Scheme Launched to Protect Rare Cattle

A Stourbridge-born farmer has launched a wildlife-friendly beef brand to help protect ancient grasslands in Worcestershire

Jack Cockburn, who now farms in Wales, has teamed up with the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust and Old Yarr Estates Farm Shop, near Redditch, to offer customers tradition Hereford beef from animals that graze on the Trust’s nature reserves.
 
The scheme aims to create an economical future for the traditional Hereford cattle, which is now listed as a rare breed.
 
It will also help to protect and promote wildlife living in the ancient grasslands.
 
Mr Cockburn said, “We’re bringing high quality beef from a native breed straight to customers’ doors. It’s a system which created the ancient grasslands that the wildlife trust is now working to protect. For hundreds of years cattle were bred in the hills of Wales and then walked by drovers to the better land in the Midlands to be fattened for market.”