FARMING FOR BEEF

William Raw keeps two types of beef cattle on his Swaledale farm. The British Blue has its ancestry in the Durham Shorthorn breed of cattle, which originated in the North East of England in the late 18th century. Shorthorns were exported from England into Belgium from 1850, to help improve the native breed in the Ardennes. The results of crossing the two led to the development of an animal today that is large and long-bodied with heavy muscling, producing meat that is very lean. The first of these Blues were imported to the UK in the 1980s. The breed is known for having a quiet temperament and being easy to handle. Coat colours include white, black and blue or a combination of these. The calves tend to have a smaller size due to the breed’s shorter than average gestation period, meaning that intervention in calving is less frequent and a large proportion of cows can be left to give birth naturally. The Limousin is a richly coloured breed of golden-red, which originated from the Massif Central, a highland region in central southern France known for a rainy, somewhat harsh climate and poor soil. Life in this difficult environment produced an animal which is solid, adaptable and strong. There are a number of opinions on the origins of the breed, and cave drawings dating back 20,000 years depicting cattle very similar to the modern Limousin have been discovered in France. Originally used as a working draught animal, developments with the Limousin have led to a prized beef breed, with a well-muscled body, a low proportion of fat and a strong, but fine-boned, frame. The first examples of the breed were imported into the UK in 1971. Like the British Blue, the Limousin calves easily.