Highland Cattle: The Shaggy Hill Breed That Fed Scotland's Drove Roads

Where do Highland cattle come from?

Highland cattle come from the Scottish Highlands and the Western Isles of the Outer Hebrides, and their Gaelic name is Bò Ghàidhealach. Two types were traditionally recognized. The small, often black Kyloe was reared mainly in the Hebrides and took its name from the habit of swimming cattle across narrow straits, called kyles, on the way to market. The mainland type was larger and more variable in color, often brown or red.

For a long time the two were treated as separate local strains. When breeders finally wrote down a standard, they recorded both together under a single name, Highland, which is why the modern breed still shows so much variation in color and size. A good overview of that origin story appears in the Wikipedia article on Highland cattle.

How Highland cattle fed the drove roads

In the 18th century these cattle carried a good part of the Highland economy. Drovers bought them at markets such as Falkirk and Crieff and walked them south over the Pennines to be fattened on English pasture. In 1723 alone, more than 30,000 Scottish cattle were reported sold into England.

The cattle suited the work. They were light enough to walk long distances, tough enough to survive poor feed along the way, and valuable enough to repay the effort of the journey. The trade tied remote hill farms and island crofts to the cities of the south long before any breed society existed.

Herd books and breed societies

According to the herd book history summarized on Wikipedia, a breed society was established in 1884, and the first herd-book volume followed in 1885. It recorded both the Kyloe and mainland types as Highland. That step gave buyers abroad a registry they could trust, and exports followed.

Societies appeared in other countries over the next century. The American Scotch Highland Breeders Association was first organized in 1948, and the American registry now has about 1,100 members. Canada registered the breed in 1964, Sweden formed a society in 1976, Denmark in 1987, and Australia in 1988. Finland's club dates from 1997, though it records imports back to 1884.

The coat, horns and size of a Highland

Both sexes carry long, wide horns, and the coat is long and wavy. About 60 percent of the population is reddish brown and about 22 percent is yellow, with the rest pale silver, black, or brindle and dun. Coat color is linked to the MC1R and PMEL genes.

Highlands are medium-sized. Mature bulls can reach about 800 kg and heifers about 500 kg, with average weights of roughly 650 kg for males and 450 kg for females. Cows usually stand 90 to 106 cm at the shoulder and bulls 106 to 120 cm. Gestation runs about 277 to 290 days, usually producing a single calf, and heifers often first calve at two to three years.

Highland beef today

Highland beef is lean and very tender. That makes it a niche product rather than a mass-market one, and the economics rest on the fact that the animals can be profitable on poor pasture, especially in Scotland. For readers curious about how hill and range beef production compares around the world, farm.FM has a section on ranching with more background.

Highland cattle around the world

From the late 19th century, Highland stock went to Argentina, Australia, Canada, the Falkland Islands, the former Soviet Union and the United States. In Canada, Donald A. Smith, later Lord Strathcona, and Robert Campbell each imported a bull to Manitoba in the 1880s, and large-scale breeding began in the 1920s. The first recorded import to the United States came in the late 1890s.

Australia's story had a gap. Scottish immigrants brought cattle in the mid-19th century, but none remained by the late 1800s, and the breed was re-established in 1954 with two cows and a bull from Scotland. In Sweden, Borlänge Municipality keeps a herd of 105 for conservation grazing, started in 1994 with five cattle. Finland's club reported about 13,000 cattle in 2016. Our recent farm.FM story about Highland cattle shows how that shaggy look still draws a crowd.

Numbers, conservation and the Balmoral herd

The UK registered breeding cow population was about 2,500 in 2002, about 6,000 in 2012 and 3,161 in 2021, and the breed is listed as endangered or at risk in UK reporting. Worldwide, 23 countries reported Highlands in 2022 and the total was just over 40,000, with the largest numbers in France and Finland. In 1954, Queen Elizabeth II began a herd at Balmoral Castle, which is still kept there.