Printable Picture of a Brown Beef Cow

Superlative story

How many of these native cattle breeds would you recognise from travelling through the British countryside or from the butcher's shop? If we don't eat them, we'll lose them, warns Kate Green. Illustrations past Fiona Osbaldstone.

Across the country, dedicated farmers and brood societies – often with regal patronage – plus the Rare Breeds Society (RBST) through its Gene Bank, ensure that the piece of work of the far-sighted 18th-century breeder Robert Bakewell and others of his ilk goes on, in preserving robust native genes to ensure resistance to disease and genetic diversity.

Perhaps at present, with Defra Secretary Michael Gove'due south emphasis on beast-welfare and environmental enhancement and rising customer demand for local, slow-grown, grass-fed beef, the hardy cattle that enhance our landscapes so delightfully may come into their own again.

1. Shetland

This thrifty little creature, the mainstay of crofting families and transportable by fishing boat, is oft cited as the ideal smallholder'south cow: like many native breeds, information technology'south tough, versatile and long-lived, calves easily and is friendly – traditionally, a cow would be accompanied to a new home by a scrap from the crofter's married woman's apron to aid bonding. Some xv,000 caput of cattle one time populated the islands, but, every bit mainland communications improved, the Government subsidies forced crofters to cross them with larger breeds and the pure Shetland nearly died out.

2. Highland

A cuddly Scottish keepsake equally totemic every bit tartan and Scottie dogs, the shaggy-fringed Highland has spread as far afield as the Andes and New Zealand, where information technology'southward popular for its power to thrive on windswept landscapes and for its full general amuse. Highlands tin can produce calves up to the historic period of nearly twenty, their 'hybrid vigour' makes them a useful outcross and their beef is low in fatty and cholesterol and high in protein and iron. Breeders are encouraged to maintain a dam line of names in Gaelic, such every bit Mùirneag (Cheerful daughter), Canach (Bog cotton) or Uiseag (Skylark).

3. Native Aberdeen Angus

Few people realise when eating the ubiquitous 'Aberdeen Angus' steak that its connection to the 18-carat article may exist, at all-time, remote; an animal tin can be classified Aberdeen Angus when it's cross-bred and even, in the United states of america, but if it'south black. The original dual-purpose Aberdeen Angus, a rare breed indeed now, was developed by three 19th-century farmers, i of whom, Hugh Watson, a tenant farmer in Angus (his favourite balderdash, Old Jock, is number one in the stud book), is remembered in a memorial installed at Glamis Castle final year. The Prince of Wales, who keeps a herd at Highgrove, has succeeded his grandmother as president of the brood gild.

4. Belted Galloway

With their pleasingly uniform white bands, 'Belties' were pop with cattle drovers because they showed up in the dark. The breed stems from the ancient cattle of the Galloway hills, which may have been crossed with the Lakenvelder (Dutch Belted cow). They were subsequently adult through iv foundation breeders, notably Flora Stuart of Mochrum in Wigtownshire, descendant of the Marquess of Bute. Some other, Sir Ian Hamilton, supplied Winston Churchill with his first cow from his Lullendon herd.

5. Ayrshire

The handsome blood-red-and-white dairy cow, with its delicately defined head and stiff, square, old-fashioned torso shape, is ane of the most commercially successful native breeds, pop with organic farmers and tough enough to survive a Swedish winter or an African summer. Betty's Ida holds the world record for milk yield; over 305 days, milked twice a twenty-four hour period, she produced 37,170lb (about three,695 gallons) of milk and ane,592lb of fatty.

6. Blue Grey

This attractive blueish-grey or blueish-roan hybrid is the outcome of a 19th-century experiment in crossing Galloway cows with a Cumberland or Whitebred shorthorn bull to produce faster-maturing females and high-quality beef males. Now, however, it'southward one of the rarest cattle types, passed over for more commercial breeds. In 2013, the Blueish Grayness Cattle Group was set to save information technology, with funding from the National Trust and Northumberland National Park; the Duke of Buccleuch is a champion and breeds them on his Dumfriesshire estate.

vii. Dexter

The Dexter has boomed, but is non, every bit some people call back, anything new – the compact, predominantly black cattle (they come in red and dun equally well and in a squat, short-legged version) originated in Ireland. A Mr Dexter, an agent in Co Tipperary, adult them from Celtic hill breeds and Martin Sutton of Kidmore Grange, Oxfordshire, brought them to England in 1882. Dexters are the smallest British brood, with cows continuing up to 3ft 6in at the shoulder. They're not, however, the obvious smallholder's moo-cow, every bit they can be lively to handle.

