Highlanders - a learning curve (September 1997)

On the 14th July 1995 my wife and I awoke to the cockeral crow of our alarm clock at 3am and fifteen minutes later were on our way from our Middlesex home to Scotland complete with one labrador and two spaniels. Around 7.30am and 280 miles north at the Tebay service station we had had our early bird breakfast and were on the way back to the car when my wife handed me a copy of the Highland Cattle Society Journal for 1995 and said “remember its your 60th birthday tomorrow - you have two hours to learn how to chose a Highland cow and calf - we are on our way to see a herd (we were ignorant then that they call a group of Highlanders a fold) of Highland Cattle near Glasgow”.

I duly read that good cows had straight backs with no hollows and horns should rise after coming out of the head and much more besides.

It is a daunting business to be faced with 30 or 40 cows to chose from when one is blissfully ignorant. However confidence rose when we picked first one beast and then another to be told “You’re not getting that fine beast”. We began to feel we must have something of an eye for them! Finally a nice looking red cow to our eyes with an even nicer looking black heifer calf was selected and agreed to and no sooner was that deal done than a heifer supposedly in calf walked by, which also took our fancy and we were allowed to buy that as well.

I was thrilled for I had always had a dream of having Highland Cattle on our small 150 hectares of hill which we grandly called a grouse moor - it had I thought everything that Highland Cattle needed with scattered larch and pine, old and young heather and blaeberry, rough grass and boggy areas and plenty of water. It even had an area which has always been known as the butterwell and local legend had it that the Highlanders of Yore (the people that is) used to take their cattle to the hill in summer and live there with them and make butter in this area which was stored in the cool spring water. Certainly the ruins of old stone houses and the round enclosures into which cattle used to be brought can still be seen there. All in all it was just the setting for a Louis B.Hurt painting.

My wife duly paid for my present and we agreed that our three beasts would be delivered to Glenshee the following month. We then started the remainder of the drive to Glenshee and as we went the realisation hit us of what we had bought and that now we were faced with making arrangements to see that they were properly cared for. After all they were not inexpensive pedigree Highlanders.

In the event that proved easier than we deserved for a local shepherdess was prepared to agree to take a look at them each day and feed them in the winter and there were of course only three of them. Nevertheless we soon learnt that even three can cause problems if fences are poor. A highland cow which decides that the grass is better the other side of the fence is totally immune to the fact that the top wire is barbed. Indeed we soon discovered that barbed wire was considered by them to be nothing more than a convenient back scratcher - and as for a weak fence, well that just gets quietly walked through, rather like a tank going through a hedge - no problem. So we started to repair our fences.

The next major landmark in our learning curve of highland cattle came in September. We were told that there was a sale on in Perth including the disposal of a very good and well known fold and that it would be a great opportunity to see a couple of hundred beasts and start learning how they should and should not look. So we decided to go and on the way decided that if there was a beast or two we really liked we should have a budget figure I could go to for them.

The first part of the advice proved to be good and we spent a very happy and enjoyable two hours wandering around the pens of cattle deciding what we liked and what we didn’t and meeting several very nice and very helpful people who were only to happy to pass on information and advice. So before long we had a catalogue with a number of possible beasts marked and then the auction began.

I love auctions! We had been told that the very best beasts were in the dispersal sale which came up first. In no time I had bought a lovely (I thought) cow with calf at foot and two heifers for very reasonable prices compared to what we had expected. At this stage my wife lost her nerve, pointed out firmly that I hadn’t a clue what I was up to and would I go and take advice from that nice man down by the ring from whom we had bought our original trio. So I went down and asked for advice. He opened his catalogue and to my surprise I found he had marked almost all the same beasts as I had - I asked if he was in the market for them and he said just one or two. So I returned triumphantly to my wife and said we must be on the right lines.

By the end of the sale I think the auctioneer thought I was a personal friend. When I totted up the damage I found I had bought four cows all with calves at foot and five heifers. Back at the farmhouse a quick call to the shepherdess Mary met with a cool reception and a reminder that she had only agreed to look after three highlanders. Anyway she agreed to come and help them be unloaded from the cattle float the following day and of course before long she had taken to them - except one. Her name was Samantha and she was bad tempered with all the others and whilst not directly with Mary her horn into the backside of a beast that Mary was beside could result in the toss of a head and an unintended knock. Mary wanted her to go.

Samantha was a two year old heifer and we had put her in the company of the other heifers where she was the total boss. We decided to give her one more chance and move her in with the cows and it was interesting to see how quickly they put her in her place and turned her into quite a reasonable citizen. In fact now she is quite a favourite and has just produced her first calf.

