most at the mercy of humans, and gener-
ally these people are not those who have reared, or cared for,
the cattle.
The worst abuses, nowadays, are frequently captured on
camera by undercover animal rights campaigners and broad-
cast to the world via the internet. For example, Animals
Australia campaigns against the live export of Australian cattle
via ship to Egypt, where they are slaughtered inhumanely, despite
reassurances to the contrary.19 Although the images of these
practices are truly horric, the workers involved seem to nd

168
nothing wrong with the way they treat the cattle, apparently
regarding them as mere objects.
But probably the most disturbing for Western, Hindu, Jainist
and Buddist eyes is the death march of Indian cattle to slaugh-
terhouses, where they are killed for their hides. The campaign
by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (peta) high-
lights the treatment of Indias sacred cow in a lm called Skins
Trade, narrated by Pamela Anderson Lee.20
Indian leather is worth $1.7 billion in exports, and the largest
markets are Germany, the uk and the us. Although India has
welfare legislation in place, the bribery and corruption involved
in the trade leads to ofcials turning a blind eye to some really
distressing scenes. Many cattle die en route from their horric
injuries.
While audiences in the civilized world watch with disgust at
mans actions, it is worth noting that the animal-loving uk
was once well known for its cruelty to cattle, although nowadays
the uk has the highest welfare standards in the world. The rst
ever animal protection movement in England was The Liverpool
Society for Preventing Wanton Cruelty to Brute Animals, which
targeted the drovers brutality towards cattle in 1809.
Similar scenes were seen at Smitheld Market in London,
which had been on the same site since medieval times. The
market was criss-crossed by roads and public thoroughfares
and by the early 1800s it was chaotic and overcrowded. Farmers,
graziers, salesmen, butchers and members of the public signed
a petition and presented it to the Privy Council in 1808 to move
the market to a new site, giving the following reasons:

cattle often bruise and lame, and sometimes trample

upon and kill each other, by being conned for hours
together in a crowded state in the market; and some of

169
Indian cattle are them are maimed and or bruised in a shocking manner
sold to butchers
on the Tamil Nadu
by the wagons, carts, or drays driven though Smitheld
/ Kerala border during market hours; That the buyers cannot go
because Kerala,
having a sizeable
between or among the beasts in their very crowded state
Christian popula- at market to examine them, without danger of sustaining
tion, is one of the
only states in India serious bodily injury.21
where beef can be
bought.
In these noisy, congested conditions it was almost inevitable
that the exhausted, bewildered and frightened cattle would be
beaten cruelly to get them to the market and then on to meet
their fate in the slaughterhouses which surrounded the
Smitheld site. Even at night the local residents were kept awake
as the dreadful blows inflicted on the cattle are distinctly heard
in their bedrooms.22 It was said that those who sold their cattle

170
for market would not recognize their animals after four days of
them being in the city.
Eventually a Royal Commission was established in 1849 to
decide the fate of Smitheld, and in 1855 Smitheld closed
and the Metropolitan Cattle Market opened at Islington to take
advantage of the new rail links, allowing disembarked cattle to be
driven the short distance to their sale without having to traverse
the London streets.
The highly visible cruelty of the drovers was in direct contrast
to the behind-closed-doors treatment of cattle during sea trans- A Night View of
portation and at the slaughterhouses. It was up to the rspca, and Smithfield Market,
London, from
especially the Humanitarian League in the 1890s, to expose the an issue of The
iniquities which are daily and nightly perpetrated in the sacred Animals Friend,
1838. Note the
name of Trade.23 The League described, in pamphlet form, the fallen, exhausted
animals on the left
horrors of the privately owned slaughterhouses,24 and the trans- being beaten to
portation of cattle by sea from Ireland, America and Canada. make them move.

171
 The eyewitness accounts in both publications are, as the
authors of Cattle Ships and our Meat Supply (1894) state, enough
to induce vegetarianism. One particular section asks readers to
place themselves on the ships during a stormy nights crossing
from Ireland:

. . . a lurching vessel constantly skipping seas, hold and

tween decks packed full of terried and exhausted ani-
mals, their foothold slippery and insecure, the air foul,
and in total, or almost total, darkness.25

But, the authors point out, before the cattle reach this stage
they have been cruelly driven to the ports, been without hay or
water for hours (or days) and branded. To get onto the ships and
into the hold, they have been beaten and driven up and down
steep, slippery gangways. The few men in charge of the cattle
were often drunk or seasick, and usually of a very rough and
careless class; the work is irregular and tends to brutalise.26
It was actually butchers who originally pushed to improve con-
ditions on the Irish cattle boats, because of the poor quality of the
cattle carcasses and hides due to bruising. But evidence of broken
ribs and legs, cows calving in transit and blindness due to the
ammoniac fumes in the hold, were enough to bring in regulations.

slaughter
Since 1861 live cattle arriving in England had been slaughtered
at the notorious Deptford slaughterhouses,27 and in the United
States the slaughtering conditions in Chicago were just as
inhumane.
An idea of the scale of the scene at Chicagos stockyards can
be gained from Upton Sinclairs novel The Jungle (1906), which

172
 Knocking
(stunning) cattle
before slaughter,
c. 1906 at Swift
and Co.s Packing
House, Chicago.

exposed the practices of Chicagos meatpacking industry.

Sinclair himself visited Chicago and worked there for about
seven weeks in the winter of 1904. He was confronted by the fol-
lowing vision of the stockyards (as described in his novel):

There is over a square mile of space in the yards, and

more than half of it is occupied by cattle pens; north and
south as far as the eye can reach there stretches a sea of
pens. And they were all lled so many cattle no one had
ever dreamed existed in the world. Red cattle, black,
white, and yellow cattle; old cattle and young cattle; great
bellowing bulls and little calves not an hour born; meek-

173
Bleeding the cow
after death; the
Villette
slaughterhouse,
Paris, 1907.

Dropping hides
and splitting
chucks in the Beef
Department of
Swift and Co.s
Packing House,
c. 1906.
 eyed milch cows and erce, long-horned Texas steers.
The sound of them here was as of all the barnyards of the
universe; and as for counting them it would have taken
all day simply to count the pens.28

From their pens, the cattle were driven up fteen-feet wide

walkways into chutes raised high above the pens. These chutes
carried a continuous stream of unsuspecting cattle to their
deaths a very river of death.29 Sinclair did not spare the sen-
sibilities of his reader with his description of the actual killing
of the cattle (neither does Sterchis The Cow), and he admired
the skills of the workers and the pace at which the cattle were
dispatched:

Along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery, a few

feet from the floor, into which gallery the cattle were
driven by men with goads which gave them electric shocks.
Once crowded in here, the creatures were prisoned, each
in a separate pen, by gates that shut, leaving them no
room to turn around; and while they stood bellowing and
plunging, over the top of the pen there leaned one of the
knockers, armed with a sledge hammer, and watching
for a chance to deal a blow. The room echoed with the
thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kicking
of the steers.30

After each cow had been knocked unconscious, another man

would raise a lever and the side of each pen would rise, allowing
the animal, still struggling and kicking, to slide out on to the
killing bed. Here, another man attached shackles to one of the
cows hind legs and hoisted it upside down above the killing
bed. The butcher then slit the cows throat and they were left

