Cattle keeper - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Thursday 30 December, 2010

by Rosemary at 5:21pm in Cattle Comments closed

We must be proper cattle keepers now - we have the Cattle Keeper's Handbook from the British Cattle Movement Service. We've also got out Herd Register and medicine book AND an account with Genus who will do the AI for us in the summer.

We're going to buy semen from the RBST - they have five Shetland bulls so we have to pick one. They are all black and white. I've had a look at their pedigrees on line and I don't think any of them have Templeson Boris or Collafirth Rasmie genes in them. Some of them are pre-Boris / Rasmie and some contemporary. I will take advice but it's quite interesting looking at all the pedigrees. Each beast has an Inbred % but I don't know what that means. Templeson Boris was 25% inbred; the sire and dams of our two heifers are about 5.6% inbred. I'm now off to ask the question...