BOOK SERIALISATION
Native: Life in a Vanishing Landscape The white stripes
Continuing our exclusive extracts from his award-winning book, Patrick Laurie explains why he prizes a once-despised strain of Galloway cattle
By Patrick Laurie
began to focus on pure black cattle – ‘black, black and only black’ as the saying goes. The Galloway Cattle Society was established in 1878 and set down many of the conventions which had become habit. They decreed that only three colours should be recognised as true. Red and dun were popular, but black was
king. Black Galloways would go on to power the beef industry in the south of Scotland for the next century, and in time they’d cast a broad shadow across the world. The future was less promising for animals which failed to conform. Some of the oldest Galloways were black animals with a white stripe
along their spines and under their bellies. These were called Riggit Galloways, pointing to the pitched white ‘rigg’ on their back. Irish farmers made a fetish o these same beautiful markings, and they developed the beautiful Droimeann and Moiled breeds with the same white line. Maybe that’s where our riggs came Duncan Ireland Photography
The original herds of Galloway cattle probably looked like a muddle, a churning mix of black, red, brown (dun) and white animals. Some were ‘belted’ with a white band around their bellies, and there were all kinds of other markings and patterns which lay somewhere in between. As momentum gathered, farmers
Galloways marked by the white ‘rigg’, or stripe, on their back used to be shunned by cattle farmers – even though they have been on the land for centuries
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