The "pureness" of a breed only goes as far as "how long have the cattle in such breed been bred from the same lines of similar phenotype cattle". There were no Aberdeen Angus in Eden, even though some on here might like to think so.
Just kiddin'! ... not really :cowboy:
So... from this source
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~bjjennin/angus.html I have gleaned the following:
Early Scottish Cattle. Although little is known about the early origin of the cattle that later became known as the Aberdeen-Angus breed, it is thought that the improvement of the original stock found in the area began in the last half of the 18th century. The cattle found in northern Scotland were not of uniform color, and many of
the cattle of the early days had varied color markings or broken color patterns. Many of the cattle were polled, but some few had horns. The characteristics we commonly call polled was often referred to in the old Scottish writings by the terms of "humble," "doddies," "humlies," or "homyl."
Founder: If any one person can be singled out as the founder of a breed of livestock, Hugh Watson of Keillor, who lived in the vale of Strathmore in Angus, is worthy of that distinction. If not the first real improver of Aberdeen-Angus cattle, he was certainly the most systematic and successful. Both his father and grandfather had been buyers and breeders of the Angus doddies. The family is known to have owned cattle as early as 1735. Hugh Watson was born in 1789 and, in 1808, at the time he was 19 years of age, he became a tenant at Keillor.
When Hugh Watson started his farming activities at Keillor, he received from his father's herd six of the best and blackest cows, as well as a bull. That same summer, he visited some of the leading Scottish cattle markets and purchased the 10 best heifers and the best bull that he could find that showed characteristics of the Angus cattle that he was striving to breed.
The females were of various colors, but the bull was black; Watson decided that the color of his herd should be black and he started selecting in that direction.
As far as Shorthorn being in the mix: "It is often suggested that some Shorthorn blood found its way into the Aberdeen-Angus breed prior to the time the Herd Book was closed. Alexander Keith, secretary of the Aberdeen-Angus Cattle Society from 1944 to 1955, takes exception to this opinion by writing:
The statement has been frequently made that shorthorn blood was introduced into the Aberdeen-Angus breed at an early stage of its existence. There is no foundation whatever for such a statement." So, there probably is a little. :mrgreen:
At any rate, the Red Angus breed was founded from those black animals that still carried a red gene after selective black breeding since the 1700's. There is no reason that the gene for a white switch couldn't be in the woodpile as well, coming from those original broken colored cows. RA as a breed still have cattle that show up with excessive white (some of the Category II's), we just breed away from it.
If you study RA crossbreds closely you will note that the paler nose is very dominant. As an example check out the calves on this website:
http://www.ankenmanranch.com/crossbreeding.htm. The black nose seems to run in certain family lines, such as the Hobos.
I have procrastinated doing chores long enough. Cheers. :wave:
