CATTLE :

A sample of each of our cattle breeds is normally on display at the Farm Park on any one day. All the cattle leave the farm park site each night to go onto large grazing fields and are waiting to come back into work each morning !

We put the bulls out with the cows on 1st June, so that our calves will be born nine months later in March. The cows are housed for the winter, but can be turned out onto the spring grass soon after calving. The new calves, with their mothers are all on display by the beginning of May.

Many Rare Breeds of Cattle are kept by enthusiasts in very small herds where it is not possible for them to keep a bull. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust ensures that artificial insemination is available for all the rare breeds to enable these smaller herds to produce pure bred calves. The Cotswold Farm Park has supplied five Gloucesters, three White Parks , three Longhorns and a Kerry bull for this purpose.

Longhorn cow 'Acorn' with her calf

The wild ancestors of our domestic cattle, the Aurochs, is now extinct, but detailed contemporary paintings of them can be seen decorating the walls of Stone Age caves. Our Longhorn cattle of today bear a striking resemblance to them with their wide horns and attractive line back markings and brindle colour.

They were once a very popular multi-purpose breed being used as powerful draught oxen, as dairy cows for milking and to produce beef cattle which could walk many miles to market.

In the 1790's the farming pioneer, Robert Bakewell used Longhorns in his first experiments in scientific animal breeding and improvement. His work, involving the purposeful changing of a breeds characteristics by selective breeding was greatly admired by Charles Darwin, who used it to help develop his ideas about evolution.

Sadly the breeds' long horns made them difficult to manage in the 1950's and 60's when farmers housed cattle and fed cereals. Their numbers declined until by 1970 they were close to extinction. A recent revival in the production of quality beef, grown out of doors on grass, has enabled the Longhorn to make a dramatic come back, assisted by an active Breed Society which has been run from the Cotswold Farm Park Office since 1984. The Bemborough herd was established in 1969 and has produced a number of bulls of national renown.

Oxen are castrated male cattle trained to pull. They may be of any breed, although many of our old traditional breeds were selected for the purpose. For thousands of years oxen were the main source of power on farms throughout the world and are still vital in many developing countries.

We have trained oxen at the Cotswold Farm Park for nearly twenty years and have used Welsh Blacks, Longhorns, Gloucesters, White Parks and even Highlands. We currently have a pair of Longhorn oxen, "Philip and Edward" weighing just under 1 tonne each and a young pair who are not yet fully grown.

The 'boys' are used regularly for set dressings in period films which have included; Precious Bane, Robin Hood, Merlin, Monty Python and the Time Bandits, Princess Caraboo, and Mel Gibson's Brave Heart. They have even pulled a wedding coach.

Joe and Adan Henson with a pair of Longhorn oxen, 'Philip' and 'Edward' (NB: No larger image available. Sorry!)

Highland Heifer, 'Una'

Another ancient breed the Highland is one of the hardiest breeds of cattle in the world, able to survive the cold and wet winters of the Scottish Highlands and Islands where they are not rare. They have a thick woolly under-coat which helps to keep them warm and a long hairy over-coat that runs off the snow and rain. The Highland represents an extreme of the great range of genetic variation found within domestic cattle breeds and it is for this reason that we have kept a herd at the Cotwswold Farm Park since 1970.

Highlands were traditionally found in a range of colours from blonde to balck but the red colour became popular and then predominant during this century. In 1993 we purchased a rare black bull, 'Albert' and are hoping to have some black calves born in the herd, in the future.

Sacrificed by the Druids and used in religious ceremonies by the Romans, they were enclosed into the Norman deer parks in the 11th century by William the Conqueror's barons. They were hunted for sport by the Plantagenet kings, and have been handed down to us through the centuries as ornamental park cattle in five ancestral herds.

The Chillingham herd of Northumberland and Vaynol herd of North Wales have been isolated for so long that they are now considered to be separate breeds, while the Chartley, Cadzow and Dynevor herds have been combined to form the White Park breed.

The Cotswold Farm Park's 'Bemborough' herd was established in 1969 when half the 'Gene Bank' of endangered breeds, established at Whipsnade Zoo by Lord Zuckermann in the 1960's was moved here. It is descended from the Earl Ferrers' Chartley stock and animals born here have taken the Championship at the Rare Breeds National Show every year from 1988 to 1992.