175
to bleed for several minutes; just enough time for the knocker
to stun the next fteen to twenty animals.
Abattoirs in modern America are different places since ani-
mal welfare legislation has been introduced, but there are still
welfare concerns. Eric Schlosser describes an unnamed slaugh-
terhouse on the High Plains which processes 5,000 head a day.
There appears to be less stress on the cattle as they arrive at the
slaughterhouse entrance, having walked along specially designed
corrals that funnel them down into a single line.31 They stroll
down a narrow chute into the slaughterhouse, oblivious to what
is about to happen. Once in the building, they are blocked by
a gate where, instead of using a sledgehammer, the knocker
stands over them and shoots a captive bolt stunner at the ani-
mals forehead.
While the old meatpacking plants in Chicago could slaugh-
ter about 50 cattle an hour, modern plants despatch 400 cattle
an hour (six animals every minute). It is difcult to guarantee
that every cow is properly stunned when processing such a huge
number.

guilt and morality

Maybe because of our once-close relationship with cattle, there
has always been a certain guilt felt when killing useful cattle (see
the bouphonia in chapter Four). The way cattle are treated as
objects has been used by commentators and humanitarians as
a metaphor for the way society treats sections of society.
Although the term cattle has been historically used to
describe all livestock, the political theorist James Harrington
(16111677) thought the Scottish people were oppressed
because they were little better than the cattle of the nobility;
and in Victorian times it was thought to be a barbarous practice

176
that men and women should stand in droves, like cattle, for
inspection at hiring-fairs.32 Currently, we use the term cattle
market to describe a place, usually a nightclub, where men go
to ogle sexually attractive females or to nd a sexual partner.
Equating the abused cow with an abused person can be seen
in both Sinclairs The Jungle and Sterchis The Cow. These novels
carry a moral message about social injustice and the dehuman-
izing effect of capitalist production. But Sterchi uses the fate of
a particular cow, Blsch, as a direct parallel to that of an immi-
grant abattoir worker, Ambrosio, who after seven years of hard
labour nds himself killing the animal he had once admired.
Human and cow (ruined by overwork and modern dairy pro-
duction, respectively) are one and the same:

But caramba! The emaciated body that had been dragged

out of the cattle-truck onto the ramp, that had mooed so
pathetically into the morning mist, that body was also
Ambrosios body. Blschs wounds were his own wounds,
the lost lustre of her hide was his loss, the deep furrows
between her ribs, the hat-sized hollows round her hips,
they were dug into his flesh, what had been taken from the
cow had been taken from himself. Blschs limping and
dragging and hesitating, that was him. Ambrosio himself
on a halter. Yes, he had laughed at Knuchels cows for their
passivity and meekness, but the display of unconditional
obedience, of obsequiousness and motiveless mooing that
he had witnessed on the ramp, he had also witnessed them
in himself, to his own disgust. In Blsch on that Tuesday
morning, Ambrosio had recognized himself.33

Similarly, a Czech samizdat (anti-government) cartoon from

the 1990s shows two women staring sadly at a factory farm

177
packed full of cows. One is saying I remember the days when
cows had souls, to which her companion replies, Yes, and so
did we.34
The metaphor of men and slaves as cattle has been around
for a long time. Black slaves were often described as black
cattle , and the war poet Wilfred Owen (18931918) describes in
his Anthem for Doomed Youth (1917) the young soldiers as
cattle going to slaughter in the face of the enemys guns:

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.35

The innocence of the soldiers, herded together and blindly

following each other towards the certainty of death; men being
so easily disposed of, without thought for their humanity or
individuality.

178
Epilogue: Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

Having charted the deterioration of the human/cow relation-

ship in the West, is there any way in which it can be rebuilt?
We seem to have reduced the epitome of virility, fertility and
strength to a mere sperm donor, the Mother and nourisher of
the world to a mere milk machine and the strong, willing ox into
a beef-and-leather factory. Cattle are regarded as objects and
have been shunted to the periphery of our lives; only a few
people are privileged to interact positively with cattle and wit-
ness their behaviour.
It is unlikely that cattle will meet the same fate as their aurochs
ancestors, as people will always want to eat beef, drink milk and
wear leather; cattle have become rmly entrenched in our world.
But do we need to use the cow in such a mercenary fashion?
The rst hurdle to rebuilding the relationship is getting
people to even think about the cow, let alone about how their
eating and shopping habits impact on the cows life. While car-
toonists such as Gary Larson keep us laughing at cows (because,
yes, they are innately funny), it is also important to introduce
children and teenagers to the real live cow as part of their
education after all, they are the shoppers and consumers of
the future.
It is essential for us to recognize what we are asking cattle to
do for us; once this effort is acknowledged, then they will surely
regain our respect. Open farm days, urban farms and school

179
Phoenix the calf,
survivor of a
foot and mouth
disease pre-
cautionary
slaughter in
Devon, England,
2001: the closest
thing we have to
a modern mystical
cow?
farms should be encouraged, and visited; which will, hopefully,
prevent many of the misconceptions surrounding cows, such as
where milk comes from no, it is not the supermarket!1
Children need to learn more than just the fact that cows go
moo. One novel way of reconnecting the nave urbanite with the
cow is by harnessing the power of the media. For example, an
American website (sadly, no longer active) called Cow Cam
provided a Longhorns-eye view of life, via a wireless camera
which was attached to the animals neck collar. The site proud-
ly announced: A rst in bovine history . . . the Cow Cam and
offered Streaming Cow Cams from the cows point of view
urging visitors to Read blogs, watch cows: be a part of everyday
cow life.2
And while there are still people interested in preserving and
publicizing the cultural history of the cow, bull and ox, then
there is a chance that these animals will remain as part of our
heritage. Non-protable organizations such as the American
Livestock Breeds Conservancy and the uks Rare Breeds Survival
Trust are working hard to preserve endangered cattle breeds,
particularly those which have historical or cultural associations
with particular countries or regions.
So could there be a happier future for cattle? Will they all be
reared on grain and beer, and be routinely massaged with sake,
like the Japanese Wagyu cattle, who produce the gourmet Kobe
beef, are reported to be? Denitely not, but we have a responsi-
bility to look again at our treatment of cattle: we brought them
into being, killing off their wild ancestors in the process, and
they have played such a huge role in shaping early civilizations
and our modern world we just need reminding sometimes.

