Pineywoods

The Pineywoods is one of the oldest cattle breeds in the United States, descended from Spanish cattle landed here from the early 1500s. Spanish colonists ran them the way they ran cattle at home: extensive, low input, largely left alone.

Breeds like this have a name. Criollo cattle are of European origin but born in the New World, and the Pineywoods sits alongside the Florida Cracker and the Texas Longhorn in that group.

What shaped it was the Southeast itself, across Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, with a light hand of human selection on top. The result is heat tolerant, long-lived, resistant to parasites and disease, and able to stay productive on forage that would not keep another breed going. They were kept for beef, occasionally milked, and worked as oxen in the southeastern timber industry.

Improved English and European cattle arrived in the late 1800s and displaced them wherever the newcomers could stand the climate. Crossbreeding took much of the rest.

One thing to ask about before you buy: temperament varies a great deal from herd to herd in this breed. Judge the herd, not the breed.