Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country | Founded 05-05-05

Actually, It’s a Highland Cow:

The Shaggy Bovines of Calloway Gap Tie the Old World to the New

Story by Ron Fitzwater

If you drive north from Boone on the Blue Ridge Parkway, you will see some of the most beautiful scenery in the High Country. Just past the Mount Jefferson overlook, between mile markers 264 and 265, you will see one of the more interesting sights on the Parkway, the Highland cattle of Omni Farm.

The shaggy beasts, sometimes mistaken for yak or oxen, meander across their grazing land with a calm and ease that contrasts with their size. “Highlanders are a kind of an independent rough guy, but at the same time they are very docile and sweet,” said Highland cattle breeder and owner-operator of Omni Farm, Hal Gimlin.

The Gimlin family purchased Omni Farm in 1972 and began a wholesale mail-order Christmas tree business that today is the oldest one in the market nation wide. But the cows are the biggest draw for passersby. “If I had a quarter for everyone who stopped [on the Parkway] to take a picture this would really be profitable,” Gimlin said. For now, the cattle are more pleasure than business for Gimlin.

After beginning their livestock endeavors at the farm with dairy goats and sheep the Gimlins turned to Highland cattle and built a business that has grown into a three-fold operation. The business includes beef production, breeding stock sales and Highland cattle hides, that according to Omni Farm’s website, make great accent items such as rugs and bedspreads. The heard started small with 21 cows and one bull, but has since grown to around 60 head including calves.

The Business End of Highlanders

Most of Gimlin’s cattle production is for breeding stock. “I have really good bulls and really good breeding stock. I have never slaughtered a female since we got them in ’86. All my females go for breeding stock as well as a couple of bulls. The steer go to custom slaughter,” Gimlin said. At the USDA slaughterhouse in Wilkesboro, Gimlin has the beef cut into quarters and halves and he sells it locally. “The quality of the Highland beef is higher than anything you could get in a supermarket,” Gimlin said. “It is naturally lean, so it doesn’t have a lot of fat and is better for you in that way. We don’t use any growth hormones or antibiotics—none of the stuff you run in to when you buy your meat at the supermarket. There are a lot of people who want to buy local and it is a better product—it’s clean, its green and its local,” he said.

Gimlin said that he takes a personal hands-on approach to the processing of his beef. “When it’s their time to go, it is very low stress. I take them down and walk them up the chute myself,” he said.

Some beef consumers are turned off by the taste of grass-fed beef. For Gimlin’s cattle, that is not an issue. When the steers get close to prime weight for production, 800 to 1,000 pounds, he moves them from pasture where they have been grass feeding to a separate holding pen for three months where they are grain finished. This grain feeding adds fat for flavor to the meat and makes for a better, well-marbled product.

Highlanders are easy to care for because of the heartiness of the breed. “One of the reasons they were brought here is that they are rougher than the English breeds. [The English cattle] couldn’t handle the more severe weather out west. Additionally, they were having trouble with wolves, and your English cows don’t have the horns to protect themselves as well as a Highlander can,” Gimlin said. “It’s the perfect cow for somebody who doesn’t know much about cows. They pretty much take care of themselves. It’s the perfect cow for the homesteader type of person who comes up here and buys 10 or 20 acres and wants to have something on it, but doesn’t really have any experience,” he added.

Along with ease of care and good attitudes Highland cattle have other advantages. They have few calving problems. Because the animals are not fed hormones and have not been bred to be larger than natural, the calves are born at a normal size, making it easier for the cow to deliver. Highlands are good mothers with a protective attitude toward the young of the herd. They have a long lactation to provide a healthy diet for the calf. They are also hardy, highly disease resistant and great foragers that can thrive where other cows might just survive. Cold, harsh weather is no problem, and they also adapt to milder climates.

Keeping the Cattle Healthy

Highlanders are a disease-resistant breed. Long lashes and forelocks shield their eyes from flying insects, and as a result, pinkeye and cancer of the eye are uncommon. Additionally, Highlands don’t stress easily, so stress-related diseases occur with less frequency than in other breeds.

According to Gimlin, most diseases that affect cattle are fly borne. The Highlander’s heavy coat and thick hide give excellent protection from most biting flies, and Gimlin has taken some steps to help their natural defenses in noninvasive ways. “I try to keep the flies down. I put out a fly predator, the fly wasp, to control them. Their sole purpose in life is to lay eggs in fly larva and it works really well. I also put out flytraps to control the population. I use these methods to control the flies as naturally as possible without the use of pesticides,” Gimlin said.

Different Looks

“Highlanders are the oldest domesticated cows in the world. Because they were raised in the islands of Scotland, they were hard to get so the breed stayed pure over thousands of years. We have the oldest registration of any type of cow in the world. You can go back 200 years on any one of those guys and trace them back to Scotland because there is no upgrading in Highlanders like in most beef cows,” Gimlin said. “To be a true Highlander you have to be able to trace that lineage with no upgrading,” he added.

Initially there were two distinct classes: the slightly smaller and usually black Kyloe, whose bloodline comes from the islands off the west coast of northern Scotland and the other larger animal that is generally reddish in color, with its ancestral territory being the remote Highlands of Scotland. Today, both of these strains are seen as one breed—the Highlander. In addition to the original coats, yellow, dun, white, brindle and silver are also considered traditional colors.

The horns on Highlanders can be as varied as the colors. Some point down and some twist around, while others are straight with the bulls sporting large impressive fighting racks that they use for protection. According to Gimlin the difference in racks is due to the hormone changes that come from castration of the steers. The changes in the natural hormones cause the odd horn growth. The cows generally sport straight wide horns.

The Future

Gimlin does not plan to expand his cattle business, but let the natural order dictate how many steer go to slaughter and how many breeders he sells.

The Highlander takes much longer to mature for slaughter according to Gimlin. “You don’t get into Highlanders unless you want to be there a long time.” He has had some bulls and cows that have lived to 14 to 18 years old.

“[Highlander cattle] are the fastest growing cattle association in the United States for registered animals. There are at least 20 or 30 breeders in North Carolina and we are starting to see herds in Tennessee, and some in Georgia,” Gimlin said.

Gimlin speaks of his herd as proud parents speak of their children. In describing the best part of raising the animals he said, “Seeing the babies born with the ease the mother delivers, seeing the rotation of Mother Nature and watching the animals grow and working with them is very rewarding. When you see a group of three or four calves that are kind of in their teenage phase racing across the field together and jumping for joy, that’s the most rewarding part of it for me,” he said.

“I think people have a tendency now to not appreciate the fact that civilization was born on the backs of animals. The Scots had wars over these cows and we are not that far away in the big picture from that, only a hundred years or so. And we have to have respect for the animals that got us here,” he said.

For more information about Highland cattle and Omni Farm products, click to www.omnifarmhighlandcattle.com or www.omnifarm.com, email omnifarm@omnifarm.com, call 336-982-3475 or stop by the farm located at 1369 Calloway Gap Road, West Jefferson, NC 28694.