181
Timeline of the Cow
c. 2 million BC c. 250,000 BC c. 6,000 to c. 4,000 BC c. 3,200 BC
Bos primigenius or aurochs, Aurochs reach Europe, Humans domesticate In Mesopotamia, a stylized
the progenitor of domestic having previously migrat- aurochs in three separate symbol to denote the word
cattle, evolve in Asia ed into the Middle East areas of the Old World ox is developed, and the
and north-east Africa plough and ox-cart are
invented

1627 1647 1726 1780s

The last aurochs dies Paulus Potter creates Francisco Romero Robert Bakewell creates
in Poland; the species the epitome of cattle becomes the father of the Improved Longhorn
becomes the rst paintings, The Bull modern bullghting, cattle breed which kick-
documented case of introducing ghting starts the British cattle
animal extinction on foot rather than on industry
horseback

1932 1960s 1994

Ernest Hemingways Death in The Concrete Cows appear in The Rwandan Genocide
The Afternoon is published an Milton Keynes is the culmination of
introduction for many to the decades of conflict
corrida between Hutu and
Tutsi groups, the history
of which is rooted
in issues over cattle
ownership
c. 2,500 BC c. 1,500 BC c. 50 BC 1086 1493

Domestic cattle Aryans bring their Julius Caesar The unit of meas- Christopher
export trade creator bull-gods encounters the urement used in Columbus ships
begins between and cows to India, aurochs in the Domesday Spanish cattle to
the Near East, greatly influencing Germany and Book is based on Hispaniola in the
India and Africa Hindu literature domestic cattle the work rate of a West Indies
are described by team of ploughing
Varro Reatinus oxen
as the origin of all
money

1788 1835 1867 1920s

First cattle arrive in Bull-baiting is made The rst Texan Longhorns Heinz and Lutz Heck
Australia at Port illegal in England are driven up the Chisholm attempt to recreate
Jackson, alongside the Trail, marking the begin- the aurochs from
rst shipment of ning of the us beef cattle primitive forms
English convicts to the boom of domestic cattle
British colony

1994 1996 1999 2006

Bovine growth hormones bse halts British beef Beat Sterchis novel Veal crates are banned
are used commercially in exports The Cow is published throughout the eu and
the us to boost dairy cow Arizona in the usa
milk yields
 References

introduction: reintroducing the cow, bull and ox

1 According to The Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (fao) statistics for 2005,
http://faostat.fao.org/site/396/default.aspx (live animal produc-
tion gures) (accessed 1 October 2006).
2 A. Wnschmann The Wild and Domestic Oxen, in Grzimeks
Animal Life Encyclopaedia, vol. xiii: Mammals IV (New York, 1972),
p. 368.
3 The full list can be seen at www.arrakis.es/~eledu/justcows.htm.
4 See Cattle and the Global Environmental Crisis chapter in
Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture
(London, 1992), pp. 185230.

1 wild ox to domesticates
1 See the Paleontologisk Museum, University of Oslo, website at
www.toyen.uio.no/palmus/galleri/montre/english/a31922.htm
(accessed 30 August 2006).
2 Daniel G. Bradley, Genetic Hoof Prints: The dna Trail Leading
Back to the Origins of Todays Cattle Has Taken Some Surprising
Turns Along the Way, Natural History (February 2003).
3 See R. Schloeths studies of wild Camargue cattle for further
insights into the probable behaviours and personality of the aurochs
in Wnschmann, The Wild and Domestic Oxen, pp. 3324. Also
see Thomas Bewick, A General History of Quadrupeds (Newcastle
upon Tyne, 1790), pp. 3841.

184
 4 Andr Leroi-Gourhan, Animals of the Old Stone Age, in A.
Houghton Brodrick, ed., Animals in Archaeology (London, 1972), p. 8.
5 Wnschmann. The Wild and Domestic Oxen, p. 370.
6 Quoted in Cis van Vuure, Retracing the Aurochs (Soa and Moscow,
2005), p. 240.
7 Caroline Grigson (1981), cited in Simon J. M. Davis, The Archaeology
of Animals (London, 1987), p. 175.
8 See views of Linda Donley-Reid and Ian Hodder on aurochs sym-
bolism at Catal Huyuk, Turkey, in Michael Balter, The Goddess and
the Bull (London, 2005), pp. 3234.
9 Inscription no. 34 from an octagonal prism and clay fragments dis-
covered at Kalah-Shergat, currently in the British Museum, trans.
H. Rawlinson, at www.bible-history.com/assyria_archaeology/
archaeology_of_ancient_assyria_text_tiglath_pileser_i.html
(accessed 22 May 2006).
10 H. Epstein and Ian L. Mason, Cattle, in Mason, ed., Evolution of
Domesticated Animals (London, 1984), p. 8.
11 For the full record of the event, see www.nefertiti.iwebland.com/
timelines/topics/shing_and_hunting.htm (accessed 11 May 2006).
12 Hunting contributed to the extinction of the aurochs in Egypt,
but other causes included the increasing aridity of the fertile
savannah and the drying up of rivers and streams. Aurochs also
had to compete for grazing with their domesticated descendents.
13 Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, trans. Carolyn Hammond (Oxford,
1996), 6:28, pp. 1323.
14 See the letter written by the Polish scientist Anton Schmeenerger
to the Polish naturalist Gesner in van Vuure, Retracing the Aurochs,
p. 385.
15 Van Vuure, Retracing the Aurochs, p. 72.
16 Juliet Clutton-Brock, A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals
(London, 1999), p. 84.
17 F. E. Zeuner, The History of the Domestication of Cattle, in
A. E. Mourant and F. E. Zeuner, eds, Man and Cattle: Proceedings
of a Symposium on Domestication, Royal Anthropological Institute
Occasional Paper no. 18 (1963), p. 10.

185
18 Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (reprinted New York, 2002),
p. 200.
19 Gilbert White, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
(reprinted London, 1993), p. 194.
20 See text in Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. iii
(Berkeley, ca, 1980), p. 158.
21 Varro Reatinus, Varro on Farming, trans. Lloyd Storr-Best
(London, 1912), Book 2:1.11.
22 Hammurabis Code of Laws, trans. L. W. King, http://eawc.evans
ville.edu/anthology/hammurabi.htm (accessed 22 May 2006). For
a discussion of cattle in the Visigothic laws, see also Joyce Salisbury,
The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (London, 1994), p. 19.
23 Bradley, Genetic hoof prints.
24 Pliny the Elder, The Natural History of Pliny, trans. J. Bostock and
H. T. Riley (London, 1893), 8:70, p. 2328.
25 Peter Harbison, Pre-Christian Ireland (London, 1988), p. 30.
26 Peter Berresford Ellis, A Brief History of the Celts (London, 2003),
pp. 102, 142.
27 See J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion,
abridged edn (reprinted London, 1987), chap. 62: The Fire-
Festivals of Europe, pp. 60941.
28 Gervase Markham in Joanna Swabe, Animals, Disease and Human
Society (London, 1999), p. 82.
29 Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel (London, 1998), pp. 2067.
30 Ibid., p. 213.
31 Virginia de John Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domesticated
Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford, 2004), p. 77.
32 Ibid., pp. 1078.
33 Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Slincourt (London,
1996), 3:111, p. 197.
34 Ibid., 4:69, p. 237.

2 bull-gods, bull-kings
1 The Epic of Gilgamesh, trans. Andrew George (London, 2000), p. 2.

