One of these harbingers was the movement to close the open range. By the turn of the twentieth century, cattle served mostly as a source of milk and meat.ĭevelopments during this period laid the foundation for what would become the modern cattle-raising industry. Furthermore, with the almost universal use of horses and mules as work stock and the increasing availability of mass-produced leather, candles, and other cattle-derived products, cattle gradually ceased to be the multi-purpose animals they had been during much of the nineteenth century. For the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, Alabama’s cattle industry stagnated. The Civil War took a further toll on Alabama’s cattle herds as animals were sold off, consumed by hungry families on the homefront or confiscated by the military. ![]() Large planters and “gentleman farmers” were most responsible for the introduction and expansion of purebred herds of modern British breeds such as Herefords, Shorthorns, and Devons, which were used to improve bloodlines in common herds and as display animals at local fairs and livestock shows.īy the mid-nineteenth century, cotton production had emerged as the primary agricultural pursuit in Alabama, a development that caused a corresponding decline in cattle raising. On the plantations of the Black Belt and the Tennessee Valley, slaves most often cared for cattle and other livestock, and some became skilled cattlemen. Cattle served as draft animals, as sources of meat and dairy products, as producers of fertilizer, and as suppliers of leather, tallow, and other products. Although pork was more popular than beef in the typical southern diet, most planters and small farmers in Alabama found plenty of reasons to keep cattle in addition to their hogs. In the first half of the nineteenth century, southwest Alabama, with its plentiful canebrakes (dense thickets of cane with edible shoots) and sawgrass stands became the territory’s and state’s primary cattle-herding region.Īlthough most common in south Alabama, cattle raising had spread across the state by the outbreak of the Civil War. Cattle were periodically corralled and identified with brands or marks, and drovers transported herds of cattle to markets in Mobile, on the east coast, or in blossoming interior towns. Farmers fenced in their crops and allowed livestock to roam freely in a system known as open-range herding. Like the French and Spanish settlers, Anglo-Americans took advantage of the vast open spaces and a comparatively sparse population. By the time of Alabama’s statehood in 1819, however, cattle ranching had come to be dominated by the Anglo-American settlers who flooded into the region, bringing with them a system of ranching developed in the piney woods of the Carolinas. The eighteenth century witnessed a dramatic increase in cattle raising among Indian nations in the Southeast, with the Cherokees of northeastern Alabama adapting the practices of European settlers in the western Carolinas.īy the time of the American Revolution, some residents of the Mobile area and several prominent residents of local Indian villages owned herds numbering in the hundreds. Within a generation, French colonial commerce boasted a thriving cattle-raising business, and, like their Spanish predecessors, French missionaries and settlers traded their knowledge and stock with local Indian tribes. The first documentation of the practice, however, appears in 1701 from French colonial records from Dauphin Island and other Mobile Bay settlements. Domestic cattle raising was likely already underway in Alabama in the late seventeenth century. Although feral cattle likely ventured from coastal areas into modern-day Alabama ahead of permanent European settlers, in the late sixteenth century Spanish missionaries first introduced the practice of cattle raising to the American Indians of the interior Southeast. ![]() Cattle can be found in every Alabama county, with Montgomery and Cullman Counties having the highest number, and beef is valued at around $524 million in the state as a whole.Ĭattle are not indigenous to the Western Hemisphere. Diverse practices and practitioners all contributed to the development of cattle raising in Alabama, and today it is the most common agricultural activity among farmers in Alabama and around the country. Since the introduction of cattle to North America by the Spanish, breeds, ranching methods, and ownership have undergone numerous transformations. ![]() ![]() Alabama’s modern cattle industry is one of the pillars of agriculture in the state.
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