After many years of research, we have decided to breed Galloway cattle as a project to preserve and advance the genetics of this ancient breed of beef cattle. Our goals are to preserve the desirable traits that led to the establishment of this breed; winter hardiness, easy calving, good temperament and finally the ability to economically convert forage into high quality protein. We also plan to breed cattle of a moderate size and hope to avoid the trends in size that breeds go through from time to time.
We are strong believers in the need to preserve genetics that produce high quality meat on forage alone. Galloways excel at this and the recent movement towards grass fed / pasture raised beef, provides us the market for the seed-stock we hope to produce.
Grass Fed, Naturally Raised Cattle
Livestock deserve a life of minimal stress in a pasture, as opposed to confinement. Raising cattle this way does not require the use of antibiotics, as a rule. We do not use any hormone implants to increase the rate of natural weight gain.
We are grass farmers and take a strong interest in the performance of our pastures. We practice management intensive rotational grazing to allow pasture to recover fully before being re-grazed. This also has the side-effect of breaking many parasite cycles.
While we think of our method of grass farming and managing our livestock as natural, and while we practise many of the same land and livestock management techniques as organic farmers do, we do not label ourselves as an organic farm. The main reason for this is because we vaccinate our cows and our calves. We believe that on balance vaccination has been excellent public health policy which has benefited the health of humans and livestock at large.
Breeding Program
The Galloway herdbook is a 100% closed. One of the challenges in a pure breed is the maintenance of a diverse gene pool for future generations to draw on. We strongly believe that we are stewards of cattle genetics. We never own them, we borrow them for a while and then we pass them down to the next generation of stock men.
We prefer to be as colour blind as possible in our breeding choices. Our philosophy is that if you don't breed for a trait then you breed against it and consequently if you breed for one trait then often you compromise other traits. We have chosen to compromise on colour above all other traits. The fact that blacks and silver duns are sub pools that most breeders have kept separate because of a preference of one of those colours, allows us a degree of hybrid vigour when black cows are bred to silver dun bulls and vice versa. The foundation of our herd consists of one silver dun cow, one dun cow, and two black cows - all from superb and diverse Galloway blood lines. The first bull, who we expect will join our herd in six weeks or so is a silver dun and a fantastic specimen of the breed.
We plan to line breed when appropriate to tighten traits in the gene pool when we believe it is appropriate to do so. We will do this with careful consideration and discussion with more experienced breeders than ourselves. Line breeding is an appropriate tool for breeders but must also be used in conjunction with culling and and thus retaining only the stock that are the best animals for breeding. We do not believe that every heifer needs to be bred and given limited pasture and our desire to raise our cattle on forage alone, we expect there to be enough opportunities to cull heifers that are not desirable in our breeding program.
