HISTORY

These are cattle whose past is truly rooted in the mists of antiquity with mention in the earliest historic records of Britain. While historians have disputed whether the cattle are descended from wild aurochs or domestic cattle introduced by the Romans, it is clear that the many of the wild white cattle herds of medieval times originated in the 13^th century. There are several ancient herds still in existence today that date from that time. Familiar herd names in the breed that date back hundreds of years include Dynevor, Chartley, and Cadzow. The famous Chillingham herd also dates from this time but has been run as a feral, closed herd for centuries.

The story of how the White Park cattle came to the US starts in Britain just prior to the outbreak of World War II. Anxious to protect centuries of heritage in the face of a possible Nazi invasion, a very small number of White Park calves were shipped to the Toronto zoo. These animals were subsequently shipped to the Bronx zoo for safekeeping. The zoo determined that keeping domestic cattle was not a long term project for them and contacted the King Ranch in Texas to provide a home for the cattle over time. The cattle stayed at the King Ranch from the early 1940’s until the early 1980’s when the entire herd was sold to the Moeckly family in Polk City Iowa. The Moeckly’s culled the herd for type and maintained the ancient horned animals separately from their more commercial herd of similarly marked but polled cattle.

In the late 1980’s the Moeckly’s sold a few heifers to Seed Savers Exchange, a single heifer to Joywind Rare Breed Conservancy in Canada and the remainder of the herd to the B Bar Ranch in Montana. The herds established in Iowa and Montana were managed throughout the 1990’s with two goals in mind. The first was to maintain the genetics of the small population and the second was to simply increase the numbers. Targets for population size have been recently achieved and cattle are now available for sale to other breeders.