186
 2 W. M. ONeil, Early Astronomy from Babylonia to Copernicus
(Sydney, 1986), p. 154.
3 See Cyril Aldred, The Egyptians (London, 1998), p. 77.
4 Herodotus, The Histories, 3:28, p. 165.
5 See Jack Randolph Conrad, The Horn and the Sword: The History of
the Bull as a Symbol of Power and Fertility (London, 1959), p. 54.
6 Ralph T. H. Grifth, trans., The Hymns of the Rig-veda (Senares,
1889) 1:33.1011.
7 Ibid.,10:103.1.
8 The Golden Bough, p. 351.
9 The ctional character of Valerius is a devotee of Mithras in
Manda Scotts Boudica: Dreaming The Bull (London, 2004). See
especially pp. 22437, where Valerius tries to prevent his god, in
bull form, from being baited.
10 Pliny the Elder, Natural History: A Selection, trans. John F. Healy
(London, 1991), p. 216.
11 Berresford Ellis, A Brief History of the Celts, p. 30.
12 Pennethorne Hughes, Witchcraft (London, 1952), p. 91.
13 Cited in Charles Squire, Celtic Myth and Legend (New York, 2003),
p. 175.
14 Virgil, The Georgics, trans. Robert Wells (Manchester, 1982),
Georgic 3, pp. 689.
15 The Cretan Bull and Minotaur myths are as described in Robert
Graves, The Greek Myths (London, 1992): no. 88 Minos and his
Brothers; no. 98 Theseus in Crete; and no. 129 The Seventh
Labour: The Cretan Bull.
16 See J. D. Evans, Cretan Cattle-Cults and Sports, in Mourant and
Zeuner, eds, Man and Cattle, pp. 14041; and Mary Renault, The
King Must Die (London, 1958), for a ctional account of The Bull
Dance held at The Bull Court in Knossos.
17 The life of Lane Frost, the world-champion bull rider in 1987,
is portrayed in the lm 8 Seconds (1994).
18 More details about bull-riding can be found on the Professional
Bull Riders website at www.pbrnow.com.
19 A Day in the Life of J. W. Hart, interviewed by Bridget Freer in

187
 the Sunday Times Magazine (12 March 2006).
20 More information about the bull-running can be found at
www.spanish-estas.com/spanish-festivals/pamplona-bull-
running-san-fermin.htm (accessed 7 October 2006).
21 Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Always Rises (New York, 1926),
pp. 2034.
22 See www.jallikatu.com/index1.htm (accessed 22 August 2006).
23 See bull-racing in Michael Palin, Himalaya (London, 2004), p. 23.
24 See article on
www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2005/03/29/2003248
280 (accessed 22 August 2006).
25 Alan Baker, The Gladiator: The Secret History of Romes Warrior
Slaves (London, 2000), p. 100.
26 See Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes
in England, 15001800 (London, 1983), p. 93.
27 Maureen Waller, 1700: Scenes from London Life (London, 2000),
p. 223.
28 Cited in E. J. Burford, London: The Synfulle Citie (London, 1990),
p. 181.
29 Ibid.
30 Cited in Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other
Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, ma, 1987), pp. 1256.
31 See Keith Tester, Animals and Society (London, 1992), pp. 1019.
32 Pliny the Elder, The Natural History of Pliny, 8:70, p. 2329.
33 See Allen Josephs, Hemingways Spanish Sensibility, in Scott
Donaldson, ed., Ernest Hemingway (Cambridge, 1996), p. 229.
34 John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. ii (London, 1996), p. 242.
35 Adrian Shubert, Death and Money in the Afternoon (Oxford, 1999),
p. 8.
36 For an analysis of Tauromaquia, see Robert Hughes, Goya (New
York, 2003), pp. 35165.
37 See Garry Marvin, Bullght (Oxford, 1988), pp. 878.
38 Ibid., p. 99.
39 Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (London, 1932), p. 94.
40 See Pierre Daix, Picasso: Life and Art, trans. Olivia Emmet (London,

188
 1993), pp. 23031.
41 Jonathan Burt, Animals in Film (London, 2002), pp. 119 and 133.

3 cow mysticism and a rural idyll

1 Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 118.
2 Ibid., p. 98.
3 Beat Sterchi, The Cow (London, 1999), p. 87.
4 Ogden Nash, I Wouldnt Have Missed It (London, 1983), p. 19.
5 See E. O. James, The Ancient Gods (London, 1999), pp. 856.
6 For a modern re-working of cow folklore, see Marlene Newman,
Myrons Magic Cow (Bath, 2005).
7 More details about Daisy the cow can be found at www.chicago
history.org/re/oleary.
8 Jack Malvern, Cow-tipping Myth Hasnt Got a Leg To Stand On,
The Times (5 November 2005), p. 5.
9 More information can be found at www.swissinfo.org/eng/
travel/detail/Locking_horns_in_canton_Valais.html?siteSect=411
&sid=1760102&cKey=1050223500000 (accessed 22 August 2006).
10 Mother Instinct Makes Sucklers a Real Threat, Farmers Weekly,
Farm Health and Safety Supplement (11 October 2002), p. s8.
11 Grifth trans., Hymns of the Rig-veda, 1:153.3.
12 Deryck O. Lodrick, Sacred Cows, Sacred Places (London, 1981),
pp. 523.
13 Ibid., p. 67.
14 Indira Gandhi quoted in Oriana Fallaci, Indiras Coup, New York
Review of Books, 18 September 1975.
15 Also see Mother Cow chapter in Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars
and Witches (New York, 1989) for his views on modern cow wor-
ship in India.
16 Norman Lewis, A Goddess in the Stones: Travels in India (London,
1991), p. 38.
17 Sterchi, The Cow, p. 95.
18 White, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, p. 23.
19 Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (reprinted London, 2002), p. 320.

189
20 D. H. Lawrence, Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine
(Philadelphia, pa, 1925), pp. 203, 164 and 166 (respectively).
21 Ibid., p. 167.
22 Ibid., p. 166.
23 Ibid., p. 176.
24 Ibid., p. 167.
25 Ibid., p. 165.
26 Norman MacCaig, Collected Poems (London, 1993), p. 117.
27 Cited in William Vaughan, British Painting: The Golden Age
(London, 1999), p. 154.
28 Cited in Hilda Kean, Animal Rights (London, 1998), p. 49.
29 For a description of the dairymaids symbolic role in urban
May Day rituals, see Charles Phythian-Adams, Milk and Soot:
The Changing Vocabulary of a Popular Ritual in Stuart and
Hanoverian London, in Derek Fraser and Anthony Sutcliffe, eds,
The Pursuit of Urban History (London, 1983).
30 Thomas Hardy, Tess of the DUrbervilles (reprinted London, 1985),
p. 176.
31 Ibid., p. 208.
32 See Cattle chapter in Philip Hook and Mark Poltimore, Popular
Nineteenth Century Paintings: A Dictionary of European Genre
Painters (London, 1986).
33 See Marit Nestermann, The Art of the Dutch Republic, 15851718
(London, 1996), pp. 1078.
34 See Colin Rhodes, Primitivism and Modern Art (London, 1997),
pp. 1445.
35 Mark Rosenthal, Franz Marc (Munich, 1989), pp. 2021.
36 John Betjeman, Collected Poems (reprinted London, 2000), p. 20.
37 The ofcial website of CowParade can be found at
www.cowparade.com.
38 See Edward McPherson, Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat
(London, 2004), pp. 16871.
39 Nell Dunn, Poor Cow (reprinted London, 1988), p. 141.

