Wye Plantation Angus

Wye Plantation Angus, part of the University of Maryland's Wye Research and Education Center in Queenstown, MD, maintains one of the most historically significant black angus herds in the country. The property sits on Maryland's Eastern Shore, roughly 30 miles east of Annapolis along the Chesapeake Bay.

The herd traces its origins to 1938, when Arthur A. Houghton Jr. and farm manager James B. Lingle founded it with just 18 registered yearling heifers and one bull. Between 1942 and 1958, 19 bulls were imported from the British Isles, and those animals account for roughly 75 percent of the genetics present in the herd today. No outside females were ever introduced, and the herd has been closed to new bloodlines since 1958 — a distinction that makes it one of the longest-running closed black angus populations anywhere in the United States.

When Houghton gifted the herd to the University of Maryland in 1979, the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station took over day-to-day management, a role it continues to hold. The cattle are raised on rotated pastures with a forage-based program, and the program has selectively reintroduced foundation sires over time to strengthen maternal and carcass traits. Bulls are post-weaning gain tested, continuing a performance evaluation tradition that has been part of the program since the 1950s. Excess animals are made available to the public through an annual sale held each April, giving cattle buyers access to black angus genetics for sale in Maryland that carry some of the deepest pedigree documentation in the breed.

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Species	Cattle Black Angus
Website	agnr.umd.edu/research/research-and-education-centers-locations/wye-research-education-center/wye-angus
Email	lyoash@umd.edu
Phone	+1 410-827-6016
Location	Queenstown, MD, US