When I moved to Canada in 2000 part of my reason for doing so was to preserve and expand the Luing gene pool here. Purebred Luing numbers were very small, and had mostly accumulated in Dr Bob Church’s herd at Lochend upon the passing of other breeders.
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After the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak in the UK in I realized the importance of maintaining a Luing gene pool elsewhere in the world from a biosecurity standpoint. It was also important to me to maintain a Luing cattle population true to the original breed type as I was, and continue to be, concerned about the genetic integrity of the breed in some of the UK herds.
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In Fall 2001 I was given the opportunity to pick five older cows and a bull calf from the Lochend herd to establish my herd. Two of the cows were 14 years old and another two were 15 years old when I bought them. Three of them reared their last calves at 21, 22 and 23 years old respectively!
Our Breeding Program
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Three old cows - front left 20, front right 21, back middle 20 years old.
Out of this group of exceptional cows one cow stood out - Lochend Luing 223U. Apart from being phenotypically almost perfect she was already probably the most influential cow in the Canadian Luing gene pool through her sons and grandsons that had been used in the Lochend herd. She also carried more Snowlander blood than any other animal remaining in the gene pool with her dam being 75% Snowlander. This influence gave 223U the best chance of producing homozygous polled descendants - which with time has proven to be the case. Her sire, Luing Bonus, was the last Scottish bull exported to Canada from the Cadzow herd in 1984.
Lochend Luing 223U at 20 years old
Line-breeding
After some research I decided that a line-breeding program based on 223U would be the best way to secure and expand the Luing gene pool in Canada. My initial mating to establish the line bred foundation saw her bred by artificial insemination to Lochend Snowlander 185Y who was better than a 3/4 brother to 223U. As a result of an embryo flush at the age of 20 this mating produced Medicine River Warrior and some full sisters. We had also retained another 223U son, Medicine River Solomon, born three years earlier off a different bull.
Medicine River Warrior at 8 years old
The next step in expanding the gene pool was to breed these two bulls to each other’s daughters in a criss-cross mating pattern. As 223U descends from the Leccamore cow family on Luing most of the females in the herd today carry the Leccamore family name. The herd continued to grow through retained heifers and a few more purchases from the Lochend herd but in total we bought less than 20 females as there were very few available.
Medicine River Solomon at 6 years old
The Greywood Line
Meanwhile Jeff Longard, a fellow breeder, had also purchased a few Luings from Lochend to establish his Greywood herd at Winfield, Alberta. Around 2007 Jeff and I redistributed some cattle between our herds resulting in him retaining the few cattle in the gene pool that were unrelated to 223U while I added any 223U relatives to my herd. This created what we still call the Greywood line which was based more on old Scottish bloodlines from Rothney that carry no Snowlander blood. The Greywood line demonstrated noticeably more hair and horns at that time. Like the Leccamores, the Greywood line was then maintained as a closed line-bred group. When we moved from Alberta to Manitoba in 2015 the Greywood line came with us, mostly now in my ownership but with Jeff retaining a nucleus that I look after for him on a custom basis.
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Moving to Manitoba
The move to Manitoba proved challenging as it is physically tough on cattle to move them south and east on this continent and we moved 800 miles in that direction. It is particularly difficult to move line-bred cattle as their ability for environmental adaptation seems to be reduced. Manitoba is a much tougher environment for cattle anyway with greater extremes of heat and cold plus greater humidity and intolerable fly and bug pressure in summer.
Medicine River Lochay 24H
The Lochay Family
Another cow family that has prospered in Manitoba is the Lochays. Only one Lochay cow came to Canada - Lochay Ailsa 88 - an early cow in the breed from the Stewarts of Ben Challum. Her parents were by Luing Magpie and Luing Osprey, sons of Luing Buzzard, grandsons of Luing Monarch one of the foundation sires of the breed. Dr Bob Church maintained this cow family in his herd but they did not seem overly prolific. I purchased a Lochay heifer from Lochend who didn’t leave me many daughters either but since moving to Manitoba her descendents have started to multiply more rapidly. Although generally smaller in size these are excellent cows with xceptional udders and are probably closer in type to the original Luings than could be found anywhere else. Cows from the Lochay family, like the one pictured above, are notable in that their phenotype never deviates from one generation to the next regardless of the bull used.
Berryfell X4 pictured at 5 years old
Moving forward
Although we are very happy with the herd, 20 years of intense line-breeding has increased the inbreeding levels considerably. With that in mind I went looking for new genetics that would complement what we have without throwing away the qualities and consistency we have refined in the herd. I had been following the progress of Wilbert and Scott Girvan’s Berryfell herd in Scotland over the years as they were the only other people in the Luing breed practising line-breeding. I knew their herd had been selected solely for functional efficiency with a particular focus on foot and udder quality. In terms of size and type their cattle were probably closer to mine than most other Luings in the world. With their help and cooperation we collected semen off Berryfell X4 and had some shipped to Canada. We have used this semen on a limited scale and will have our first X4 daughters calving at two years old in 2026. Sons will also be used in the herd this summer. We are very happy with all the offspring in terms of size and type and they appear well adapted to our conditions.
Typical cows in the Berryfell herd
We are also pursuing another source of “new” genetics through a partnership with Curtis Cauley, a young breeder in Minnesota. We sent him some females from the Greywood line to breed to some old Luing Jet and Luing Magpie semen from the 1970s that was trapped by bureaucracy in the US unable to return to Canada. We hope to use some offspring from these matings in our herd in future.
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Back to the future
With an eye to the longterm sustainability of the Luing genepool in Canada we decided in 2025 to reintroduce a breeding system that the Cadzows utilized in their original creation of the breed. We have begun to line cross the different bloodlines within our herd. The females were separated into four groups and we will use bulls from each group in a rotation between the cow groups which will reduce inbreeding levels to a more manageable level which should be sustainable in perpetuity.