190
4 toiling the elds and a cattle complex

1 See Andrew Sherratt, Plough and Pastoralism: Aspects of the

Secondary Products Revolution, in Ian Hodder, Glynn Isaac and
Norman Hammond, eds, Pattern of the Past: Studies in Honour of
David Clarke (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 261301.
2 Cited in Garry Marvin, Bullght (Oxford, 1988), p. 91.
3 Hesiod, The Works and Days, trans. Richmond Lattimore
(Ann Arbor, mi, 1959), 43740, p. 71.
4 Ibid., 81416, p. 155.
5 Virgil, The Georgics, trans. Robert Wells, Georgic 3, pp. 667.
6 Varro Reatinus, Varro on Farming, Book 1:20.1.
7 Columella, On Agriculture, vol. iii, trans E. S. Forster and Edward
H. Heffner (Cambridge, 1954), 6:1:12. p. 125.
8 Paul Starkey, The History of Working Animals in Africa, in
R. M. Blench and K. MacDonald, eds, The Origins and
Development of African Livestock (London, 2000), pp. 478502; or
www.animaltraction.com/StarkeyPapers/Starkey-History
AnimalTractioninAfrica-97-draft.pdf (accessed 9 June 2006).
9 John Lockwood Kipling, Beast and Man in India, cited in J. Frank
Dobie, The Longhorns (London, 1943), p. xiii.
10 Cited in Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domesticated Animals
Transformed Early America , p. 145.
11 R. Welldon Finn, Domesday Book: A Guide (Chichester, 1973), p. 66.
12 W.H.R. Curtler A Short History of English Agriculture (Oxford,
1909), p. 16.
13 See Ox entry at www.bestiary.ca/beasts/beastalphashort.htm
(accessed 24 May 2006).
14 Aesop, The Complete Fables (reprinted London, 1998), p. 73.
15 Frazer, The Golden Bough, p. 466.
16 Francis Galton, The Art of Travel (reprinted London, 1971), p. 58.
17 Ibid., p. 60.
18 Ibid., p. 64.
19 Ibid., pp. 2523.
20 Cited in Christopher Hibbert, Africa Explored: Europeans in the

191
 Dark Continent, 17691889 (London, 1982), p. 237.
21 See E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer (Oxford, 1974), p. 49.
22 See discussion in the Introduction of Jonathan Mtetwa, Man and
Cattle in Africa (Saarbrcken, 1982).
23 Philip M. Peek and Kwesi Yankah, eds, African Folklore: An
Encyclopedia (London, 2004), p. 4.
24 Ibid., p. 79.
25 Derrick J. Stenning, Africa: The Social Background, in Mourant
and Zeuner, eds, Man and Cattle, p. 112.
26 Michael E. Meeker, The Pastoral Son and the Spirit of Patriarch:
Religion, Society, and Person among East African Stockkeepers
(Madison, wi, 1989), p. 18.
27 Cited in Melville J. Herskovits, The Cattle Complex in East Africa
(n.p., 1927), p. 72.
28 Frazer, The Golden Bough, p. 565.
29 Taken from Patrick Cunningham, Maasai Rite of Passage,
Geographical, lxxviii/3 (March 2006), pp. 2632.
30 See Mtetwa, Man and Cattle in Africa, pp. 2301.
31 See Martin Meredith, The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of
Independence (London, 2005), p. 158.
32 J. Terrence McCabe, Cattle Bring Us to Our Enemies (Ann Arbor,
mi, 2004), p. 93.
33 Ibid., p. 94.
34 John Iliffe, Africans: The History of a Continent (Cambridge, 1995),
p. 210.
35 See Mtetwa, Man and Cattle in Africa, pp. 1112.
36 Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, p. 186.
37 Figures from M. Mackenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting,
Conservation and British Imperialism (Manchester, 1988), p. 241.
38 Figures cited in Inner Mongolia near Starvation, bbc Online,
25 January 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacic/
1135850.stm.

192
5 cattle stars and romantic associations
1 Henri Misson, Memoirs and Observations of Travels over England
(London, 1719), pp. 31011.
2 Cited in Richard Perren, The Meat Trade in Britain, 18401914
(London, 1978), p. 32.
3 Cited in Raymond B. Becker, Dairy Cattle Breeds (Gainesville, fl,
1973), p. 64.
4 Cited in Stephen Hall and Juliet Clutton-Brock, Two Hundred Years
of British Farm Livestock (London, 1989), p. 63.
5 Becker, Dairy Cattle Breeds, p. 64.
6 Reverend Arthur Young, General View of the Agriculture of the
County of Sussex (London, 1813), p. 228.
7 Ben Rogers, Beef and Liberty: Roast Beef, John Bull and the English
Nation (London, 2004), p. 15.
8 For a complete history of the Shorthorn breed, see
www.shorthorn.co.uk/beef_shorthorn/history.htm.
9 Cited in Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other
Creatures in the Victorian Age, p. 56.
10 Ibid., see The Critique of Fat Cattle, pp. 6979.
11 Cited in William Vaughan, British Painting: The Golden Age
(London, 1999), p. 165.
12 James Dickson, On the Application of the Points by which
Livestock are Judged, Quarterly Review of Agriculture, vi (1835/6),
p. 269.
13 Cited in Perren, The Meat Trade in Britain, p. 32.
14 See J. Frank Dobie, The Longhorns (London, 1943), p. 292.
15 Cited in Clyde A. Milner ii, Carol A. OConnor and Martha A.
Sandweiss, eds, The Oxford History of the American West (Oxford,
1994), p. 252.
16 For a full description of the Chicago stockyards, see Annihilating
Space, meat chapter in William Cronon, Natures Metropolis:
Chicago and the Great West (London, 1991), pp. 20759.
17 J. Frank Dobie, Cow People (Austin, tx, 1981), p. 32.
18 Cited in Lonn Taylor and Ingrid Maar, The American Cowboy

193
 (Washington, dc, 1983), p. 27.
19 Andy Adams, cited in Jon E. Lewis, The Mammoth Book of The West
(London, 2001), p. 163.
20 Ibid., p. 164.
21 George C. Dufeld, Driving Cattle from Texas to Iowa, 1866, in
Annals of Iowa 14 (1924), pp. 2524.
22 The mass slaughter of millions of buffalo, mainly for their hides,
which Philadelphian tanners could turn into commercial leather,
removed the livelihood of the Native Americans, gradually forcing
them into Government reserves. The expansion of the open range
cattle industry was the nal nail in the cofn for the Indians. See
discussion in Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher, The American
West: A New Interpretive History (New Haven, ct, 2000), p. 317.
23 Cited in Lewis, The Mammoth Book of The West, p. 196.
24 Cited in Taylor and Maar, The American Cowboy, p. 39.
25 Ibid., p. 36.
26 Ibid., p. 18.
27 See Milner, OConnor and Sandweiss, eds, The Oxford History of
the American West, pp. 2667.
28 A description of the reversal of Longhorn fortunes can be
accessed at http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/
articles/LL/atl2.html.
29 D. J. Anthony and W.G.T. Blois, The Meat Industry, 2nd edn
(London, 1931), pp. 4775.
30 J. T. Critchell and J. Raymond, A History of the Frozen Meat Trade
(London, 1912), p. 13.
31 faostat (classic) statistics for 2005 (Livestock primary production).
32 See Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation
of Convicts to Australia, 17871868 (London, 1987), p. 96.
33 See A.G.L. Shaw, The Story of Australia, 5th edn (London, 1983),
p. 154.