Next stop Oban and the autumn show and sale. Mary, on hearing that we were going, issued strict instructions that my wife was to handcuff my hands behind my back at auction time.

The show was a great education. We soon learnt that judges have to show great balance between selection for tradition and selection for beef. The Highlander is after all a practical animal designed and bred down through the generations to turn low quality grazing into high quality beef. It has special characteristics which help it to do this with an unusual ability for a beef animal to put on fast growth during the summer and the long hours of daylight that Scotland has and go into a no growth subsistance phase on low quality forage in the winter. This indeed was lesson number three for us for in our first winter we spoilt our beasts with feeding them entirely on hay. They were unecessarily fat by the winters end and this last winter have done just as well on two thirds straw and one third hay which was an enormous saving in feed costs - not to mention that we kept them much longer on the hill which resulted in still more savings.

But back to Oban. It was as I said a great education and I was very self controlled with only two beasts bought of which one was black and this brought our numbers up to 18 for the start of our first winter. As I’ve indicated, we made the mistake that first winter of being too kind and wasted money but nevertheless felt good that we had overfed rather than underfed them and brought our cows in good condition for our first calving.

This was an anxious time for Mary particularly as she wanted them all calved before the lambing. When all went well with first one, then the second and then the third calf she visibly relaxed. None of the difficult calving nonsense of some of the crosses between normal sized breeds and bulls from much larger continental breeds. Only one cow the oldest failed to calve before the lambing and she was entrusted to our gamekeeper to keep an eye on.

Lesson number four. She duly calved without problem and our keeper found a still little calf huddled looking almost lifeless in the rushes. In a panic he thought it had failed to get milk from its mother and was dying so went to a neighbour with a tractor and the two of them bundled the calf into the bucket on the tractor with mother cow bellowing beside them and took it up to a small shed followed by indignant mum. They shut mother and calf in the shed and left a message for Mary who came to inspect that evening. She had had a long and exhausting day at the lambing but one look at mother and a fat bellied little calf and she opened the gate and let them out! The calf had been so bloated with milk that it was sleeping its meal off in the rushes - our keeper was fortunate not to be attacked by the cow who fortunately was a particularly good tempered beast. He was lucky not to get a horn in his backside or worse. Interestingly when the same cow calved this year and Mary went to check on her she took off around our loch followed by her twelve hour old calf at the gallop. She was not going to allow a repeat of the previous years indignity. This years calf has been nicknamed filly for its fine galloping performance at such a tender age.

The entry on the scene of ones first bull is another time of great excitement. With only a small fold I had decided to avoid the complications initially of buying my own bull and arranged to borrow one - a black one.

Which brings me to the subject of colour. The popular conception today of a highland cow is of a russety red coloured shaggy beast with beautiful curving horns. However in 1885 when the Highland Cattle Society was first formed, the dominant colour was black and the colours of dun, brindle and yellow were fully the equal of the reds. My own ambition was to build a fold of traditional colours which was to mean a good deal more hunting around for what I wanted. One quick way of possibly increasing our numbers of black beasts was to use a black bull.

As so to lesson number five or perhaps just a total coincidence as I will explain shortly. A year to the day after my wifes 60th birthday present we flew to Benbecula in North Uist where we had decided for my birthday once more to visit a fold of Highland Cattle which not only had a high proportion (25%) of black beasts but also was reputed to have some of the old blood lines. Indeed the largest fold of highland cattle in the year the Highland Cattle Society was formed was in North Uist.

The Highlanders were all to my eye everthing I could have hoped for. I have to admit too that the North Uist hospitality was memorable which could have clouded my judgement. The outcome of the weekend on North Uist was an addition of seven to our fold including the purchase for delivery the following June of our first bull and three gorgeous black heifers. But also an extraordinary piece of islander folk lore. One look at the photograph of our borrowed bull which had very downturned horns our host said “I’ll bet you a tenner that of the eight cows you are putting to it, at least five will produce bull calves” - how right he was. In fact the tally was seven out of eight with only one black heifer and three black, two dun and one red bull calf.

We soon learnt that the keeping of highlanders is not just a question of putting them out to the hill and leaving them to get on with it, which they are very capable of doing and in the good old days that is just about what was done. Today however there is a certain Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to deal with and they want to know just what you are up to with your beef cattle particularly if you plan to claim for them and there are all sorts of rewards for making the right claims.

Firstly there is the basic suckler cow premium which is paid only on beasts that have produced a calf and therefore has become a cow. Once it has produced a first calf it can be claimed for though too many non calving cows would require an explanation. An annual payment per cow is made.

