I must admit that over the years I have done more than my fair share of experimenting. Not the Rock and Roll lifestyle as such, you understand, but the less glamorous task of finding the perfect cow for my suckler herd. Thirty years ago the Hereford Friesian from my father’s dairy herd set me up on my own, and I crossed them with some very expensive Charolais bulls bought at Perth. But as my brother started improving the milk yield of that herd I found that the replacement heifers I was getting were not suiting my system. These were all different types of continental crosses bred out of the sharp cows he preferred, but with no cash for sheds and a large outwintering area I needed something a bit tougher than a Holstein cross. I then sourced replacements from various avenues with varying degrees of success until it all went horribly wrong one year with poor conception rates and a number of deaths; my first lesson in the importance of biosecurity. I had also seen the effects of a grading system designed to increase carcase yield that had introduced many continental breeds to the UK, but had complicated the lives of so many cattlemen.

It made me wonder why the beef industry relies so heavily on the dairy industry to supply it with a cow that is far from perfect. Cows that are bred to yield more milk than any one calf could ever consume and backbones as sharp as razors are not the most efficient way to produce beef. Dairy farmers are also not that bothered about getting a calf every 365 days as long as the cow still produces milk. The list of faults in dairy breeding such as poor fertility, bad feet, mastitis and locomotion are worthy of another paper for your journal but most dairy farmers put up with these faults as it is milk yield that drives the profitability of their business. I concluded that if I wanted to improve profitability in my beef herd I needed to get rid of all of the dairy genetics. I needed a cow that calved on the same day every year, was a good mother with plenty of milk, produced high value calves on minimum input, was easily handled, and suited a grass based farm with no sheds. I also ruled out breeding programmes using more than one cross as these ended up looking like a zoo, and if I could do all this and breed my own replacements, all the better. Simple?

The turning point came when I visited the breeding sale of a local Hereford breeder and bought a pen of Angus x Hereford heifers that had caught my eye. More commonly known in other parts of the world as a ‘Black Baldie’, these were in calf to a Hereford, were extremely easy to work with, and did not eat me out of house and home. The only disadvantage I could find was that I took a fair hit in the store ring with the Hereford yearling steers compared to the Charolais crosses I usually topped the market with. The heifers more than made up for this as quality replacements for my own herd or sold privately as breeders.

The breeding programme is particularly simple. Take two breeds that are relatively similar in size and shape, and use hybrid vigour to get extra performance and fertility. The bit that takes a bit more effort is finding bulls that have top EBV’s but are not too extreme in physical traits. I want calves that will perform, but I want to maintain easy calving traits in order to keep a tight calving pattern where 90% of the herd will calve in six weeks. This also allows heifers to come back into the herd calving as two year olds. I also want consistency and, in effect, breed the same animal from different breed sires, so I try to find Hereford and Angus bulls that are physically similar in size and shape. None of these bulls on farm at the moment have been bought at a society sale as I am not a fan of overfed and overpriced cattle. I have never understood why I need to buy a 1200Kg breeding bull to produce a 750Kg fat animal or a 700Kg cow.

This year there were just under 200 cows and heifers put to seven bulls over a 10 week period at Drumdow. Scanning in early December saw a very respectable 4% not in calf. Empty cows do not get a second chance and were all sold cast deadweight after weaning. In calf cows are normally wintered outside on a 120 acre moor in their bulling groups but are also condition scored, with leaner cows running in a separate group that gets a bit more grub. Each group gets a feed trailer of silage plus minerals three times a week at about 35kg pit silage/hd/day. The main aim is to take some of the backfat off some of the fitter cows in the first part of the winter with a maintenance minus diet and feed the poorer cows in order that at point of calving they are all at score 3 – 3.5. In general, fit Black Baldie groups will get through the winter on 20% less silage than the remainder of the herd.

Cows and heifers all calve at grass from the second week in April onwards with very little intervention. They are only checked 4 times each day and if we see a nose and two feet they are left alone but are usually calved and sucking within 40 minutes of first seeing them start. Assistance rate is less than 5% and most of these are breeches and the occasional torsion. I am certainly not of the opinion of ‘It’s not a good “un if y” don’t need to pull it’, as bad and assisted calvings are undoubtedly the biggest cause of poor conception rates and elongated calving patterns.

