Do you want a white one or a good one? Maybe you can have both…
Our breed isn’t good enough yet to responsibly breed and select for color. But can you get a good white one from already good lines? Of course.
There is a big difference between Skye High Farms’ white heifer, which recently sold for a record price and most white Highland cattle. The Skye High heifer comes from lines that are so famous they are almost Highland household names. She was pretty, to boot. Of course, there are good white cattle out there, but there are also a LOT of bad ones. For some reason, people forget they are all red on the inside – nobody wants to eat Snowflake.
Of course, there are good white cattle out there, but there are also a LOT of bad ones. For some reason, people forget they are all red on the inside – nobody wants to eat Snowflake.
Angie Long
This year I could sell this sweet little steer calf as a bull to a new breeder for a lot of money if he only had one more dilution gene. That is a problem. That is a big problem for a breed that has made a lot of quality progress in the last couple of decades. We have all colors of cattle at Highland Spice. In fact, we had a white bull, and we kept a little semen from him. But we also have seven females from his lines (that are not white) in our herd. Do we love them any less? Absolutely not. They are here because they are good cattle.
If we are going to try to preserve and improve this treasure of a breed, it seems to me that we cannot chase color trends. Maybe there will be a day when all the Highlands in the US are so good that one will have the luxury of selecting for color without compromising quality. New breeders can go to any local breeder and find a whole herd of nice ones and choose the one that happens to be white. But we are not there today. Until we get to that day, we will keep breeding good cattle, selecting beef and maternal traits, and trying to do better. When you approach it that way and get a color you like, that’s certainly a reason to celebrate. Congrats to Skye High Farms, Trafalgar Square Farm, and the handful of reputable breeders recently to have achieved this feat.