Then there are subsidies for use of poor quality land for which highland cattle are particularly suited and this is paid per hectare for the amount of land used. Additionally claims can be made for each bull calf of over eight months of age provided that it is kept for a further two months after the claim has been entered. In combination these subsidies are a powerful inducement to keeping of highlanders on poor quality land but they do come at a cost.

Cost number one is an inspection to see that land is suitably fenced and in particular suitably fenced adjacent to any neighbour who keeps cattle. Double fenced in fact or a road between.

Expense number two is the requirement to submit all cattle in the fold to an annual blood test for tuberculosis. Whilst the test and ministry vets time is free the requirement means that one has to have suitable equipment to be able to hold an unwilling and very strong beast still, whilst blood samples are being taken. This in practical terms means the begging, borrowing or purchasing of a piece of equipment known as a crush. For ordinary dull cows without horns that is very simple but for highlanders with horns special crushes have had to be desinged and made. We were fortunate that a local supplier of other farm equipment chose just the time of our entry into the business to design a new crush and was eager to have it tried out and get reactions. We suggested that a free loan might result in an order so our first round of ministry testing was carried out with borrowed equipment which postponed the evil day of a fairly substantial capital investment.

The new crush proved to be a brilliant piece of engineering and resulted in an immediate order for it and suitable steel hurdles to act as guides to get the cattle into the crush. Despite the right equipment it still takes skill, handling ability with the beasts and not a little strength at times to get fit and some what anxious beasts into the crush and held still for the vet to carry out his or her duties.

A considerable amount of form filling is involved though most of the forms are fairly self explanatory and certainly in our case pleas of ignorance which was there for anyone to see soon resulted in considerable help and advice from ‘the girl at the ministry’ who in fact could not have been more helpful. I should mention too that annual returns of all calves are required with full tagging details to the Highland Cattle Society.

We soon found that it was pretty easy to frighten oneself over all the possible diseases that cattle can get but fortunately highlanders particularly on hill land rarely do. However as we had decided to do things properly from the start, we did tack on certification for being free from IBR (infectious bovine rhinotracheitis) which also requires a blood test which can be done at the same time as the ministry test but is not obligatory and therefore has to be privately paid for. The one problem of this standard is that every beast coming onto the farm has to be quarantineed and blood tested and cleared before it can join the fold. Worse still no beast can leave the farm for say a show and come back and be put back with the fold without being quarantined and tested again four weeks after its return. With the current export ban due to BSE its value is questionable.

Which brings me to shows. The farming world has a long tradition of showing cattle at agricultural shows and awarding large cups and small cash prizes to the winners. For a pedigree fold it can be advantageous to the value of progeny sold from the fold to have entered shows which helps to build up a name for the fold particularly if the odd win or placing comes ones way.

I tentatively bounced the idea of entering a show or two across Mary’s bows but with absolutely no joy whatsoever so in year one it passed us by. However during two visits to Perth and two to Oban I noted the way that beasts were shown and it was very noticeable at the Perth sales that the well presented haltered beasts fetched better prices than unhaltered beasts straight off the hill. One man in particular stood out - a large burly man who brought beast after beast into the ring, rarely had trouble with it and quite obviously knew what he was doing.

I made a point of meeting him and discovered that he was an Aberdonian, whose livelihood largely came from trimming the feet of highlanders, showing highlanders and more importantly teaching people how to show highlanders. He was already very committed on showing for other people and did not think he could make the time to show for us. However I tucked the information away along with his card and rather hoped that a solution could be found.

November 1993 saw the second of our ministry veterinary inspections for TB and Mary had got in her brother in law from a small farm up the glen to help. It was quickly apparent that John had a natural gift in the handling of Highlanders and liked them. It soon transpired too that he used to keep pure highlanders and now kept first cross highlanders on his small tenanted 200 acre farm. It also transpired that due to his landlord’s change of grazing policy he had lost his hill ground and therefore had to reduce his cattle and sheep numbers. This left him with a financial gap to fill and time to fill it particularly outside of the lambing season. I discreetly asked if he would like to learn how to show highlanders and to my surprise got a very positive reply.

A telephone call to Aberdeen that night elicited the information that it would need three days with us to teach us the rudiments of showing. This would involve selecting the beasts, learning to halter them, learning to comb their coats and even shampoo them, file and polish their horns and finally and most difficult teach the selected animals to be halter led. Three days in mid May after the lambing were booked and John’s education was begun and so too that of the selected heifers for we had decided to enter only heifers in our first year and only at a few small local shows. It was an eye opener for all concerned and I will not here go into all the details of it. Suffice to say that on the third day it was a joy to see a contented looking haltered Annabelle one of our best heifers quietly chewing the cud whilst being given a shampoo and set!