6 poor cow: pushing the boundaries

1 Douglas M. Considine and Glenn D. Considine, eds, Foods and

194
 Food Products Encyclopaedia (New York, 1982), p. 1170.
2 faostat (classic) 2005 gures.
3 Figures from C.J.C. Phillips, Principles of Cattle Production
(Wallingford, 2001), p. 9, and for 2005/6 from the Milk
Development Council website at
www.mdcdatum.org.uk/Milk%20Supply/averagemilkyields.html
(accessed 21 September 2006).
4 Steve Jones, Almost Like a Whale (London, 1999), p. 44.
5 John Webster, Understanding the Dairy Cow (Oxford, 1987), p. 22.
6 Figures taken from the University of Readings Department of
Agricultural and Food Economics website at
www.apd.rdg.ac.uk/AgEcon/livestockdisease/cattle.htm
(accessed 21 September 2006).
7 Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation (London, 2001), p. 150.
8 Gina Mallet, Last Chance To Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food
World (Edinburgh, 2005), p. 118. The Ox is Gored chapter dis-
cusses how beef has been tainted by health scares.
9 Cited in Jimmy M. Skaggs, Prime Cut: Livestock Raising and
Meatpacking in the US (College Station, tx, 1986), pp. 1212.
10 Brian J. Ford, bse: The Facts (London, 1996), pp. 223.
11 Ofcial gures from defra website,
www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/bse/general/qa/section1.html#q1
(accessed 22 September 2006), and estimates cited in Michael
B. A. Oldstone, Viruses, Plagues and History (Oxford, 2000), p. 163.
12 See gures at www.cjd.ed.ac.uk/gures.htm (as accessed 8 March
2007).
13 See fao document Cattle Ranching and Deforestation at
www.fao.org/ag/againfo/resources/documents/pol-briefs/03/EN/
AGA04_EN_05.pdf, p. 2.
14 Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, p. 150.
15 Isabella Beeton, Book of Household Management, abridged edn
(reprinted Oxford, 2000), pp. 20001.
16 Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd edn (London, 1995), p. 129.
17 Alun Howkins and Linda Merricks, Dewy-eyed Veal Calves: Live
Animal Exports and Middle-Class Opinion, 19801995,

195
 Agricultural History Review, xlviii/1 (2000), p. 99.
18 See photograph in The Independent (22 April 1995).
19 The Animals Australia campaign can be viewed at www.animals
australia.org/default2.asp?idL1=1272&idL2=1865&idL3=1880,
and Compassion in World Farmings campaign against long
distance transportation can been viewed at www.ciwf.org.uk/
campaigns/primary_campaigns/long_distance.html .
20 Skins Trade can be viewed at www.petatv.com/skins.html.
21 Richard Perren, The Meat Trade in Britain, 18401914 (London,
1978), p. 33.
22 Taken from the Voice of Humanity (1827), cited in Hilda Kean,
Animal Rights (London, 1998), p. 62.
23 I. M. Greg and S. H. Towers, Cattle Ships and our Meat Supply
(London, 1894), p. 3.
24 Horace Francis Lester, Behind the Scenes in Slaughterhouses
(London, 1892).
25 Greg and Towers, Cattle Ships and our Meat Supply, p. 13.
26 Ibid., pp. 1112.
27 Live cattle were imported and slaughtered at Deptford docks
following a disastrous outbreak of rinderpest, which had been
bought into Hull by cattle from Russia in 1865.
28 Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (reprinted New York, 1986), pp. 4041.
29 Ibid., p. 42.
30 Ibid., p. 48. In England, the method of slaughter was with a pole-
axe which was similar to a sledge-hammer, but on the end of the
head was a hollow steel spike. A cane was inserted into the resulting
hole made by the blow to stir up the brains of the dying animal;
supposedly to improve the taste of the meat.
31 The corrals have been designed by the animal scientist Temple
Grandin, whose own experience with autism led her to realize
that animals process the world as sensory information sights
and sounds, pictures just as she does. In her book Animals in
Translation (London, 2005), she describes her work with cattle
to improve the feed-lots and slaughtering handling facilities in
the majority of us and Canadian concerns.

196
32 Examples cited in Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing
Attitudes in England, 15001800, p. 48.
33 Sterchi, The Cow, p. 354.
34 Cited in Roger Scruton, Animal Rights and Wrongs, 3rd edn
(London, 2000), p. 103.
35 Wilfred Owen, The War Poems, ed. Jon Stallworthy (reprinted
London, 2006), p. 12.

epilogue: out of sight, out of mind?

1 Farmers Weekly website, www.fwi.co.uk, forum pages sometimes
relate public misconceptions about milk production: 17 May 2006
saw comments that children thought cows had to be killed to get
their milk, and a comment from a mother of three children that
their milk comes from the supermarket (not a cow).
2 Another eye-opener was the televised slaughter of beef cattle
during the programme Kill it, Cook it, Eat it (bbc3, 5 March 2007),
which showed the processes involved when taking the live cow to
beef on the plate. Many in the audience remarked on the skill of
the slaughtermen and how humanely the cattle were treated.

197
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Aldred, Cyril, The Egyptians (London, 1998)

Anthony, D. J., and W.G.T. Blois, The Meat Industry, 2nd edn
(London, 1931)
Balter, Michael, The Goddess and the Bull (London, 2005)
Berresford Ellis, Peter, A Brief History of the Celts (London, 2003)
Bradley, D. G., Genetic Hoof Prints: The dna Trail Leading Back to
the Origins of Todays Cattle Has Taken Some Surprising Turns
Along the Way, Natural History (February 2003)
Burt, Jonathan, Animals in Film (London, 2002)
Clutton-Brock, Juliet, A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals
(London, 1999)
Conrad, Jack Randolph, The Horn and the Sword: The History of the
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Cotterell, Arthur, The Minoan World (London, 1979)
Critchell, J. T., and J. Raymond, A History of the Frozen Meat Trade
(London, 1912)
Cronon, William, Natures Metropolis (London, 1991)
Davis, Simon J. M., The Archaeology of Animals (London, 1987)
Daix, Pierre, Picasso: Life and Art, trans. Olivia Emmet (London, 1993)
deJohn Anderson, Virginia, Creatures of Empire: How Domesticated
Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford, 2004)
Dobie, J. Frank, The Longhorns (London, 1943)
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Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer (Oxford, 1974)
Ford, Brian J., bse: The Facts (London, 1996)

198
Fraser, Alan, The Bull (Reading, 1972)
Frazer, J. G., The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, abridged
edn (reprinted London, 1987)
Galaty, J. G., and P. Bonte, eds, Herders, Warriors and Traders:
Pastoralism in Africa (Oxford, 1991)
Galton, Francis, The Art of Travel, 1872 (reprinted London, 1971)
Grandin, Temple, Animals in Translation (London, 2005)
Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths (London, 1992)
Greg, I. M., and S. H. Towers, Cattle Ships and our Meat Supply
(London, 1894)
Hall, Stephen, and Juliet Clutton-Brock, Two Hundred Years of British
Farm Livestock (London, 1989)
Harris, Marvin, Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches (New York, 1989)
Hemingway, Ernest, Death in the Afternoon, (London, 1932)
, The Sun Also Rises (New York, 1926)
Herskovits, Melville J., The Cattle Complex in East Africa (1927)
Houghton Brodrick, A., ed., Animals in Archaeology (London, 1972)
Hughes, Robert, Goya (London, 2003)
Kean, Hilda, Animal Rights (London, 1998)
Lester, Horace Francis, Behind the Scenes in Slaughterhouses (London,
1892)
Lewis, Jon E., The Mammoth Book of the West (London, 2001)
Lodrick, Deryck O., Sacred Cows, Sacred Places (London, 1981)
Mallet, Gina, Last Chance To Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World
(Edinburgh, 2005)
Marvin, Garry, Bullght (Oxford, 1988)
Mourant, A. E., and F. E. Zeuner, eds, Man and Cattle: Proceedings of
a Symposium on Domestication (Royal Anthropological Institute,
1963)
Rath, Sara, About Cows (Minocqua, wi, 1988)
Perren, Richard, The Meat Trade in Britain, 18401914 (London, 1978)
Renault, Mary, The King Must Die (London, 1958)
Rice, Michael, The Power of the Bull (London, 1998)
Rifkin, Jeremy, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture
(London, 1992)