eight. Irish Moiled

The solidly built 'moiley' is a magnificent-looking beast and the only surviving native domestic beast of Northern Ireland. The name comes from maol, Gaelic for mound – the head should be domed. They take bonny scarlet markings, often flecked and usually on the sides, with white underbelly and a white strip (blanch) downward the spine. They've metamorphosed into a dual-purpose breed useful for conservation grazing, peculiarly clearing ivy and willow ash, but went out of way – in the 1970s, numbers dropped to 30 cows. The Prince of Wales and Countryfile presenter Adam Henson are fans and the cattle thrive in Scandinavia, where they were taken by Viking raiding parties.

9. Welsh Blackness

Does any farm animal command respect more than than a Welsh Black bull? The animals were in one case and then valuable that they were known equally 'the black gilt from the Welsh hills'. Drovers returning from English markets, their pockets laden with money, were targets for bandits, a threat that prompted the formation of the 'Banking concern of the Black Ox', now known as Lloyds. Until the 1970s, the Welsh Black tended to divide into the stocky beef cattle of North Wales and the dairy cattle of South Wales, but the modernistic brute is dual-purpose. Welsh beef has Protected Geographical Indication status under EU law.

x. White Park

The RBST chose the hit, hardy White Park, with its wide-spreading horns, as its emblem when it was formed in 1973. Every bit the proper name suggests, it's developed from the primitive white cattle that populated medieval parklands; although still a minority breed, it'southward an RBST success story – the brood society celebrates its centenary this year.

A close relation is the Vaynol, started in Vaynol Park near Bangor, North Wales, in 1872, where the herd was left to its own devices until it relocated about a century subsequently to Temple Newsom in Leeds, West Yorkshire. It'south now been dispersed – most animals are owned by the RBST. Another adjunct is the famous herd of Chillingham Wild Cattle in Northumberland, which the public is brash to care for with respect.

eleven. Longhorn

The magnificent Longhorn, with red mottled colouring and straight or curving horns, is exceptionally pleasing on the heart and is one of the great British breeds, its milk then loftier in butterfat that it was crucial to the success of the Stilton and Cherry-red Leicester industries. Today's moo-cow owes much to the efforts of Leicestershire agriculturalist Robert Bakewell; the breed society boasts that the longhorn is 'across equal' equally a suckler cow and its longevity and fuss-gratuitous calving go far a desirable cross.

12. Shorthorn

These genetically important cattle, which have been used worldwide in the development of more than 40 breeds, also owe much to Bakewell. His animals and methods impressed, among others at the time, brothers Charles and Robert Colling, who began developing the local Durham cattle using an £viii bull chosen Hubback; a subsequent bull, Comet, sold in 1810 for a then tape of 1,000 guineas and became a fable in cattle-breeding circles. In the 20th century, the breed began to split up officially into dairy and beef strains and the two now have their ain societies – in the UK, most shorthorns are used for milk.

13. British White

These uniformly marked cattle, so bonny with their sooty points, also beautify the Highgrove estate. Like the White Park, they're descended from ancient, ethnic animals and their preservation owes much to single big estates, originally the Assheton family's at Whalley Abbey, Lancashire, and Middleton Hall, Manchester, plus Somerford Park in Cheshire. In the 17th century, the heiress Mary Assheton took some cattle as dowry to Gunton Park in Norfolk, from which the Blickling, Kelmarsh and Woodbastwick (now the oldest in existence) estates founded herds. In 1912, Sir Claud Alexander, possessor of famously prolific milker Faygate Laura, wrote that 'one of mine averages five gallons [of milk] a mean solar day when in total profit. In add-on to this, they are big heavy beasts and give a good render from the butcher when their milking days are over'.

14. Red Poll

The sleeky, dark-anecdote, naturally polled (hornless) Ruby Poll, whose breed society is 130 years old, is the effect of crossing the 'milky' Suffolk Dun with the 'meaty' Norfolk Red in the early 19th century and is of a slighter build than some other 'red' breeds. Information technology'south one of Uk's most economical cattle, needing little in the style of actress fodder, merely has been swamped by more commercial Continental dairy breeds and is now chiefly a suckler cow.