 At the time of writing we have yet to appear at our first show so more of than anon.

Our first 20 months of highlanders have been a steep learning curve and amongst the most interesting facets of them is their behaviours towards humans.

They undoubtedly have remarkable memories and most if encouraged quickly learn to take cobs from the hand. They quickly learn to recognise voice which is perhaps not surprising as it is probably the sense that is most important to them. Good highlanders have a mass of hair coming down from the horns and covering their eyes called a dossan. This covering of their eyes makes eyesight other than downwards at the ground, difficult for them so sound becomes extremely important. They quickly learn their pet names. My own visits to them are in the nature of about once every four to six weeks and yet they undoubtedly remember me from one visit to the next.

We have learnt a lot in our first 20 months not least that it is easy to be seduced by their good looks into building up numbers perhaps faster than one should. Indeed as I write this at the end of May, my wife has just come in to tell me about my birthday in July. We are going to Norway to fish for salmon. I think she feels this might be cheaper than looking at folds of Highlanders with their attendant temptations.

The Learning Curve Continues (June 1998)

The day before our entry into our first show, I inspected the beasts that we had entered for the show with some pride. They were a picture of good health straight off the hill. Thick gleaming coats, newly polished hooves and horns and just what I thought a true Highlander should look like. I was in a minority, certainly with the judge! Not only were we not placed, we were last in every class! I had to admire the unflappable John who had been persuaded into showing our beasts - in the final class as numbers parading dwindled he moved firmly to the end of the line saying to the judge as he did so, I know my place by now.

            A number of kindly souls commented on what nice beasts we had, so what went wrong? We learnt three things that day. Firstly, John’s few days of training under John Fergus with the beasts had been highly successful and they behaved as well as any, so that was not the problem. Secondly, and most importantly you don’t just take beasts off the hill a week before the first show and expect to win. You take them off months in advance and stuff them with pulp and other goodies so they put on an unnatural amount of weight for a hill beast and round off all the corners.

            As the season went on so we improved - with the same beasts but ones which like their fellows in the ring, had filled out with extra feeding. We soon learnt that judges vary in their likes and dislikes and this is I suppose a part of the charm and fascination of showing - what is turned down by one judge may do well with another so there is always hope.

            We learnt that for some judges ‘beef’ is everything so that the heavier framed beasts that undoubtedly had some shorthorn blood somewhere in its lineage was always preferred to its lighter framed compatriot with more traditional lines.

            Some of the bulls we saw during the season would certainly not have made the climb up onto our hill let alone managed to serve a cow on it but nevertheless, they were magnificently bodied beasts so what we really learnt was that showing was fun provoked much discussion but the results should not perhaps be considered the be all and end all for defining a good highlander. I wondered indeed at the seasons end whether there should not be some distinction drawn between the best beef beast in show and the best true Highlander and I think that probably this is the area to focus on for any newcomer. Do you want to have the best beef beast or the best beef on a totally traditional Highlander? As was said to me by one wise and very experienced owner of Highlanders, "Go for what you like" and that is probably the best advice that any newcomer can have.

            I like the black traditional beasts so I suppose it was inevitable that in addition to the dun bull already bought from South Uist, I would fall for the opportunity to buy a really good black bull and in doing so inevitable pose yet more management problems for Mary our stockman. At least that was what we expected and decided to give each a separate field and a few in calf cows to keep them happy during the winter, with a good stock fence in between. And happy they were until the newly arrived Black Prince decided to try the apparently well known Highland bull trick of lifting the gate off its hinges and in the morning the astonished Mary found the two bulls contentedly grazing side by side. From then on we kept them happily together until the time came for them to go up onto their respective pieces of hill with their girls.

            Would it be very naughty of me to suggest that those who used to advocate down horned bulls with undoubted shorthorn blood in them did so because it solves the problem of the bull lifting the gate off its hinges!!

            I had always thought that it was the bull that was supposed to be the culprit when it came to jumping fences (or bulldozing them down) in order to get to a desirable young lady. However that we learnt is not always the case. One of our good looking young heifers which we intended to hold back for another year had other ideas. We had nicknamed her after a rather precocious niece of mine - she decided the new black bull was just the thing for her and jumped in beside him so that settled the question of when she would be put into calf. Her bad example was followed by three others so we ended 1998 with four more calves than we had planned on. A fence is only a barrier for a Highlander when it wants it to be!

