Highland cattle are known for their long hairy coats and attractive horns. While their horns can look intimidating, here at Croftdown, our Highlands are known for their gentle and friendly nature.
With origins dating back to the sixth century, Highland cattle are known as conservation grazers and excellent at cleaning up wooded pastures, given their lighter frame and ability to eat a wide variety of plants. At Croftdown our Highlands have been an excellent source of weed management and have kept our pesky blackberry in check, they just love it!
Did you know…
Highlands are the oldest registered cattle in the world.
They come in numerous colours, including, black, brindle, red, yellow, dun, silver and white.
In cold climates where there is heavy snowfall they use their horns to dig through the snow to forage.
Highlands are a smaller breed of cattle with cows averaging 500kgs and bulls 800kgs, light, compared to other breeds.
A herd of Highland cattle is called a ‘fold’.
They have a double coat and cope really well during our cold Bathurst winters and hot summers!
Our small fold currently consists of two genetic lines. We are steadily growing our Highlands through carefully selected genetics with the aim to improve the breed. We choose to Artificially Inseminate (AI) our heifers and cows as this gives us the opportunity to not only select from the best genetics, however, it also allows us to improve the future generations of the breed. We breed for excellent conformation and outstanding temperament, these qualities and traits in our Highlands is very important to us.
