Accomplished livestock judge, mentor and agriculture professor - Darlow helped transform the state of Oklahoma from a row crop state into a livestock state.
1899-1966 | Artist: Joseph Allworthy (1892-1991)
Impact & Accomplishments
Named president of the American Society of Animal Production in 1954, that organization selected Al Darlow for Saddle & Sirloin honors four years later. Darlow earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Oklahoma A&M College, and then joined the faculty there in 1919.
He continued a winning legacy begun as a student, serving as coach of the judging team at the International. Darlow also established the sheep herd at Oklahoma and published extensively on sheep feeding and breeding.
In 1935, he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin and while there, earned his Ph.D. Darlow returned to Oklahoma in 1943, to lead the Animal Husbandry Department, and eventually, to serve as dean and vice president.
During his tenure, and until his retirement in 1964, Dean Darlow helped transform the state of Oklahoma from a row crop state into a livestock state. He was inducted into the American Angus Heritage Foundation Hall of Fame in 1983.
Did You Know?
Albert E. Darlow, a native Oklahoman and an Oklahoma A&M graduate, joined the A&M faculty in 1919. He assumed judging instruction duties in 1920 and bought sheep for the program in 1921. In 1928 he recruited Alexander McKenzie, a Scottish-born shepherd, as a herdsman. Within two years the judging teams were nationally ranked, and the college sheep were winning ribbons and championships.
As a student at Oklahoma A&M, he won the coveted Block and Bridle Kennedy Cup, so named for Iowa State College’s prominent coach who retired the first Bronze Bull of the International judging contest.
In 1945, at the close of WWII, Darlow worked for six months with the U.S. Army at Shrivenham, England, to teach animal husbandry at the temporary university established there for returning servicemen. He made extensive visits to breeding herds in the U.K.
In 1946, he was invited to judge Shorthorn cattle at the internationally famous Perth show in Scotland, becoming the first person from the United States to judge this prestigious show
"Stock shows during the past 50 years have proven to be the outstanding classrooms, or laboratories, for the assimilation, coordination, and dissemination of information in the art and science of animal husbandry. . . . Each of these men [academic livestock judges] who has walked into the classroom of the arena, for all the world to see, has proved to be a master teacher.” - Al Darlow, Journal of Animal Science, in 1958
Albert E. Darlow (second from left) as coach of the 1925 Oklahoma A&M College livestock judging team after winning the International Livestock Exposition contest, in Chicago.