            We learnt quite early on that Highlanders given the choice, prefer rough ground with woodland to any other form of pasture. Two of our earliest heifers came from a well known fold specialising in black Highlanders which are reared exclusively in mature woodlands. They arrived with us in the winter time when in our early years we had all the beasts down in the fields at 1200 ft rather than on the hill at 1500 ft. They were put into a field, with a small wood alongside of Christmas trees - in no time they had jumped the fence into it and were blissfully happy and did surprisingly little harm to the trees.

            As I write this, I have just returned from looking at five young heifers that we had turned loose into a ten acre 15 year old plantation just 24 hours earlier. They all looked as if John had been brushing them all week ready for a show - moving through the low branches had removed the tangles and polished up their coats. Watching them feeding in their new pastures was quite an education in itself. First a bite of young larch shoots and then despite plenty more larch shoots around a mouthful of coarse grass and then a mouthful of mosses - the foraging habits of Highlanders is one of their greatest assets but one which the modern pressure for high throughput beef cattle farming is in danger of overlooking.

            A fascinating paper was published in February 1998 by Roy Dennis entitled "The importance of traditional cattle for woodland biodiversity in the Scottish Highlands - a personal view"*, which I highly commend to anyone with an interest in Highland Cattle, forestry and improving their grouse moors.

            Many landowners treat woodland and farming as two quite separate entities. In doing so they waste a valuable grazing resource within the woodland which can be actively enhanced in heather growing areas for grouse family species such as capercaillie and black grouse by the introduction of Highland cattle in low density numbers. For the first two years of having Highlanders we were conventional and ensured that they could not invade the quite numerous 15 year old small woods that we have. Now that we have learnt how well they do in them (and at the same time save us an awful lot of brashing) we use them freely though always keeping the stocking level low.

            To worm or not to worm has been another part of our learning curve. With 30 years experience of keeping rare pheasants behind me routine worming is a standard procedure and thus was one of the first things we did before putting our beasts out on the hill in our first year. We enquired as to the most effective treatment and were advised to use Ivomectin pour on. This we did and thought no more about it. However a few weeks later the ever observant Mary noticed that none of the cow pats were breaking up in the way they normally do through being literally chewed in pieces by large numbers of fly and other insect larvae from eggs laid in them. Unknown to me at the time she enquired of a neighbouring farmer if he had an explanation and was told on hearing what we had used that it was probably due to residual Ivomectin being passed with the dung which in addition to killing the worms in the beasts went on to kill the fly larvae. She resolved to use a wormer which was non toxic to fly larvae in the future but said nothing about it.

            In fact with the low density level at which we keep our cattle (approx one cow and calf to 8-10 hectares) worm has not been a problem and we have not in fact needed to worm since.

            The same paper by Roy Dennis to which I referred earlier provides some fascinating information particularly for Highlander owners with an interest in red grouse, black grouse and capercaillie. A single cow has been shown to produce a weight of insect life from her dung equivalent to 25% of her body weight. On average that is probably not far off 100kg - an awful lot of insects. But elsewhere in the paper is quoted that traces of Ivomectin as low as 0.5ppm will kill some invertebrates important to the breaking down of cow dung. So as someone who thinks that the red grouse is the worlds most wonderful gamebird, I have learnt that it would be extremely foolish to treat cattle with an Avamectin type product shortly before putting them out on the hill for the summer. All the wonderful good that it could do would be negated for at least ten days after treatment and perhaps up to 28 days so far as I can ascertain from the suppliers.

            There is much to be learnt about the changes to hill ground that occur when changing from sheep with their very close cropping feeding pattern and Highlanders with their large mouths and non specific foraging over large distances. Already after just two years, we are noticing seedling trees springing up over many parts of the hill and paths being opened up in the rank heather alongside a Forestry Commission Plantation, where we have been unable to burn heather for 30 years. With the Grouse Specialist Group of the World Pheasant Association combining now with The Game Conservancy Trust to research these matters in depth, there hopefully will be much more forthcoming showing the value of these wonderful beasts when used in the right place. We are learning therefore how to use our Highlanders at best advantage not only to themselves but to our precious highland habitat.

*Available from Roy Dennis, Inchdryne, Nethy Bridge, Inverness-shire PH25 3EF, price £5.00.

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The learning curve goes on and on

I ended last years article by indicating that we had decided to go organic and indeed our conversion period began in October 1999. To date we have had no real problems as a result of it – the fields look better than in the past 30 years although I would be the first to admit it has been at an increased labour cost for ‘topping’. We have been so determined not to let the thistles and nettles get on top of us that we may have slightly overdone the topping from an economic point of view but the benefits to the look of the fields and grass regrowth have been worth it. We survived our first re-inspection by The Soil Association without problems and there seem to be few difficulties arising from our decision.

