If they’d been Gaelic cattle, would the Scottish Government have kept them?

The Scottish Crofting Foundation, the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and the Shetland Cattle Herd Book Society are locking horns with the Scottish Government over a penny pinching move akin to the likelihood that the MoD sent HMS Astute to sea with out of date Admiralty charts.

In an irreversible move, the Environment Minister, Roseanna Cunningham, has not only sanctioned the sale of a herd of nine rare Shetland cattle, a breed with no more than four extant bloodlines and descried as ‘at risk’ – but has presided over their dispersal, sold to a variety of different owners.

These Shetland Cattle are said to date back to Viking times and are seen as part of Scotland’s agricultural and livestock heritage.

They have been sold – for the miniscule sum of around £4,500 – as part of the public spendin cuts and defended by the Environment Mnister as a sum to be spent on ‘offsetting the costs of modernising the bull stud to help ensure the production of quality livestock in crofting communities’.

That’s a lot of bull. £4,500?

A spokesman for the Government has said that it ‘had a duty to realise the greatest possible benefit for the taxpayer from the pubic assets’. £4,500? Blaming the budget crisis for the need for a sale of this order is simply silly.

This has to be a short-sighted, culturally destructive action. There is no mention of the exploration of an alternative future for the herd than dispersal and sale into the private sector.

A breed with the history and nature of these cattle must have had potential foe a sheltered breeding future within a wildife visitor attraction.

In the 19th century there were 20,000 of the cattle in Shetland. By the 20th centry this was down to 50. Why?

It could be said to be down to the profit motive which underpins survival, particularly in remote and fragile communities.

Somewhere around 1850, a shipping line was established which made the export of the cattle possible. The mainland market to which they went dictated that the biggest animals fetched the best prices and over time boats taking Shelands to the mainland came back with bulls from bigger mainland breeds. These were crossbred with the small Shetland cattle to produce larger calves and return more at sale.

In World War II, rationing brought a focus on the best nutrition which then brought beef within the diet of the urban working class.

Charolais and Belgian Blue, continental breeds, were used to bring about genetic developments, producing bigger cattle and faster growth rates. The utility of the pure bred native Shetlands seemed ever more feeble.

The Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) was set up in 1971, by which time there was no longer pedigree recording there. Work by the RBST throughout the 1970s, the RSBT identified purebred animals and in 1981 an Shetland Cattle Herd Book came back to production.

The Shetland Cattle Breeder’s Association began in 2000, started by a group of mainland UK breeders concerned about the breed;’s fragile status.

Now, after the weekend sell-off in Dingwall, this delicate hstorical breed has been dispersed and the Shetland Cattle Herd Book team are working fast to discover where each of the 9-strong herd has now gone.

If the cattle had spoken with the soft Celtic melancholy of the Gaelic Western Isles rather than with the more direct tones of their northern Nordic neighbours in Shetland, would they have been retained in public ownership?

Abair e!

The photograph above – of a 13 month old Shetland heifer – is by Boxersoft and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.