Beer and massage – raising cows the Wagyu way in midWales
Afarmer in mid Wales has revealed how he feeds his cattle beer and treats them to a massage as part of a traditional Japanese approach to producing highquality beef.
Ifor Humphreys, who farms near Montgomery in Powys, has been raising Japanese Black Wagyu cattle for more than 10 years.
He says he turned to the distinctive breed because of his experiences as a beef farmer in those days.
He explained: “I was producing commercial beef and getting thanks from nobody, and I looked around a bit and discovered this fantastic breed of cattle called Japanese Black Wagyu.
“There was none available in UK at the time, so I imported embryos and semen from Australia in 2006, and thought, ‘I’ll produce these myself if I can’. That’s how I got into them.
“They taste better than any other sort of beef. I thought, ‘If it tastes good, then surely I can find somebody who will buy it off me’.”
All the calves that have been born on the farm have been sired by a single Japanese Black Wagyu bull who’s now nearly 10 years old.
There are 30 cows on the farm and Mr Humphreys’ brother has 20 more, so between the two of them they produce nearly 50 animals a year.
The allure of Japanese Black Wagyu lies partly in the history and folklore that surrounds them. It also explains some of the more unusual features in their care.
“Tradition has it that in their native Japan, where these animals were kept on small farms, there might only be a handful of cattle on a farm and they’d be inside all the year round, so they’d be living very close to the family.
“And because they had little movement they’d be massaged, which is said to improve their muscle tone because they didn’t have much movement,” Mr Humphreys said.
He added: “Also, in the hot weather they’d tend to go off their appetite and so they were fed beer in order to stimulate their appetite. Hence the tradition of massage and feeding beer which the Japanese Black Wagyu is still famous for.”
Mr Humphreys’ cattle get a daily couple of pints of beer from the local