On the health front, the news has been good and bad. The latter not in the way one might expect. As a result of the decision to go organic, I decided to upgrade our health status – we already were clear on EBL of course and were also clear on IBR. We decided to test for Johnnes disease, Lepto and randomly for BVD. With fold numbers now in the 80s and the intention to restrict them to around 120 built up from within the fold. We are in the happy position with three bulls and many different and excellent bloodlines of it being worthwhile to work towards being a closed fold.

On Johnnes and Lepto the news was excellent, but imagine our horror to discover that every animal tested had been in contact with BVD and therefore we must have a BVD carrier, so we tested everything and found it. Why am I so honest? The answer is very simple. If one if writing a series of this sort which has charted the start of a new fold with both its up and downs one should tell all for the benefit of others and not just the good bits.

I should have taken notice after the issue of BVD was well and truly aired at an Oban meeting two years earlier, but I had ignored the warnings given then. I will not go into the details of the disease except to say that it is essential to find the carrier and the prime damage is caused by the carrier being in contact with pregnant cows and heifers which can result in at best, a high rate of abortions and at worst, a high rate of abortions and defective calves that have to be culled.

However it is not hard to eradicate once the carrier is known and provided care is taken to check all calves as soon as they are 14 weeks old. In many ways we were fortunate – the infected animal came to us as a young heifer calf. We along with most others, keep our heifer calves separate from everything else with the result that all our heifers were well and truly inoculated (in effect) before they went to the bull and therefore neither they nor their calves could be infected again.

The bad news was that she came in contact with all our cows just at the wrong time – that is about three months after they went to the bull. Why three months after the rest? Because she was a slow grower and this can be a sign of a BVD carrier – and yes, we did have a number of abortions. However in 2000 all our calves tested clear and not only have we eradicated the disease but as all our cows and heifers have been in contact with it, we are now in a very safe position in relation to BVD for the future. Nevertheless, we will regularly monitor in future and the moral of the story is that regular health checks are worthwhile. It was only because of the voluntary decision to do a spot check that we spotted it well before calving time. This meant that we not only knew why we had an unusually high abortion rate and were expecting it, which eased the pain, but we also knew that we could not have passed the disease on to anyone else through infected calves because they were all themselves tested.

Testing of non-obligatory diseases is expensive particularly if done on all animals in a sizeable fold but at least on a random basis is I feel, worthwhile.

I have recorded in previous articles the benefits to the quality of our heather moorland that have arisen by the replacement of black faced sheep with Highland cattle – many members who attended the Battleby Conference were able to see the effects  forthemselves during a farm visit after the conference. What has been particularly pleasing is the rapid improvement in grouse numbers on the moor, which was not matched by adjacent moors in the area. This has been reconfirmed by the spring grouse count in April 2001.

Finally our steers. It is five years now since we bought our first Highlanders and our learning curve began. Initially we passed on our young steers after weaning to a finisher. However along with the decision to go organic in 1999, we decided to try doing our own finishing and produce eventually our own organic beef. The main difficulty encountered was in obtaining information on what yardstick to measure growth rates by. As a farm under organic conversion our options are limited in terms of any supplementary feed so it has really been a question of learning as we go.

No-one I spoke to had any knowledge of whether growth rate on the hill would be seriously under that on the ‘in bye’ fields except that no-one I spoke to did it or favoured doing it. The cow pats from Highlanders on grass fields are like those of any other cow and with the usual mucky bums! On the hill droppings are firm and bums are clean – on which feed is this rather special breed of cow doing best? I decided to find out.

In April 2000 we weighed our steers and had two pairs of almost identical ages and weights.

                        WEIGHT                                                       WEIGHT

                        22/4/2000                    Date of birth                 3/5/2001

            1.            300 kg                         21/1/99                        430 kg

            2.            305 kg                         23/1/99                        440 kg

            3.            255 kg                         4/4/99                          425 kg

            4.            255 kg                         15/4/99                        425 kg

We decided to put nos 2 and 4 up on the hill with the cows and keep 1 and 3 with the other steers and young bulls on the fields. The hill steers were given no supplementary feed whilst on the hill. The steers on the hill came down in late October and went back with the rest. Winter feed was our own haylage and around 1-2 kg of sugar beet cobs per beast per day.

The conclusion from this admittedly tiny sample is that no harm whatsoever was done by putting the steers on the hill for their second summer (as well as their first with their mothers). We will shortly know the 30-month weights but given Highlanders known burst of growth rate in the summer months, we look to be on target for around 500 kg with the January steers and possibly better for the April ones.

