Ancient White Park

White cattle with dark points have been in Britain a very long time. The Celts wrote about them, the Romans documented them in 39 AD, and Druids kept them for ceremony. Later they were hunted for sport, in herds scattered across England, Scotland and Wales.

In 1225 Henry III legislated to enclose some of the deer parks that held them, at Cadzow, Chartley, Chillingham, Dynevor and Vaynol. Most of the cattle kept roaming outside those walls, and as their habitat shrank the free herds went. The park animals are what survived, which is where the name comes from.

That accident of enclosure is why the breed matters. Blood typing shows a remarkable genetic distance between the Ancient White Park and every other domestic breed, because it spent centuries isolated with almost nobody selecting it for anything.

The Park Society formed in 1918, and its first herd book recorded nine horned herds and six polled. British White cattle were included originally and were split off as a separate breed in 1946.

Buy with the temperament in mind. These are athletic, lean, aggressive grazers that keep a feral streak.