199
Ritvo, Harriet, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in
the Victorian Age (Cambridge, ma, 1987)
Rogers, Ben, Beef and Liberty: Roast Beef, John Bull and the English
Nation (London, 2004)
Scott, Manda, Boudica: Dreaming The Bull (London, 2004)
Sherratt, Andrew, Plough and Pastoralism: Aspects of the Secondary
Products Revolution, in Ian Hodder, Glynn Isaac and Norman
Hammond, eds, Pattern of the Past: Studies in Honour of David
Clarke (Cambridge, 1981)
Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation (London, 2001)
Shubert, Adrian, Death and Money in the Afternoon (Oxford, 1999)
Sinclair, Upton, The Jungle (New York, 1906)
Singer, Peter, Animal Liberation, 2nd edn (London, 1995)
Skaggs, Jimmy M., Prime Cut: Livestock Raising and Meatpacking in the
us (College Station, tx, 1986)
Smith, Andrew B., Pastoralism in Africa: Origins and Development
Ecology (London, 1992)
Starkey, Paul, The History of Working Animals in Africa, in R. M.
Blench and K. MacDonald, eds, The Origins and Development of
African Livestock (London, 2000)
Sterchi, Beat, The Cow (London, 1988)
Swabe, Joanna, Animals, Disease and Human Society (London, 1999)
Taylor, Lonn, and Ingrid Maar, The American Cowboy (Washington,
dc, 1983)
Thomas, Keith, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in
England, 15001800 (London, 1983)
van Vuure, Cis, Retracing the Aurochs (Soa and Moscow, 2005)
Webster, John, Understanding the Dairy Cow (Oxford, 1987)
Wnschmann, A., The Wild and Domestic Oxen, in Grzimeks
Animal Life Encyclopedia, vol. xiii: Mammals iv (New York, 1972)

200
 Associations and Websites

oklahoma state university animal science department

www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/cattle/
Descriptions of the cattle breeds of the world

the bovine bazaar

www.bovinebazaar.com/breedassoc.htm
A near-complete list of global cattle breed associations

other associations include:

www.gloucestercattle.org.uk

www.irishmoiledcattlesociety.com

www.lincolnredcattlesociety.co.uk

www.longhorncattlesociety.com

see references for suggested websites, plus:

www.aurochs.org/cows/famous/
List of, and links to, famous cows

www.crazyforcows.com
Popular website for cow enthusiasts; springboard site for many
other cow-related internet links

201
www.prairieoxdrovers.com
Canadian oxen enthusiasts; many links to oxen-related websites

www.ciwf.org.uk
Compassion in World Farming website

http://members.tripod.com/~animom/bull.html
The Extreme Cruelty of Bullfighting anti-bullfight website

www.iscowp.org
The International Society for Cow Protection

202
 Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge Jonathan Burt for all his encouragement and
advice without him I would not have written this book. Also thanks to
Harry Gilonis for his patience. Thanks lastly to Grant Sherriffs and to my
parents, Tim and Pauline: no more cow-talk, I promise.
This book is for my brother, Christian Velten, who has been miss-
ing in Africa since March 2003 after setting out to follow in the
footsteps of the Scottish explorer Mungo Park. May the special cows
be looking after him.

203
 Photo Acknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to express their thanks to the below
sources of illustrative material and/or permission to reproduce it.
(Some sources uncredited in the captions for reasons of brevity are also
given below.)

Photo Seth N. Anderson: p. 92; Archaeological Museum of Herakleion:

pp. 40, 50; Acropolis Museum, Athens: p. 41; Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
Buffalo: p. 90; photo courtesy of the artist (Michael J. Austin) / Park Walk
Gallery, London: p. 6; drawings by the author: pp. 11, 99; photo Leonardo
Beraldo: p. 165; Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris: p. 81; British
Library, London: pp. 102 (ms 42130f.170), 128 (ms Royal 2.b.vii.f.75),
British Museum, London: pp. 24-25, 32, 117 (bm Orient 533); Cairo
Museum: p. 71; photo Frans Devriese: p. 113; Egyptian Museum, Cairo: p.
68; photo Porter Glendinning: p. 38; photo Naveen Jamal: p. 170; Karachi
Museum: p. 22; photo courtesy of John Kenny / Sparshatt Galleries,
London: p. 9; photo Mark Kerrison: p. 78; Koninklijk Kabinet van
Schilderijen Mauritshuis, Den Haag: p. 87; Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna: p. 83; photo Enrico Laet: p. 18; photos Library of Congress,
Washington, dc, Prints and Photographs Division: pp. 27 (British
Cartoon Prints Collection, lc-uszc4-3147), 28 (lc-usz62-100542), 33
(lc-uszc4-10065), 51 (lc-usz62-102085), 62 (lc-uszc4-6784), 64 (lc-
usz62-91677), 69 (lc-usz62-113356), 85 (lc-usz62-112640), 94 (lc-usz61-
1026), 103 (photo Fred Niblo, LC-DIG-ppmsca-04931), 104 foot (photo
John F. Jarvis, lc-usz62-64854), p. 109 (lc-usz62-72566), 121 (lc-usz62-
94687), 132 (British Cartoon Prints Collection, lc-usz62-132986), 139

204
(lc-usz62-97324), 141 (American Folklife Centre, lc-usz62-2669), 144
(photo F. M. Steele, lc-usz62-55219), 145 (lc-usz62-106852), 146 (lc-
usz62-89989), 152 (Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection, lc-usz62-
99484), 173 (lc-usz62-51759), 174 foot (lc-usz62-51781); reproduced cour-
tesy of the Montana Stockgrowers Association and the Montana
Historical Society: p. 150; Muse du Louvre, Paris: pp. 35, 48; Muse
Eugne Boudin, Honfleur: p. 47; Museo Capitolino, Rome: p. 42; Muse
dOrsay, Paris: p. 63; Museo Nazionale, Naples: p. 29; National Gallery
of Scotland, Edinburgh: p. 129 (top); National Museum, Athens: p. 49;
National Museum, Copenhagen: p. 43; photo 1 2 3 oochappan: p. 54
(www.pbase.com/oochappan); Palace Museum, Beijing: p. 98; Palazzo
Ducale, Venice: p. 39; photo Colin Gregory Palmer: p. 162 (www.Colin
GregoryPalmer.net); photos Rex Features: p. 106 (Rex Features / Sipa
Press, 203792c), 116 (Rex Features / Pacific Press Service, 94255d), 122
(Rex Features / K. Nomachi, 294915be), 124 (Rex Features / Paul Grover,
538263m), 163 (Rex Features / Greg Williams, 260105a), 167 (Rex Features
/ Simon Townsley, 238999a), (Rex Features / Richard Austin, 335879e);
photo Tim Robson: p. 151; Roger-Viollet: p. 174 top (3960-10, courtesy of
Rex Features); photo Richard Shilling: p. 79; Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, New York: p. 89; photo Hartmut Ulrich: p. 123; photo John
Warburton-Lee photography: p. 119; photo Ellen Wallace / Zidao Com-
munication, Switzerland: p. 74; collection of Jan Wichers, Hamburg:
p. 75; photo Matthew Winterburn: p. 95.