This is an area on which I feel more work needs to be done for if the findings are confirmed the implications for economic use of moorland by Highland cattle become further strengthened.

Finally, a large thank you to Kenneth Headspeath of Highland Producers in Perth who do a great job of butchering and vacuum packing of Highlanders and who provided much help and encouragement with these experiments.

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The learning curve goes on and on, Part 4

I ended last years article by indicating that we had decided to go organic and indeed our conversion period began in October 1999. To date we have had no real problems as a result of it – the fields look better than in the past 30 years although I would be the first to admit it has been at an increased labour cost for ‘topping’. We have been so determined not to let the thistles and nettles get on top of us that we may have overdone the topping from a slightly economic point of view but the benefits to the look of the fields and grass regrowth have been worth it. We survived our first re-inspection without problems and there seem to be few difficulties arising from our decision.

On the health front, the news has been good and bad. The latter not in the way one might expect. As a result of the decision to go organic, I decided to upgrade our health status – we already were clear on EBL of course and were also clear on IBR. We decided to test for Johnnes disease, Lepto and randomly for BVD. With fold numbers now in the 80s and the intention to restrict them to around 120 built up from within the fold. We are in the happy position with three bulls and many different and excellent bloodlines of it being worthwhile to work towards being a closed fold.

On Johnnes and Lepto the news was excellent, but imagine our horror at discovery every animal tested had been in contact with BVD and therefore we must have a BVD carrier, so we tested everything and found it. Why am I so honest? The answer very simple is that if one is writing a series of this sort which has charted the start of a new fold with both its ups and downs one should tell all for the benefit of others.

I should have taken notice after the issue of BVD was well and truly aimed at an Oban meeting two years earlier, but I had ignored the warnings given then. I will not go into the details of the disease except to say that it is essential to find the carrier and the prime damage is caused by the carrier being in contact with pregnant cows and heifers which can result in at best, a high rate of abortions and at worst, a high rate of abortions and defective calves that have to be culled.

However it is not hard to eradicate one the carrier is known and provided care is taken to check all calves as soon as they are 14 weeks old. In many ways we were fortunate – the infected animal came to us as a young heifer calf. We along with most others, keep our heifer calves separate from everything else with the result that all our heifers were well and truly inoculated (in effect) before they went to the bull and therefore neither they nor their calves could be infected again.

The bad news was that she came in contact with all our cows at just at the wrong time – that is about three months after they went to the bull. Why three months after the rest? Because she was a slow grower – and yes, we did have a number of abortions. However in 2000 all our calves tested clear and not only have we eradicated the disease but as all our cows and heifers have been in contact with it, we are now in a very safe position in relation to BVD for the future. Nevertheless, we will regularly monitor in future and the moral of the story is that regular health checks are worthwhile. It was only because of the voluntary decision to do a spot check that we spotted it well before calving time. This meant that we not only knew why we had an unusually high abortion rate and were expecting it, which eased the pain, but we also knew that we could not have passed the disease on to anyone else through infected calves because they were all themselves tested.

Testing or non-obligatory diseases is expensive particularly if done on all animals in a sizeable fold but at least a random basis is I feel, worthwhile.

I have recorded in previous articles the benefits to the quality of our heather moorland that have arisen by the replacement of black faced sheep with Highland cattle – many members who attended the Battleby Conference were able to see the effects themselves during a farm visit after the conference. What has been particularly pleasing is the rapid improvement in grouse numbers on the moor, which was not matched by adjacent moors in the area.

Finally our steers. It is five years now since we bought our first Highlanders and our learning curve began. Initially we passed on our young steers after weaning. However in 1999 we decided to try doing our own finishing and produce our own organic beef.

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The Learning Curve still goes on

I ended my ‘learning curve’ article in last years journal by relating our efforts to learn more about the benefits or otherwise of Highland cattle ‘on the hill’ in relation to other browsing animals. The scientific content of this work has been carried out by Adam Smith of The Game Conservancy with funding from the World Pheasant Association. Many members met Adam during our open day at Borland farm at the end of May. An open day I may say, held with considerable trepidation as a total newcomer to Highland cattle. Adam was our decoy and a very successful one too – as he held the audience spellbound, the cattle which had gathered around, quietly slipped away!

The work has now reached a stage where some useful facts are coming clear. First and foremost, that Highland cattle on a typical Perthshire moor when stocked at a density of approximately 1 cow and calf to 9 hectares, will use no more than 15% of the heather biomass. This contrasts at the other end of the scale to a combination of blackfaced ewes and rabbits of 85%. Other work done by The Game Conservancy Trust indicates that the ideal situation for red grouse is a browsing usage of 10-15% (less and numbers actually decline) and a maximum usage of around 25%, after which numbers decline rapidly. Highland cattle fit nicely into the almost perfect scenario.

