Blue Grey cattle

This article is about the beef cattle. For the colour, see Blue-gray. For other uses, see The Blue and the Gray.

A blue grey cow

Blue Grey is a type of beef cattle popular in Scotland and the north of England.

It is traditionally produced by crossing a Whitebred Shorthorn bull with black Galloway cows. The offspring gain beefiness from their sire and hardiness from their upland dams, and their colour is a blue roan which is regarded as attractive by many farmers.

Due to the genetic origin of roan colouration in cattle, this colour does not breed true. This is because roan is the result of incomplete dominance between white and solid colour. Roan is produced consistently only in the first-generation cross between these. On average only half of the offspring of two blue roan cattle will be blue roan themselves, with the other half being either solid white or solid black.

The Blue Grey cross became so popular that a special type of Shorthorn was developed to produce white Shorthorn bulls – the Whitebred Shorthorn.

They are well-suited for rough grazing land and will utilize coarse grasses other breeds would shun. They are able to maintain good condition on less than ideal pasture and do not graze so intensively as sheep.^[1]

References

↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-09-09. Retrieved 2011-10-01. Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, Limestone Country Project. Access date August 2011

Livestock breeds of the British Isles

Cattle

Beef cattle	Angus Beef Shorthorn Belted Galloway Blue Grey Devon Dexter English Longhorn Galloway Hereford Highland Luing Shorthorn South Devon Sussex Welsh Black

Dairy cattle	Ayrshire Guernsey Jersey Milking Shorthorn

Dual purpose	British White Gloucester Pembroke Red Poll Shetland Whitebred Shorthorn

Primitive	Chillingham wild cattle Vaynol White Park cattle

Sheep

Extant	Beulah Speckled Face Bluefaced Leicester Border Leicester British Milk Cheviot Clun Forest Cotswold Dalesbred Derbyshire Gritstone Devon Closewool Devon Longwoolled Dorset Down English Leicester Exmoor Horn Galway Greyface Dartmoor Hampshire Herdwick Hill Radnor Kerry Hill Lincoln Llanwenog Lleyn Lonk Norfolk Horn Oxford Down Portland Romney Rough Fell Ryeland Scottish Blackface Shetland Shropshire Southdown sheep Suffolk Swaledale Teeswater Welsh Mountain Wensleydale Whitefaced Woodland Wiltshire Horn

Primitive	Boreray Castlemilk Moorit Hebridean Jacob Manx Loaghtan North Ronaldsay Soay

Extinct	Scottish Dunface

Pigs

Extant	Berkshire British Landrace British Lop British Saddleback Essex Gloucestershire Old Spots Hampshire Large Black Large White Middle White Oxford Sandy and Black Tamworth Welsh Wessex Saddleback

Extinct	Cumberland Grice Lincolnshire Curly-coated Small Black Small White Yorkshire Blue and White

Goats

Anglo-Nubian Bilberry British Alpine Golden Guernsey Irish

Poultry

Chickens	Cornish Derbyshire Redcap Dorking Ixworth Marsh Daisy Modern Game Modern Langshan Norfolk Grey Old English Game Old English Pheasant Fowl Orpington Rosecomb Scots Dumpy Scots Grey Sebright Sussex

Ducks	Abacot Ranger Aylesbury Orpington Khaki Campbell Magpie Shetland Welsh Harlequin

Geese	Brecon Buff Shetland

External links

Blue Grey information on Whitebred Shorthorn Association (UK) web page.

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/4/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.

Blue Grey cattle

See also

References

External links