Calves start getting a bit of creep from mid August and are weaned early December. Once inside their diet is a 50% barley, 25% beet pulp and 25% dark grains mix with added minerals and yeast at 2Kg/hd/day, as well as ad-lib silage. The aim is to take the steers through the winter from a weaning weight of around 300Kg, to a 400Kg April sale weight. The heifers are fed exactly the same diet but are put back to grass in April to get to a bulling or sale weight of around 420Kg by the end of May at 14–15 months of age.

So what has changed in the last 10 years?

Well, not much if you look at the table below. I am still selling yearling steers at 380Kg liveweight.

However, that is only part of the story. The steers are now, on average, about a month older on sale day even though the start of calving date is the same; the biggest benefit of a tight calving pattern. The Herd calving percentage has increased by around 10%; a result of easier calvings and fantastic calf vigour. Replacement rates are below 15% as I am now expecting at least 10 calves per cow per lifetime, and there are less than 5% cows barren each year. The steers have now caught up in the market with the Limousins as this year’s yearlings made an average of £830 (£2.18/Kg) at Stirling. Half of these were bought by a repeat buyer that will summer them at grass and fatten them with a small amount of barley. He buys them because they are quiet, easily handled at grass, leave him a decent margin and they ‘taste like beef used to taste’.

The main story is with the heifers as the breeding market has opened up. For the last 4 years nearly every single heifer has been sold or used as a breeder to calve at two years old. Using Hereford and Angus bulls in a rotational crossing system results in three colour types. About two thirds of the calves born are black with a white head and the remainder split evenly as brown with white head, and black. Luckily the most popular as a bulling heifer seem to be the black and whites with about 60 of these produced every year. Of the 60, about two thirds will be on a Hereford passport but will look identical to the remainder on an Angus passport. As a result they are very easy to batch and buyers are very happy on a ‘first 20 out of the pen’ basis. All are sold vaccinated for BVD and Leptospirosis, Johnes free and guaranteed fertile. Scotland is currently TB free and the herd is routinely tested every four years. This year’s heifers, at the age of 14 months have averaged £1200 each to repeat buyers. I have always thought of this as a fat price at store animal input costs, and certainly more profitable than any continental bred steer.

In the end it comes down to personal preference when choosing the colour type. The Brown and Whites tend to be a bit more maternal looking and normally go back to an Angus. The Blacks can be marginally harder to keep but when put back to a Hereford will produce some of the best Black and White calves.

Why Hereford and Angus?

If you look around the world to areas using unsubsidised grass based beef production systems most cattlemen are using these two breeds, and the most popular cow is a cross of the two; The Black Baldie. As I said at the start it was traditional for most UK beef herds to source replacements from the dairy herd and it was probably more a fault of the Angus and Hereford breeds that they did not adapt quickly enough to keep up with developing trends in milk production and carcase evaluation. However, times change and breeds develop. The Line One Hereford genetics I am now using have definitely improved performance and consistency and I have found an Angus type that complements them in a system that is so simple. Another very good reason for going down the native breed route is down to market forces. During the summer of 2013 processors were offering breed bonuses of up to 40p/kg on Angus sired cattle. Hereford and Shorthorn were not far behind at 30p/kg and 20p/kg respectively. No other beef breeds command such premiums from processors. This was mainly due to a shortage of cattle but it was a considerable bonus for perceived eating quality. Beef as it used to taste.

Is it not time the industry moved on? Grading systems and shows that reward size and shape, especially at the extremes of breeding excesses, must be out of date in a consumer led market. The shows, especially, perpetuate the myth that a calf has to have a decent back end, when in fact all the expensive cuts are along the back of the animal on the loin. That prize back end mostly ends up as mince. Nearly every processor, when asked, will state that the ideal prime animal is a 370Kg deadweight R4L. This is a carcase that has the size of cuts the consumer is looking for, with a decent amount of fat cover for the three most important attributes of a piece of beef; tenderness, juiciness, and taste.

UK beef had a reputation of being the best in the world. Some of it still is. Modern native breed genetics are more than able to compete on performance and profitability with continentals, but will be more consistent, easier to manage, better mothers and deliver the mouth-watering taste the discerning UK consumer deserves.