15. Lincoln Blood-red

The striking Lincoln Red is one of Britain's oldest beef breeds and was significantly improved by Lincolnshire breeders who, at the turn of the 19th century, crossed Durham and York shorthorns with local coarse draught cows to ameliorate conformation. Known every bit the Lincolnshire Cerise Shorthorn, in 1799, the brood was described by the Lath of Agriculture as existence 'unsurpassed in this land for points highly valuable and for their disposition at any age to finish chop-chop'. At the get-go of the 20th century, the cattle were exported to 20 countries, from Argentine republic to Australia, and, past 1926, the Lincoln was the second most registered moo-cow in Britain, but, again, it now competes with Continental types.

16. Sussex

In 1823, the pamphleteer William Cobbett came across mahogany-cerise Sussex cattle during i of his Rural Rides. 'How curious is the natural economy of a country!' he wrote. 'The forests of Sussex; those miserable tracts of heath and fern and sand and bushes… breed the cattle which we come across fatting in Romney Marsh… and the sight is well-nigh beautiful.' Originally a vast, ox-similar creature used for ploughing and hauling timber – records show a steer weighing 214 stone – the modern Sussex, boosted by Limousin and Aberdeen Angus claret, is a handsome, well-proportioned beast.

17. Hereford

The upstanding, conker-coloured, white-faced Hereford is perhaps the British native that has best stood the examination of fourth dimension. The Herd Book, founded in 1846, has, since 1886, been closed to whatever animal whose sire and dam had non been recorded, to ensure purity. It's extraordinary that one canton could have spawned such an industry (fifty things Uk gave the world, July half dozen, 2017); due to its adaptability, healthiness and ability to flourish on a forage-based diet, there are more than five million pedigree Herefords across 50-plus countries.

18. Gloucester

Information technology was a Gloucester cow, Flower, that provided the anti-smallpox serum for the scientist Edward Jenner, but this magnificent, richly coloured cow, with its upswept crescent horns and creamy dorsal stripe, owes its existence to a group of farmers, including Eric Freeman – whose son, Clifford, now owns the biggest herd in United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland – cheesemaker Charles Martell and the late Joe Henson. In 1972, they bought up the last herd standing and scoured the state for more animals to widen the genepool of their local cow. Their efforts, considered eccentric by a commercially driven farming manufacture, led to the formation of the RBST.

19. Ruby-red Carmine Devon

The county of Devon boasts cattle to match its rich, red soil. Francis Quartley, an Exmoor farmer, tin have much credit for today's salubrious herd. As other farmers rushed to sell cattle for high prices to feed troops in the Napoleonic Wars, he refused to part with his; his herd lives on at the aforementioned subcontract, Great Champson, Molland, with farmer William Dart, a leading proper noun in the Reddish Red world. Now, the Devon is a typical case of a native that's come into its own in the current climate of environmentally friendly farming.

20. Due south Devon

A slightly paler version of the Devon and with curlier hair, especially on the poll, it originated in the Due south Hams, from where it was exported, in cracking numbers, from Plymouth to America, including on the Mayflower virtually 400 years ago. Selective convenance improved stock considerably and, in 1891, the breed society was formed; by the 1960s, the South Devon was a predominantly beef cow and an of import source of income in a rural expanse.

21. Guernsey

No one is quite sure how the gentle, chestnut-and-white Guernsey moo-cow, popular with smallholders for its rich, yellowish milk, arrived on the island – it could accept come with monks banished from Mont St Michel in the tenth century and is probably related to the French Normande. By the late 18th century, the islanders were making money by selling thousands of these small, cheap cows, although many may accept been French, passing through the Channel Islands to avoid tax. In 1878, The Rev Joshua Watson and James James started a register, swiftly followed by a herd book, and the Guernsey equally we now know it took shape.

22. Jersey

The dainty dun-coloured, soft-eyed Jersey leads the bovine dazzler parade. The island is proud of its pretty cows and has operated a strict ban on any other brood for 150 years, so the 6,000 cattle there are pure bred. Famed for its creamy milk, which has xviii% more protein, 20% more calcium and 25% more butter fat than any other breed's, the Jersey is the world's favourite dairy cow after the Holstein and has a depression carbon footprint. The Queen has one of the oldest herds, at Windsor Castle.

From Shetlands to Shires, it'southward horsepower that helped make this land great. We celebrate the wonderful local variety of our

Hither are merely some of the breeds to consider, whether for field or table or both.

Our traditional pig breeds are a delight to look at and tasty to eat - which is your favourite?

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Source: https://www.countrylife.co.uk/out-and-about/aberdeen-angus-jerseys-native-cattle-breeds-britain-176304