Rare breed of bull at Field Barn Farm in Beenham becomes local celebrity
An extremely rare breed of bull has become a local village celebrity due to his significant size, placid nature and impressive horns.
Winston, a 16-year-old British White Park steer who weighs around a tonne, is living out his final years at Field Barn Farm in Beenham, where he is looked after by Kate Bowsher, her father Graham and her brother Andy.
There are fewer than 1,000 breeding White Park females left in the country and they are a rare breed of ancient horned cattle that are around 2,000 years old.
Miss Bowsher said: “He’s very friendly despite his very large horns and he comes over every day for his joint supplements to help him with his mobility.
“He’ll live out his days here on the farm.”
Graham Bowsher, who runs GB Farming out of Field Barn, said: “He is a magnificent boy and he’s very well looked after.
“He is a local celebrity and he gets featured on the local Beenham Facebook page quite often.
Mr Bowsher also said that locals regularly stop by the farm to get photos of Winston.
Winston lives in a herd with 25 other cows which are all British Hereford cattle, another rare native breed, as well as Kate’s 28-year-old former show horse called Lark.
The Herefords are reared for breeding and meat purposes, but due to Winston’s age and with White Parks rarely living past 20, Miss Bowsher just wants to make sure he comfortably lives out his twilight years.
She said: “You will not find a farmer in this country that does not genuinely love their animals.”
The herd of Herefords at Field Barn Farm descend from cows first bred by Kate’s grandfather, so she hopes that she can breed more of them, and send some out elsewhere to create new herds and increase the numbers of traditional Herefords in this country.
She added: “We all muck in with everything around the farm, but the cows are definitely mine.”
Herefords, popular for their meat and their iconic look, have been exported all over the world throughout the last 100 years, but because of this, the native British pedigree has become quite rare.
Miss Bowsher said that the Herefords are perfect for sustainable beef production because their diet consists entirely of grass and they are almost entirely self-sufficient.
To find out more about the herd, visit the Beenham Park Herefords Facebook page, or to find out more about what happens at Field Barn Farm, visit gb_farming on Instagram.
