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Scottish cattle on the Stodart Farm
Rob and Alison Stodart have two farms – one in Angus and one in Dumfries and Galloway – where they raise cattle to sell as food. Here’s how they look after their cattle, so you get better meat.
Passports/tagging
Calves have to get tags put in their ears within 21 days of being born. Rob usually tags his within 24 hours. They also get a passport which matches the number of their ear tag.
The British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) issues the passport, which looks a bit like a chequebook. It must be signed by the farmer, and he has to put his quality assurance sticker in it. The passport shows the mother and date of birth of the calf, along with the breed.
The passport is pretty much like a human one – you can’t leave home to go to a foreign place without it. The passport travels with the animal wherever it goes – for example, to another farm, a market or to an abattoir.
All the tag, passport and cattle movement details are recorded at the BCMS so everybody from the farmer to the customer who eventually buys the meat knows exactly where the animal has been.
What cattle eat
They eat a lot! Animals that have been weaned (stopped drinking their mum’s milk) and store cattle (animals that are being fattened to sell as meat) are fed on a mixture of barley, straw, potatoes, carrots and silage. Store animals are also put on grass during the summer. They are given supplementary feed in late summer, as the grass goes off. It gets them used to people being in the field, and it also gets them used to following a feed bag home.
Cows that are feeding their calves eat their way through fields of grass in the summer. As the grass stops growing in the late summer, they are fed a barley mix. In winter they can be fed on silage, straw and sometimes barley. Calves drink their mother’s milk, but they quickly learn to graze on grass.
Rob and Alison have two farms for two good reasons. The farm in Angus is in the east, and it provides food and straw for the winter. The farm in Dumfries and Galloway is in the west, and it provides good grass for the summer.
Nearly all the beef producers in Scotland (including Rob and Alison) are members of the Quality Meat Scotland farm assurance scheme. This scheme sets out strict rules that farmers have to follow – just like you have to follow rules at school. The vet comes to the farm every three months to make sure the animals are well.
There are also assessors who go round each farm regularly to make sure that the farmers are following the rules. They look out for things like how many cattle there are, the food and water they drink and the space they live in. Sometimes people from the Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) come to the farm with them to make sure the animals are looked after.
To be called Scotch Beef, animals must be born, reared for all their lives in Scotland on an approved farm, and slaughtered in Scotland in an approved meat plant.
Where cattle sleep
Straw is used for bedding the animals in the winter. When the courts (where the animals sleep) are cleaned out, the dung is put into a midden, to be spread onto fields as organic fertilizer. The animals are fed twice a day, seven days a week. They’re bedded every day, even at Christmas and New Year!
Looking after the health of the animals
The animals need to be looked after carefully. They can get pneumonia at any time, but this happens especially in late autumn when the weather turns cold and then gets mild again. You can see the steam rising from them in the sheds!
Pneumonia can cause a lot of heartache and extra work for farmers, because the whole batch in the shed can need a dose of medicine. There is nothing the farmer hates more than going out to the shed and finding a dead beast.
Just like humans, there are signs when an animal is ill. An experienced farmer will spot problems early on – one of the first signs there is a problem is that the animals get runny noses. The farmer also looks out for problems with breathing, and lack of interest in food – this is called ‘hanging back at the feed trough’. But there are always times when the worst happens and the farmer just couldn’t have done anything about it.
Animals too need to have a healthy, balanced diet. There can be problems if they don’t eat enough calcium or magnesium. For example, during calving time, cows can get milk fever because they lack calcium. This means the cow can’t stand up, and will sometimes die if she’s not treated. A whole bottle of calcium is injected into her, and she’s usually ok within an hour.
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