The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Redskins from the US fitting in well on the Angus coast
Stabilisers’ suitability to Scotland to be highlighted at Arbroath farm event
An imported “breed” of cattle known as Stabilisers is quietly making its mark on Scottish beef production.
However, the red-skinned animals can easily be mistaken for Luings or Limousins, they rarely reach the auction marts as finished stock and Stabiliser bulls have never changed hands at Stirling.
Purists are suspicious or even dismissive of this composite animal that sells itself on statistics, yet supporters claim it is the fastest growing breed in the UK with more than 10,000 cows in 110 herds.
The Stabiliser’s origins are in a US Department of Agriculture-designed four-way cross that combines Red Angus, Simmental, Gelbveigh and Hereford genetics to produce an animal that benefits from hybrid vigour.
The Yorkshire-based Beef Improvement Grouping Ltd (BIG) owns the Stabiliser trademark in the EU and has been selling the genetics here since 2000.
It is a sleek business model, with individual lines produced in the United States, exported as embryos then multiplied by nucleus breeders in the UK.
Bull sales are also controlled by the breeding company. Sires cost £2,500 to £8,000, with prices based on a bull’s genetic merit, or estimated breeding value (EBV), although bulls are also semen tested and inspected.
Some of the question marks over Stabilisers relate to this tight control over the genetics.
However, the Stabiliser movement is popular in the US, and farmers in the UK who use the cattle swear by their results, particularly in their role as an efficient suckler cow.
Early converts include the Norrie family who farm at Denhead of Arbirlot near Arbroath.
They are so convinced of the breed’s suitability to Scottish conditions they are hosting a farm walk and talk by the breed mastermind, Lee Leachman, next week.
Douglas, Frank and Robin Norrie were among the first in Scotland to import the Stabiliser stock in the late 1990s, originally to use as a maternal line to put to Charolais bulls, but in 2006 they bought a Stabiliser bull and now run a closed herd of 140 animals which includes five bulls.
“We were certainly the furthest north Stabiliser breeder in those early days