Highland Cow Breeders
Red Spruce Farm breeds Highland cows as beef cows in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, in Atlantic Canada.
Our Highlands live on the range in the growing months of the year, and when grass gets low, we switch to dry hay bales in the winter. Usually at any given time we will have around six calves and yearlings available.
If you are interested in starting your own Highland cow herd, please contact us to discuss availability and pricing.
Our Highland Bull
Our Highland bull on the farm is black and large. We can only guess he’s about 1400 lbs (635 kg) since we’ve never weighed him. He is a bull, but, he is nearly as docile as our cow. But being a bull, he will stop and stare us in the eye when we are trying to move him sometimes. However, we find that if he’s with his girls he will move along very nicely; when his girls are in heat and we’re trying to move him away from his ladies, he will not move along very nicely.
Our Highland Cows
Currently, we have three Highland cows we keep as breeding cows, two of which are black Highland cows, and one is a brown Highland cow. They are fully horned, have a fairly calm temperament but not halter broken.
Highland Calves
Each year we expect three Highland calves to be born, one or two as females and one or two as males. We castrate at birth, so if you are looking for a bull, you will need to contact us in advance to make arrangements.
We find we get an assortment of calf colours off of our current bull, being black, light brown, dark brown, and blue.
Highland cows birth pretty independently and require very little special attention.
Highland Cow Breed Characteristics
Highland cows have a fairly calm temperament compared to other cows, but it is always important to remember that they are cows with large horns that you really do not have clear communication with. They are long haired cows with hair that often comes down over their face. It is a double layered coat, which helps them be the iconic animals they are. Their horns span about 1 m (3 ft) when fully grown, as you can see the various stages in the photos on this page. They are not fast growers, and they are pretty hearty animals. This means that they do better on marginal land, which includes range and forest; this is compared to more commercial fast growing breeds who do not do well on marginal lands. It is important to remember that this doesn’t mean they don’t need any food, it just means that they will eat leaves, shrubs and flowers as well as the choice grass available (unlike more picky eaters).
On this note, we will find that feeding the cows hay in the winter they will eat about one bale every two days for the approximate seven animal units we have, so this translates into each cow eating one big round bale every 10 – 14 days. This entirely depends on the quality of the hay and age of the animals.
Highland cows are pretty easy to move and get along with. We move the cows with a few sticks, a loud whistle, and a guiding fence which they move along nicely. The fencing for our pastures is typically two strands of polywire, the highest being at a height of about three feet. So, this means that the Highland cows are relatively easy to keep contained in your rotation system. I would definitely be a little more cautious in fencing if we didn’t have the security of our four strand high tensile perimeter fence.
A full grown Highland cow, which would be at about two years old, will weigh about 1000 – 1200 lbs (450 – 550 kg), mature adult Highland bull will be heavier, about 1500 – 1900 lbs (680 – 850 kg), and a mature cow will weigh about 1100 – 1500 lbs (500 – 700 kg). As you can imagine, the full weight of any animal depend on many factors, including grass type, feed supplements, animal health, breed, and genetics.
We find our Highlands that are ready for harvest at about two years old are a little over 1000 lbs. This would dress out around 600 – 700 lbs (270 – 320 kg) of meat.
