History | Mashona

ORIGIN AND HISTORY

The first written record on Mashona cattle dates back to 1890 when Mr Jack Curruthers-Smith wrote in a letter to Mr Fank Willoughby the following:

"My first experience of Mashona cattle was in the beginning of 1891 until the end of March 1897, when I left for Bulawayo in Matabeleland. I considered Mashona cattle a distinctive breed of their own. They were a very small breed, with very small and fine bone, very compact."

"The true Mashona, as I remember it, had very short legs, bone very fine, a long thin tail, with a bush at the end of it, not unlike the bush on a lion's tail."

"I might add that the hair on the Mashona cattle was very short and simply shone, when in perfect condition, which in the early 1890s they generally were"

Perfect Mashona bull from the early years in Zimbabwe

A typical Mashona heifer maintaining good condition on natural veld

FIRST BREEDING HERDS

The first two Mashona breeding herds were built up by two men, Frank Willoughby and Allie McLeod. They were the pioneers who, in 1941, independently started buying up indigenous animals that conformed to their desired characteristics.

Willoughby bought much of his foundation stock in the Chilimanzi and Buhera areas. One particular polled bull, at just 3 months old, amazingly walked the full 200 miles from Buhera to Ellerton Farm, and would have a tremendous influence on the future Mashona breed.

McLeod bought most of his original animals in the Mhondoro area. He trekked them first to Gokwe, then Essexvale, bought some polled bulls from Ellerton and by careful selection built a fine, hardy, fertile herd of small, docile, black, hornless cattle.

They shared a vision and founded the Rhodesian Indigenous Cattle Society in January of 1950 which was renamed to the Mashona Cattle Society a few years later and is still in existence to this day.

Mashona bull MCS1, the first animal that was registered in the Zimbabwean Herd Book, walked 200 miles as a three month old calf with its mother from Buhera to Ellerton farm

Special recognition and sincere gratitude goes towards the Mashona Cattle Society of Zimbabwe for allowing us to republish contents from their very informative website.