Handling and halter training your Highland

Every animal that leaves here is handled daily and worked in the yards, because an unhandled Highland with horns is a problem you will eventually have to solve in a hurry.

Yard handling is the part that matters most. An animal that will move where you ask, stand quietly in a pen, be drafted, have its feet and head handled and walk onto a float is an animal you can look after. Vet visits, hoof trimming, loading and moving between paddocks are all straightforward with a calm animal and genuinely dangerous without one.

Halter training is a step beyond that. Some of our animals are halter trained and some are not — we do it case by case rather than as a blanket promise, and we will always tell you plainly where a particular animal is up to. If you want to take one further yourself, here is how we approach it.

Yard work first

Before any halter goes on, the animal needs to be comfortable with the yards themselves. That means walking through them when nothing is happening, standing in a pen without being rushed, and learning that a gate closing is not the start of something unpleasant.

Move quietly and at a walk. Cattle read body position far more than voice — where you stand relative to the shoulder decides whether an animal goes forward or turns back, and most handling problems are people standing in the wrong place and then getting loud about it. Let them look at things. An animal given two seconds to examine a gateway walks through it; one pushed at it plants.

Finish every yard session by letting them out calmly rather than chasing them out. What they remember is the end.

Start early

Calves learn fast and are small enough that a mistake is inconvenient rather than dangerous. Use that window. A six-month-old who leans on a halter is manageable; a two-year-old bull who leans on a halter is not, and by then you are negotiating with several hundred kilograms that has worked out it is stronger than you.

Early does not mean rushed. It means the groundwork is done while the arithmetic is still in your favour.

The progression

• Presence — being near them without asking anything of them. Sitting in the paddock, moving about the yard, doing nothing in particular.
• Touch — shoulder first, never the face. The shoulder is neutral ground. Working up to the neck, back, then head takes as long as it takes.
• Halter on, halter off — with no pressure applied at all, several times, until it is unremarkable.
• Yield to pressure — one step at a time, and the release is the reward. Ask, wait, and the instant the foot moves, slacken the rope. The release teaches, not the pull.
• Leading — short distances in a confined space before anywhere open.
• Tying — only once leading is solid, and always to something that will not move, with a quick-release knot.
• Loading — the one that repays every hour you put in, usually on a day that has not gone to plan.

Short sessions, often. Five minutes every day beats an hour on a Sunday. Finish while it is still going well rather than pushing for one more win — the last thing that happened is the thing they take away.

Equipment and safety

A properly fitted rope or flat cattle halter, adjusted so it does not slip down over the nostrils. A long enough lead that you are not standing under the horns. Boots, and gloves if you are holding rope.

Never wrap a lead around your hand, your wrist or anything else. Never stand between an animal and a solid fence. Work with a rail or a race between you and the animal until you are confident in it, and make sure someone knows you are in the yards.

Horns change the geometry rather than the risk. A Highland turning its head has a wide sweep and is frequently unaware of where the tips are. Stand where a turn will not catch you.

What to expect

Some animals take to it in a fortnight. Others decide they would rather not, and pushing a reluctant one is how people and animals get hurt. There is no prize for forcing it, and an animal that is calm in the yards but has no interest in a halter is still a perfectly manageable animal.

Temperament is inherited and it is not evenly distributed. Some lines are simply easier, which is exactly why we breed for it — and why we would rather tell you honestly what an individual animal is like than sell you a promise that every one of them is the same.