Cattle
Neat animals were kept near Jamestown in the early years, but they, like the swine, had to gather their own living. A few were trained for draft purposes. In new grounds where stumps and roots prevail, oxen are more useful than horses. They do not get in a panic when obstacles interfere. Then too, they can be slaughtered for beef when they become too old for work. During the period under study, cattle, in Virginia, often brought good prices. Many were purchased by the New England colonists as it was cheaper to buy animals, in America, than to go to the expense and loss of animals by shipping them across the ocean.
There was a market for oxen in the Caribbean region, where they were used for power, in the sugar mills.
In the first thirty years, some of the cattle went wild in the back country, but many of the cows were kept in the vicinity of the Jamestown headquarters. While not notable as dairy cows, they produced enough milk so that Virginia gained a reputation among ship crews for its excellent butter and cheese. In 1649 it was estimated that there were twenty thousand cattle in the Colony.