A group of Highland cattle is called a fold, not a herd
Shaggy, long-horned Highland cattle gather in folds, named after the open stone shelters where they once spent winter nights out of the weather. The breed was bred to survive the harsh west of Scotland, yet in its homeland it is now classed as at risk, with far more animals abroad.
The breed comes from the Scottish Highlands and the Western Islands and is prized for hardiness in rough conditions. It once had two forms. The Kyloe of the Hebrides was small and often black, and took its name from the practice of swimming cattle across the narrow kyles between islands and mainland. Mainland cattle were bigger and varied in colour, frequently brown or red. When a breed society formed in 1884, its first herd-book in 1885 lumped both together simply as Highland. Today they are raised mainly for beef.
In the 18th century these animals were a pillar of the Scottish economy. English drovers bought them at markets such as Falkirk and Crieff and walked them south across the Pennines to be fattened, and in 1723 more than 30000 Scottish cattle were sold into England. Royal patronage came later: in 1954 Queen Elizabeth II established a herd at Balmoral Castle, where they remain.
Exports began in the late 19th century, to places including Argentina, Canada, the Falkland Islands and the United States. Australia's early imports by Scottish settlers died out, and the breed was restarted there in 1954 with two cows and a bull, later expanded using imported semen. In Canada, the future Lord Strathcona and Robert Campbell each brought a bull to Manitoba in the 1880s, though numbers stayed low until the 1920s, and a UK trade in semen and embryos ended largely because of the BSE outbreaks. In 2022, twenty-three countries reported the breed, with a world population of just over 40000, led by France and Finland.
At home the numbers have fluctuated. Registered breeding cows in the UK rose from about 2500 in 2002 to some 6000 in 2012, then fell back to 3161 in 2021, and the breed is listed as endangered or at risk. Nobody knows how many unregistered animals exist.
Source: Highland cattle