Another area of Adam Smith’s work now completed, has been to make a simple study of the fold movements day by day. This was done to show that dung which as I mentioned in my last years article, can produce over 200lbs of insect life on the hill in one year, was well and truly scattered over the hill and not just in one place – as we all would have expected, it is well scattered and that is now a fact.

Enough of the science and back to the coos. What did we learn in 1999 and what new mistakes did we make. Things started well and only a 1998 late calving heifer (yes, a mistake) failed to calve. So far so good, but then our first problem – a lovely long legged bull calf only started to get a little thin and gangly. The problem was spotted by our stand in herdsman who quickly realised the problem. The bull calf was almost too big at his tender inexperienced age and he had only got two of the four teats going. A visit to the crush for the cow, some Vaseline on the unused teats, a little of bit of hand milking and an instruction course for the calf, whilst mum was static in the crush (the best equipment buy we have made). One lesson was enough but it was interesting to note that the calf never caught up with the others and is only making good progress now that it is weaned and is a bull no longer. A good lesson in the need for close observation even when things seen to be going well.

Our next problem was with Crinkly and Crumbly and probably illustrates well one of the main risks you take when buying old cows. They are eleven and thirteen years old respectively and were bought very deliberately despite their age, for their Joseph of Cladich bloodline. They were the last two to calve having been bought ‘in calf’ and both got mastitis. Mary who was back from her lambing stint by then, spotted it immediately and treatment with antibiotics began. It was successful though Crinkly is now operating on three cylinders and Crumbly on two, but they and both calves, are doing well – the latter surprisingly do not appear to have been set back at all.

I had to admire Mary’s handling technique. Mastitis is very painful for the cow and Crumbly in particular did not appreciate the antibiotic treatment to her teats and kicked fiercely and to my eyes dangerously, despite the crush. Mary made a lasso from a halter rope, waited for a kick, lassood the leg and tied it up. So now you know what to do if the same problem happens to you.

Our great news for 1999 is that we made the decision to go for organic conversion and members who have not yet taken the plunge, may like to know what appears to be involved. Our decision to go organic was fuelled by the obvious almost organic ground we were using coupled with the image of Highland cattle and organic beef going well together. There was one other factor which may be of interest to those within reasonably easy reach of Perth. That was the opening in August of the Highland Producers Ltd, there with an immaculate EU approved unit with butchering, vacuum packing and freezing service and Highland cattle as their prime target.

So what do you have to do. Firstly, get all the information from The Soil Association and ask for advice and contacts. In our case the advice came from David Younie who could not have been more helpful and advised that the first thing to do was to get a comprehensive field by field soil analysis done. This was carried out by The Scottish Agricultural College in Perth. The next stage is to join The Soil Association and ask for an Inspector to visit – none of this is done for free and you will not get much change from £1500. The Inspectors visit is likely to confirm the treatment to the fields recommended following the soil analysis and I should say here that the SAC report was extremely thorough and helpful and in my view worth every penny. The report will list the conditions that you will need to adhere to in order to enter and maintain organic conversion status which takes two years.

We got our timing wrong by having a start date of late September and no organic winter feed available and are unable therefore to begin what is called simultaneous conversion for the cattle (as well as the land) before April 2000. In other words, the land will be organic by September 2001, but the cattle will not be until spring of 2002.

That is our bad news. The good news is that the grants for carrying out conversion to organic when the come, are definitely beneficial to the farm account and it does look as though the government is determined to make funds available into this sector of farming.

Once you have been through the application and inspection stage, provided all is well, a certificate (probably temporary) is issued and you send this to your local MAFF or Scottish equivalent office, and sit back and hope the grant is approved.

So far as I can see for a typical small Scottish farm of hill and ‘in bye’ grazing fields, there is no great problem involved, so long as the fields are sufficient for producing your own organic haylage. Certainly buying in organic hay or haylage is to say the least expensive and is probably not available.

Weed control without the use of chemicals is obviously a problem which is probably best solved by ‘topping’. If the farm does not justify a tractor then there are excellent small topping machines available from 'Logic' for towing behind a quad bike. The only weed that this probably does not solve is ragwort and we have just started a small flock of Hebridean sheep for this purpose which should fit in well with the organic image. I suspect that most members with folds in upland areas will find the conversion to organic beneficial so long as grants remain at their present levels.

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