205
 Index

Animals Australia 168 bullfight (corrida) 6, 40, 5866

Aberdeen Angus breed 138, 150 bull-leaping 49, 50, 119
Aesop 107 bull-racing 545
Africa 7, 10, 11, 21, 22, 24, 97, 101, 103, bull-riding 5052
105, 11026 bull-running 524, 57, 73
Apis 346 bull-wrestling 50, 59
artificial insemination 1589 bulls, combat of 456, 55
Attis 412
Audhumla 70 castration 9, 21, 41, 97, 98, 144
Austin, Michael J. 6 Catal Huyuk, Turkey 50
Australia 8, 24, 50, 138, 1535, 183 cattle boom, American 1478
cattle drives, American 140, 1412,
Bacon, Francis 91 1446, 148, 150
Bakewell, Robert 13031, 133, 159, 182 cattle plague (rinderpest) 26, 124
barbed wire 14850 cattle portrayed in art 6, 39, 47, 60, 63,
beef, intensive production 8, 156, 160, 645, 83, 868, 89
1613, 166 cattle-raiding 114, 1224
Beeton, Isabella 1667 Chagall, Marc 88, 89
bestiaries 107 China 28, 98, 126
Betjeman, John 91 Christians / Christianity 28, 30, 434, 73,
Bewick, Thomas 7, 17, 137 78, 170
Bos indicus / zebu 22, 24, 54, 105, 154 Columbus, Christopher 27
Bos primigenius / aurochs 1011, 1221, Columella 101
31, 97, 179 Concrete Cows, at Milton Keynes 91
Bos taurus / taurine 22, 24, 25 cowboys (in the Americas) 20, 50,
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy 1426, 148, 150, 152
(bse) 8, 91, 163, 165 CowParade 923
Brahman breed 154 Cowpox 26, 27, 84
Bride-wealth 114, 11920, 123, 124 Cretan Bull, the 478, 50
Bruegel the Elder, Pieter 83 Crete 3941, 4650
bull-baiting 558 Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (vcjd) 1634

206
Criollo breed 27, 139, 143, 152 Herens breed 734
Culley, George 12931 Herodotus 2930, 35, 70
Herskovits, Melville 115
dairy, intensive production 111, 156, Hesiod 99
15760, 177 Hirst, Damien 91
Darwin, Charles 20 Humanitarian League 1712
Devon breed 134, 150
Diamond, Jared 267 India /Sacred cow 7, 8, 9, 10, 21, 22, 24,
Dickens, Charles 81 378, 535, 7480, 95, 101, 105,
Digby, Sir Kenelm 68 1067,1689
Domesday Book 107 Indra 37
Droughtmaster breed 138 Ireland 10, 19, 25, 44, 45, 72, 1712
Dunn, Nell 96
Jaktorowski Royal Forest 17
Egypt 15, 21, 23, 346, 39, 41, 68, 7072, Jallikattu 534
101, 103 Jamestown, Virginia 28
English Park Cattle / Chillingham 17, 18 Jersey cows (fictional) 935
Epic of Gilgamesh, The 323 John Bull 133
Julius Caesar 16, 59, 183
Farnese Bull, The 29
film / animation 62, 656, 93, 945, 96, Kenny, John 9
104, 143, 145, 157 Kipling, John Lockwood 1067
folklore, cow 723 Krishna 75, 77
foot-and-mouth disease 153, 164, 180
Frazer, James 26, 108, 118 lactose 110, 112
Lascaux caves 12
Galton, Sir Francis 10810 Lawrence, D. H. 812
Gandhi, Indira 79 leather / hide 8, 14, 95, 108, 111, 114, 127,
Gibbons, Stella 934 140, 152, 169, 172, 179
Golden Calf, the 434 Lewis, Norman 7980
Goya, Francisco de 6061, 61, 62, 645 Longhorn breed 13031, 133
Grandin, Temple 196 Longhorns, Texan 127, 13846, 14851,
Gundestrup Cauldron 43 156, 173, 181

Hahn, Eduard 19 Maasai 110, 113, 118, 123

Hardy, Thomas 85 MacCaig, Norman 823
Harrison, Ruth 167 Mallet, Gina 162
Hathor 70, 71 Manet, Edouard 63
Heck, Heinz and Lutz (Heck cattle) 18 Marc, Franz 88, 89
Hemingway, Ernest 523, 623 Mesopotamia 14, 223, 313, 39, 41, 97,
Heracles 467, 50 99
Hereford breed 135, 15051, 155 milk let down 11112

207
milkmaids / dairymaids 67, 836 Shorthorn breed 1334, 136, 138, 150, 153,
Min 36 155
Minotaur 489, 65 Sinclair, Upton (The Jungle) 1723, 175,
misconceptions about cows 8, 181 177
Mithras 42, 43 Singer, Peter 167
Mohenjo-daro 22, 105 slaughter / abattoirs 8, 78, 151, 157,
1623, 165, 1689, 170, 1726, 177, 178
Nandi 38 Smithfield Club Cattle Show 1356
Nash, Ogden 69 Smithfield Market, London 129, 138,
Neith 70 16971
New England, ploughing 107 South America 8, 20, 24, 50, 66, 151, 152,
Nuer, the 114, 115, 11718, 122 153, 164, 165
Nut 7071 Soutine, Chaim 89, 90
Sterchi, Beat (The Cow) 689, 80, 175, 177
Owen, Richard 19 Surabhi 74
Owen, Wilfred 178
ox-cart 97, 101, 103, 104, 105 Tin B Cuailnge 45
Taurus 334
pastoralists 97, 11027 Tell Ubaid, Iraq, frieze 24
peta 169 Tess of the DUrbervilles 856
Picasso, Pablo 59, 62, 65 Theseus 46, 48, 50
Pliny the Elder 245, 36, 44, 589 transportation, of cattle 8, 16872
plough(ing) 97102, 105, 1067, 108 tsetse fly 1256
Potter, Paulus 87
Union Stockyard, Chicago 139, 140, 142,
Recombinant bovine somatotropin 150, 1726
(rbst) 161
Rembrandt van Rijn 89 Vaphio cups 49
Rig-Veda 37, 75 Varro Reatinus 22, 100, 183
roast beef 128, 1323, 135 veal 1668
Romero, Francisco 59, 182 Venationes 55, 59
round-up (traditional rodeo) 1434, 149 Veronese, Paulo 39
Rwanda 12022, 183 Virgil 456, 99100
Voisard-Margerie, Adrien 47
sacrifice 4042, 44, 47, 48, 76, 107, 108,
118 White, Gilbert 21, 80
Schlosser, Eric (Fast Food Nation) 1612,
166, 1756 Young, Revd Arthur 131
Schweinfurth, Georg 112, 114
Scottish Highland breed 18, 129, 138 ZagreusDionysus 4041
Serapis 36 Zeuner, F. E. 1920
Shiva 378, 74, 105 Zeus 39, 83, 108

208