Means what it says, Dad was a pedigree, registered Aberdeen Angus. Could have been bred and reared (but not finished) on an upland beef and sheep farm like ex-BH’s in Cumbria, with a beef suckler cow for a mum, or could have been born to a dairy cow and reared somewhere other than its holding of birth.
The story goes like this. Morrison’s wanted to support the rare Whitebred Shorthorn, and set up a herd in Dumfriesshire, and offered a premium to producers using Whitebred Shorthorn bulls. That wasn’t many - they are a
very rare breed - so Morrison’s extended the premium to all Beef Shorthorn. Still not very many, so they extended the scheme initially to include Angus and Hereford too and then to all native beef breeds, but paid double premium for Shorthorn. At this point the premium was 10ppk for all native beef, 20ppk for Shorthorn.
Why only on the sire, not taking account of the mother’s breeding? Because that’s the way cattle registration works. Calves are registered by breed - BBB if pure bred, where BBB is the breed abbreviation, and BBBx if only the father is of that breed. The mother’s breed isn’t indicated (except insofar as she must be BBB if the calf is BBB.]. ‘AA’ is pure (more than 7/8) Aberdeen Angus; ‘AAx’ is sired by an Aberdeen Angus, mother could be anything.
If they’d limited the scheme to pure pedigrees only, they’d have a) limited their sources and b) harmed the very breed they set out to try to help, as the Whitebred Shorthorn exists primarily to sire the Blue Grey - an excellent beef suckler cow and a decent beef stirk, out of a Galloway cow to a Whitebred Shorthorn bull. The moorlands of the far north of England and Southern Scotland used to be a stronghold for the Blue Grey, but the Limousin was taking over - and damaging the moorlands in so doing, being less of a forager and less of a good doer on rough picking than the natives. EU-funded Natural England-run schemes to encourage grazing by native breeds paid only for pedigree pure breds, which excluded the hybrid Blue Grey, thereby hurting the Whitebred Shorthorn further still. Farmers and the Breeders’ Societies lobbied Morrison’, and so the native premium scheme came about.
Other supermarkets got on the bandwagon, and beef started to be labelled ‘Aberdeen Angus’ or ‘Hereford’ or whatever.
As a beef farmer at the time, farming native crossbreed suckler cows to a native bull, I can tell you that the Morrisons scheme really helped farmers to switch to a native breed bull.
I’m all for accurate labelling, and dislike labelling which misleads - ‘outdoor bred pork’, for instance, which sounds like free range but actually means that the sow ran with a boar outside and probably did farrow in an ark in a field too - but the piglets were probably brought indoors at weaning (at 8 weeks or earlier) - or maybe even sooner.
So if the supermarkets are now having to make it clear that it’s not pure Aberdeen Angus but only Aberdeen Angus Sired, I guess that’s good thing in a way - provided it doesn’t go back around the loop and end up again hurting the Whitebred Shorthorn - Blue Grey production.
Would this be another beef breed put to an AA bull, or a dairy breed? (oh, and if dairy, does that mean that both male and female calves would go for beef?).
Some of the females will go for beef yes, whether the mothers are pure beef, or crossbred sucklers, or dairy. Some of all these types will go on to become suckler cows themselves. Ex-BH used to buy in dairy x Hereford heifer calves to rear as suckler cows for himself, and the heifers he produced himself, being 1/4 dairy 3/4 beef, were becoming much sought after as suckler cows.
Topic: "Aberdeen Angus Sired"? (Read 13212 times)
