Do Highland cattle cope with the Australian heat?

Highlands evolved on the west coast of Scotland, so the question is fair and it comes up in almost every enquiry. The short answer: they cope well across most of southern Australia, they need real management in the north, and everywhere they need shade and water you have actually thought about rather than assumed.

How the coat works

A Highland carries a double coat. The outer layer is long, coarse and oily, and its job is to shed rain — water runs off it rather than soaking through to the skin. Underneath sits a soft, dense undercoat that does the insulating.

In winter this combination is why Highlands need no shelter at all. Rain and wind that would have a British breed miserable barely register.

In summer they shed the undercoat, and a healthy Highland in January looks strikingly different to the same animal in July — lighter, sleeker, sometimes patchy while it is coming out. That shedding is normal and is not a sign anything is wrong. What is left is the outer coat, which is less insulating than it looks, and Highlands manage heat better than people expect once the undercoat is gone.

The real enemy is not dry heat. It is sustained heat combined with humidity, because that is where an animal struggles to shed heat at all.

What they need from you

• Real shade. Trees are better than a shed, because the shade moves with the sun, the air underneath is genuinely cooler, and there is no build-up of heat in an iron roof. Established shelterbelts on the western and northern sides of a paddock do more for summer comfort than any structure. If you have neither trees nor shade, that is the first thing to fix, and it is worth planting for the summer after next.
• Water they will actually use. Cool, clean, in shade where you can manage it, and more of it than you think. Cattle drink far more in hot weather, and a trough that is adequate in September will not keep up in February. Check flow rates, not just whether the trough is full when you look at it.
• Timing. Do your handling early in the morning. A Highland asked to walk anywhere at 2pm in February is not going to think well of you, and a stressed animal in heat is a genuine welfare risk. If something must be done in the middle of a hot day, it had better be an emergency.
• Fly and lice management. Summer brings flies, and long coats around the face and horns collect them. Keep an eye out for pinkeye, which spreads fast in a hot, dusty, fly-heavy summer.
• Watch condition through summer, not just through winter. Pasture goes off, animals eat less in the heat, and a Highland's coat hides condition loss better than a short-coated breed does. Learn to put your hands on them.

What it looks like here

Our country is 137 acres of grazing at Freshwater Creek, on the coast in Victoria. The summers are dry rather than humid, with a handful of genuinely hot days driven by northerly wind, usually broken in the afternoon by a change off the water. That is close to ideal for Highlands: the heat is real but it does not sit overnight, and the humidity that would trouble them is not there.

On a hot day the fold does what cattle everywhere do — they move to shade mid-morning, camp there through the worst of it, and come out to graze again in the evening. Provided the trough keeps up and there is somewhere decent to stand, they simply manage it. The harder parts of our year are the wet ones, not the hot ones, and mud through a coastal winter is a bigger practical problem than January ever is.

Where Highlands are harder work

Sustained high humidity with no shade is where we would think carefully. Much of coastal Queensland and the Top End is a genuine challenge for the breed, not impossible but a different proposition, and it usually means more shade, more water, and accepting the animals will be sluggish through the wet season.

Tick country is the other consideration. Long coats and cattle ticks are a poor combination, and if you are in a tick area you need a program and you need to be honest with yourself about doing it.

Things people worry about that do not matter much

• Patchy shedding. Ugly for a few weeks, not a problem.
• Whether to clip them. Generally unnecessary in southern Australia. The coat sheds on its own, and the outer coat provides sun protection. Clipping for show is a different matter to clipping for welfare.
• Whether they will cope at all. Highlands have been in Australia a long time and are run in every southern state. The breed is not the limiting factor. Your shade and water are.

If you are in a marginal climate

Tell us where you are and what your place looks like, and we will give you an honest view rather than a sale. Sometimes the answer is that it would work with a shelterbelt and a bigger trough. Sometimes it is that a different breed would have an easier life.