Herd community

We work with a careful selection of hardy northern breeds to supply our business with the best beef our land can produce.

Our beef herd is made up of around 170 cattle from hardy traditional breeds that do well on our wet and hilly pastures. We buy young stock from farmers in the North of England and Scottish borders whom we know and trust.

Blue Greys are particularly well suited to our moorlands. These mottled grey and polled (hornless) animals were first bred in the 19^th century in Northern England and the Scottish Borders using a Galloway cow and Whitebred Shorthorn bull (also known as a Cumberland White).

The compact red-brown beasts that graze beside them are Luings (pronounced ‘lings’), a cross between Highland cattle and Beef Shorthorns first bred in the Inner Hebrides in the 1940s.

As much as our cattle are suited to the outdoor life while there is grass to eat, we bring them indoors during winter when the grass quality decreases and the wet, cold weather means they would damage our fields. Here we feed them on silage (fermented grass) that we cut during the summer, supplemented with cereals.

At the end of their lives, our Farm Manager Bob Day or Head of Butchery David Morland takes our cattle to one of two family-owned Cumbrian abattoirs within a 40-mile radius of the Farm. During these short journeys in the care of people they know and trust, our animals are treated with dignity.