Saving the White Park Cattle

by seedsavers 7. December 2009 19:03

“My dad told me that you don’t have to worry about a happy bull, and a happy bull is one that is chewing its cud,” said Tim Abbott, our herdsman at Heritage Farm. He was admiring a mammoth animal five feet away that weighed 2100 pounds and had a three foot rack of horns on its head.

“You can’t be skittish around horned cattle,” Abbott said, smiling. “The animal can sense that.”

Tim Abbott and the White Park out in pasture.

Most days for the White Park Cattle are spent munching lazily on grass amid blue chicory and wild daisies in one of 14 pastures at Heritage Farm.

So, nose to the ground, the contented bull didn’t seem to mind that all the cows and calves around him were being rounded up for their yearly veterinary checkup. A hundred bellowing animals make for a lot of noise - two herds of 50 cattle each being separated into cows, young bulls, and heifer calves. They were vaccinated, tagged with a chip, tattooed in the ear and the females were checked to see if they are pregnant.

The day was a success; both herds were in very good health. Five older animals were culled out due to old age and several animals were sold to Leaping Waters Farm in Virginia. We are over-wintering 68 animals in two herds this year; 14 Heifers, 10 Bulls, and 44 pregnant cows. Which means we’re expecting 44 calves next April and May 2010.

We preserve the cattle here at Heritage Farm, for several reasons. The cattle play an important role in seed saving by helping us maintain our pastures. With 890 acres, our preservation gardens are spread throughout the property. The cattle’s grazing and rotation through the pastures allow us to move our garden sites to new areas easily. The White Park Cattle are important as they defy feed lot-style beef production. The cattle have aquired, over hundereds of years, traits essential for raising healthy cattle without dangerous environmental impact: good grazers, easy to calf, good mothers, delicious lean meat, and they are low maintainenance.

Currently, the status of the cattle is listed as critical by the American Livestock Breed Conservancy, meaning that there are fewer than 200 annual registrations in the United States and an estimated global population of less than 2,000.

Those numbers may seem shockingly low, but there were only four cattle in North America at the start of WWII. The four were sent to the Toronto Zoo by worried British breeders who feared a Nazi invasion. They were later moved to the Bronx Zoo, and then to the King Ranch in Texas. Seed Savers bought its first White Park in the late 1980s.

Since then, White Park cattle in the U.S. have been split up, with most of the cattle belonging to these four herds - the B Bar Ranch in Montana, Heritage Farm in Decorah, and two farms in Virginia - Ayrshire Farm and Leaping Waters Farm. All three locations follow the same breeding program. Each maintain two separate herds (called A & B herds) so that they can share bulls between the two herds and keep the cattle as distantly related as possible. These locations also share the same goals for raising White Park cattle: to maintain the genetics of the small population and to increase the breed’s numbers.

And all this work may soon pay off. The White Park Cattle may see their status changed from critical to threatened (meaning fewer than 1,000 annual registrations in the United States and an estimated global population less than 5,000). Moving the status of the White Park Cattle to threatened would be a huge accomplishment, when all too often many breeds are moving closer to extinction.

After a full day with the vet, Abbott led the cattle back to their pasture where they continue to play a significant role in conserving our land and protecting our gardening heritage.

Breeding herds of at least 10 animals are now for sale. Individuals interested in joining the ongoing process of the preservation of the breed can call Seed Savers Exchange at 563-3820-5990 for details.

BELOW: A typical summer day for the White Park out in the pasture