ABSTRACT
William Marshall noticed that the dairy cattle of Gloucestershire were deficient in chine and too long in the leg in 1788. By 1850 part of the grass formerly used for dairy cattle in the Vales of Evesham and Berkeley was being used for grazing and fattening, though Berkeley retained its reputation for butter and cheese. The importation of Dutch or Flanders cattle, related by contemporaries, was another sign of the growing interest in the breeding of higher yielding and more remunerative cattle that was soon to flower in the work of Bakewell, the Collings Brothers and others. The herd of cattle, which lived on grass, hay and straw, could not be enlarged on a holding of a given size because the farmer could not provide more food to keep additional cows. The dairy industry flourished on the land adjacent to Cheshire in the neighbouring counties, but there is no similar detailed information about the size of herds the farmers maintained.
