Shorthorn conference set to launch British tour

NEXT month delegates from all over the world will attend the 2010 Shorthorn World Conference. This is the first time since 1989 that the conference has been held in the UK.

The 13th World Conference includes a tour of 14 farms using the Shorthorn breed in a diverse range of farming conditions, hosted by beef and dairy Shorthorn breeders.

The visit starts with two days at the Royal Highland Show where they will see the biggest entry of Shorthorn cattle ever seen at an agricultural show in living memory, as breeders bring out their cattle to showcase British Shorthorn genetics to a worldwide audience.

It ends two weeks later with a conference in Stratford-upon-Avon, where the Shorthorn Society's patron, the Princess Royal, will host a reception during the conference tour.

Shorthorn Society president James Playfair Hannay, who is opening his farm, Morebattle Tofts, near Kelso, said the tour with its 120 delegates from ten countries including Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay provided the ideal opportunity to show overseas breeders the massive changes that had been made.

"Over the last 30-plus years, the features of the breed and its breeders have changed dramatically. From the lows of the late 1970s to the current highs, our breed has been transformed."

The herd visits include pedigree herds in the Scottish uplands and Border country as well as a large commercial cattle enterprise involving Shorthorns on an historic Scottish Estate.

In England the visitors will see a unique milk marketing business using pedigree dairy Shorthorn milk on the edge of Hadrian's Wall country, the oldest beef Shorthorn herd based on a north Yorkshire estate, commercial and pedigree beef enterprises in East Anglia and the Midlands and two dairy Shorthorn herds – one organic and the other the last remaining in what is now a specialist arable area.