Information Awareness Report

Question: My husband and I are looking to raise Scottish Highlander Cattle and are interested in information about this type of breed.

My husband and I purchased a mini-farm of approximately 15 acres at an auction and at that time of purchase a farmer leased the land for his crops. After watching the farmer spray large amount of pesticides on his crops throughout the summer, we decided our land would better off if we raised sometime type of livestock on it instead. My husband knew someone that raised Scottish Highlander cattle and he thought might be a breed of cattle that might work for us. Since I know nothing about this type of cattle and my husband knew very little, I decided before we take this adventure we needed to know more about the breed.

I started my research by looking at my local public library’s catalog. The search terms I used in the keyword, subject and title fields were:

Scottish Highlander cattle
Highlander cattle
Highland cattle

I was unable locate anything by with this type of search.

I then decided to look up the call number for cattle and go to that section in the reference department and look in the stacks for books on cattle. After locating several books on cattle I pulled the books and checked the index for any information about Scottish Highlander cattle. I was able to locate three books.

Books I found:

Dowling, Robert, & Alderson, Lawrence. (1994). Rare breeds. Boston: Bulfinch Pr.
Hunsley, Roger. (2001). Livestock judging, selection, and evaluation. Danville: Vero Media Inc.

Gillespie, James. (2002). Modern livestock & poultry production. albany: 2002.

Each of the books has some great photos and snippets of information (ie. history and description), but did not have a lot of pertinent information.

Next I did a google search using the term “Scottish Highlander cattle” this gave me over 1,660,00 results. I then looked at the first page of results and selected those websites that I felt would provide the information my husband and I were looking for. I narrowed search down by selecting those that ended in .gov, .edu or .org. However, I did find a few that ended in .com that were resourceful. I successfully found all the information we wanted or needed without viewing all the searches that were provided.

URL’s that I found helpful were:
http://www.scottishhighlandcattle.com/
http://www.midwesthighlands.org/
http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/cattle/highland/
http://www.highlandcattleusa.org/?gclid=CNPAscrl_KICFUJx5Qod3zpSiQ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_cattle
http://canyonmeadowsfarm.com/id40.html

Overall, I found the books not much help, since they basically showed a picture of the cow and little synopsis it about its history and a description. However, I found the websites a great source of information. Through my research I realized that it was impossible to find all the information in one type of source. When the books didn’t help I had to turn to electronic resources. The websites taught us about the cattle’s requirements as far as, climate, shelter, grazing, and food and found these websites provided information. After doing this research we felt that this type of cattle would fit on our mini farm and we purchased 6 pregnant cows from a farmer that was advertising on one of the websites I discovered in my research.

My husband and I love our Highland Cattle. We have found them to be kind, gentle and they love people. They are easy to care for and have very lean and low cholesterol beef. We have found that they love treats such as; bread, apples, pears and watermelon rinds and will come running for it when they see you at the fence line. We have a small herd currently, but have had up to 15 at one time and averaged 3-4 calves a year.