Livestock - Beef

Beef Industry.

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The UK Beef Industry - an introduction

Cattle provide us with meat, milk, leather, glue, gelatine to name a few items, and in some countries they are still used for draft.

In some countries beef and milk is produced from the same animal, this is called a dual purpose breed. In other countries, like North America, the beef and dairy cattle are completly independent sectors.

The cattle industry in the UK is divided into these two main sectors, however their is an intimate relationship between the two. The beef produced in this country comes partly from the dairy herd, which is primarily kept for milk, and partly from the suckler herd which is purpsoely kept for meat production. The intimate relationship comes from the important exchange of breeding stock between the suckler and diary herds.

The recent BBC series 'The Future of Food' discussed how world livestock production was wasteful of our world food energy. Using grain to fatten cattle is inefficient - the programme gave an example of how the grain used to produce one large steak could be used to feed 40 people. It also gave figures for how much grain was needed on average to produce 1 Kg of different meats. It then however went on to say how UK Agriculture is something of an exception as around 80% of cattle in this country are fattened on grass and not cereals. What's more this grass is grown on the Uplands of Britain which cannot be used for much else than to grow grass.

Breeds of Cattle

Beef Breeds

  • Traditional English Breeds

    • Aberdeen Angus

    • Hereford

  • Continental Breeds

    • Charolais

    • Limousin

    • Simmental

Dairy Breeds

  • Freisian

  • Holstein

 

Beef from Diary Herds.

 

Wheat Crop
Holstein Dairy Cow

In order to continue the dairy farmer must breed replacments for his cows, he does this by mating his Holstein dairy breed cows with Holstein bulls, usually by A. I. (artificial insemination).

This provides him with cows to choose his replacments from, but also with bulls he has no use for plus some surplus cows, which are unsuitable for replacments. These surplus pure Holstein cattle are reared for beef.

The dairy farmer may also mate some of his cows with a beef breed such as: Charloais or Limousin. These beef bulls will have come from the suckler herd.

Some of the female offspring from this mating will be cross-breed cows which may be bought by the suckler herd. These cows will be mated with a beef bull to produce ideal beef cattle. In addition they will have the benefit of being part Holstein with a better milk yeild for suckling than pure beef cows.

Beef from Suckler Cows.

Beef suckler herds rear cattle purely for beef. The cow produces a calf each year which she suckles until it is weaned at around 6 months old. They use beef breeds - some may be cross-breeds, from the dairy herd as expalined above, or crossed beef breeds.

Some maybe pure breeds such as: Charolais, Limousin, Aberdeen Angus, Belgian Blue. Some of the bull calves wil be used in the dairy herd for crosing with some of the cows which they don't want to breed replacment milking cows from.

An efficient system.

Wheat Crop
Cattle and Sheep can be reared on marginal land, like this hill.

This cross over of stock between the dairy and beef sectors is what forms the intimate relationship between the two sectors. It is biologically effiecient with each sector providing stock for the other and providing more beef cattle than would otherwise be possible if the beef herd had to rear all it's own replacments. It also allows suckler herds to be maintained on marginal land which would not be able to grow crops and is only suitable to grow timber. Those who argue that feeding crops to animals then eating the animals is not an efficient way of producing protein in a nungry world forget that cattle and sheep maintained on rangeland s and in hilly and mountainous areas produce protein from soil which would not other wise contribute to human food supplies. The animals have low requirments for fossil fuels too!

Cattle can also be good for wildlife. Surprising though it may seem this is true. Much of the countryside we may consider as wild in this country is like it is due to livestock which have been kept on it over the centuries. Even the RSPB appreciate this and are using cattle to restore natural marshes - Cattle make a welcome comeback.

Read full story in Yorkshire Post