Bemborough 'Nanette' Interbreed Champion 1992 (NB: larger image is very big)

Gloucester Bull, 'Boy', Interbreed Champion at the Three Counties Show 1994

Gloucester calf

The Old Gloucester was a triple purpose breed used for milk production, draught work and meat. They are a beautiful dark mahogany colour with a striking white line down the back and along the belly. The cows produce milk which was ideal for cheese-making, an important characteristic when fresh milk could not reach London market from Gloucestershire, and by the thirteenth century traditional Double Gloucester cheese had become famous.

Sadly they could not compete with the specialist dairy breeds for gross milk production, and they were gradually replaced by Longhorns, Shorthorns and finally the black and white Holstien Friesians. By 1975 only one herd remained belonging to the Dowdeswell sisters at Wick Court near Gloucester.

The Bemborough herd was established in 1969 direct from Wick Court and has produced a number of key bulls for use in the artificial insemination programme, and many champions. Nationally, numbers are increasing with the support of an active breed society which has been run from the Cotswold Farm Park Office since 1981.

Another dual-purpose breed which could not compete in a more specialised agricultural market was the British White. It is a naturally 'polled' or hornless breed which makes them easily distinguishable from the similarly coloured White Park.

The breed was developed in the Eastern Counties of England from cattle brought into this country by Viking settlers, and they were originally used as drauht oxen and to produce milk, meat and laether. Today they are being developed principally for beef production which means that the old dairy strains are disapppearing. Our herd was established in 1972 and our cows are of the old dairy type which produce more than enough milk for one calf. After each cow has calved we often buy an extra calf from a neighbouring dairy farm, which we foster onto the cow, who has plenty of milk to rear twins.

British White cow 'January' with her calf

This diminutive breed was develpoed in Ireland during the last century by Mr. Dexter. He selected miniature and dwarf examples of the Irish Kerry breed to produce the ideal small-holdes cow. Two Dexters will eat no more than one standard size cow, but by staggering their calving dates, it is possible to produce a constant supply of milk for the house, and provide two calves a year.

Twenty years ago they were a rare breed, but they have benefited from an upsurge in interest in small-scale and self sufficient farming 'the good life' for which they are undoubtedly the ideal breed and they are no longer classified as a rare breed.

Until the 1950's the Shorthorn was the most numerous British cattle breed, and the most widely distributed worldwide. In 1822 it became the first breed to have a published 'Herd Book', a detailed record of the pedigrees and births of all the animals in the breed. This was and still is known as the 'Coates Herd Book' and the ancestry of all living Shorthorn cattle can be traced back to that first edition.

They are naturally horned cattle, although they are often disbudded painlessly at birth, preventing the horns from growing. They may be red, white, red and white or a mixture of the two colours making an attractive roan colour. The breed was originally dual purpose but was soon developed into different strains used to perform different tasks. The Dairy Shorthorn was developed for its milking characteristics and is still quite numerous, although holds a relatively tiny proportion of the dairy market as compared to the predominant black and white Holstein Friesian. The Beef Shorthorn was developed as a quality beef breed for crossing. Beef Shorthorn bulls were used on hardy hill cows, often with rather poor beef conformation, to produce quality beef calves. They became very popular and were exported all over the world where the quality of British breeding stock is still held in very high regard.

Sadly the fashions in beef production have changed and this magnificent breed has found itself rather unexpectedly on the lists of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.

Belted Galloway cow 'Petronella' with her twins, 'Sash and Splash'

A 'polled' or hornless breed, the Belted Galloway originated from the South West of Scotland and is very well adapted to it's own particular environment, and to extensive beef production out of doors. They are very hardy and grow a thick winter coat which is made even more attractive by their white belt or belly band. The back-ground colour is normally black, although dun and red animals do occur. We have kept Belted Galloways since 1970 and have had one dun heifer. We have also been lucky enough to have several sets of twins in the past few years.

BELTED GALLOWAY	BRITISH WHITE CATTLE	DEXTER CATTLE	GLOUCESTER CATTLE	HIGHLAND CATTLE
LONGHORN CATTLE	OXEN	BEEF SHORTHORN CATTLE	WHITE PARK CATTLE