The Shetland, known natively in the Scots language as Shetland kye is a small, hardy Scottish breed of cattle from the Shetland Islands to the north of mainland Scotland. The cattle are normally black and white in colour but there are smaller numbers in grey, red and dun. History Cattle were one of the originally domesticated breeds of livestock kept by the Neolithic settlers of the Shetland islands. This happened probably no later than circa 3,600 BC. The early remains indicate a very large animal for these early farmers to cope with. It is believed these early cattle were young aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius), captured in the Scottish forests, the direct ancestor. Cattle bones found in these early Shetland settlements show evidence of domestication. Their joints show traces of arthritis, the teeth indicate periods of stress (manifested as rings of lighter and darker ridges), indicating regular winter hardship. Gradually, a smaller animal started to appear in the archaeological remains, and by the Bronze Age, starting ca 2,500 BC, two types of cattle appear in the remains, a larger and a smaller one. The smaller one seems to have been favoured and by the Iron Age, starting around 2,000 years ago, it is the only type occurring in the sites. This animal was just over one meter high at the shoulder and was described as “a short-legged, stocky, short-horned beast” descended from a small gene pool. A court record from 1797 describes the cattle – in terms of colours, names, ages and heights – of a particular farm involved in a legal settlement, and based on this description the cattle still had the small size of their Iron Age ancestors. Today the island cattle remain small, standing about 1.2 metres high at the withers, with a light bone structure, thin hide, fine hair and long tail with a white switch. They were once multi-coloured, but modern selection has favoured predominantly black or black and white cattle. Alexander Fenton, citing Forsyth and Shirreff gives an estimate of just over 40,000 head of cattle in 1808 and less than half of that, circa 15,000 in 1814 due to the expansion in the human population. The small tenanted farms or crofts were made smaller by the land-owning lairds to increase the number of tenants they could oblige to undertake the haaf (deep-sea) fishery for them. This was a period of starvation and poverty for