FARMERS are known as a resilient breed, and with the present state of the industry they would need to be.
It's bad enough when prices drop, but when you find that
cattle fetch only about a fifth of what they were selling for five or seven years ago, the stock market drops pale into insignificance.
If you are a Belted Galloway breeder, then you have been in at the thick of the price plunge as the lucrative German market dried up with the BSE scare and the export ban on British cattle.
But the Beltie breeders have battened down the hatches and are sitting it out as they wait for the European markets to re-open.
It's ironic that there has never been a case of BSE in a Belted Galloway and yet they have been made to suffer in the same way as other home breeds, such as the Galloway and Highlander.
John Corrie, the biggest of the Beltie breeders with several hundred head, is prepared to sit it out and hope that things will improve in the not too distant future.
''We are getting closer to the lifting of the export ban with only 44 cases of BSE in Scotland this year and only one case of new variant BSE in the British Isles.
''Like every other sector of agriculture, we're doing badly at the moment with no export market. The home market is very poor with very few people looking for Belties at the moment. The people who go for producing meat are going in for animals that will mature quickly so they have a quick turnover of money.''
He added: ''The meat from the Belted Galloway and such as the other slow maturing breeds like the Galloway and the Highlanders tend to have lost the place at the moment.
''A lot of our cattle were sold to people who probably wanted two or three to have in front of their houses. But with the way the agricultural industry is at the moment, that is just not happening at the present time and won't in the very near future.''
Corrie said that heifers which normally would have sold to Germany at 1500gns were now being sold for #300 or 350gns.
''It is not a happy picture at the moment. I think, however, that there will always be a future for this type of cattle for they thrive so well on the hill ground.
''You couldn't take a Limousin or a Charolais up on to the hills the way you can a Beltie or a Galloway and have any hope of them surviving, let alone
fattening, so I think that there is always going to be a place for natural cattle.''
However, Corrie, who first brought Belted Galloways to Park of Tongland in 1979 when he bought 15 heifers and a bull,
purely by chance when he was building up a beef herd, added: ''I think that unless you are going to cross them, then you are not going to be able to compete in the meat market.
''There is a niche, a very good niche for good quality, well-hung native breed cattle such as the Belted Galloway if one could just build on that niche. The thing is that you have to have small outlets - the supermarkets want large quantities of meat and they don't want to pay for the longer maturing animals.
Corrie added: ''What we are doing is literally trimming back everything on the farm to keep going. We use the silage and grass, and they are naturally fed and nothing is bought in.
''We have put our herd away to Carsphairn for the summer from April and the cows calve up there. They get the natural hill grass until November and then we bring them back and they go on to the grass silage and a bit of straw.''
About 100 of the Park of Tongland cows are running on the hills and the others are at home. ''We are hanging on in the hope they will open up the market,'' he said.
At Park of Tongland there is no crossing at the moment with herds of pure Belted Galloways, Galloways, White Galloways and also the unique Ridgebacks - now called Riggits - which are a throwback to animals which were in Galloway in the 1400s.
''The Riggits were discovered about 11 years ago now. We got this throwback from the cattle which were here in Galloway some 500 to 600 years ago. There was another one the following year and we crossed those two and have now built up a small herd of 17 which is unique.''
''It just proves that if you had genetic engineering that could never happen. This was purely by chance with cattle with very strong genes coming together after hundreds of years. Instead of
having the belt round them, they have the belt from their neck right down along their back.''
One of the best known Belted Galloway breeders and president of the Society, Flora Stuart of Old Place of Mochrum, Port William also had a throwback using the same blood lines.
''Miss Stuart had a bull and another bull and I had a heifer and another heifer, so we swopped and things have gone from there,'' he said. ''There is a future in the Riggits if we could get the market open. The Germans would have given anything for one of these. They would have written a cheque to get one of these Riggits across the Channel.''
The Belties were first registered in 1920 with the Sproats, another family which has kept the Belties to the fore over the past 80 years and more, but the breed had been in the country for centuries.
From being one of the rare breeds, the Belted Galloways have now moved on to being one which is watched but is in the 750 to 1400 range.
There are now around 500 head registered world-wide, with the society in this country having around 250 to 300 breeding adults. Chairman of the Belted Galloway Council George Sproat, who farmed near Borgue for most of his life, said: ''It is very difficult at the moment.
''Breeders are just waiting on the export market opening up again to give the breed a boost. We are currently planning for our annual show and sale at Castle Douglas in October which is held in conjunction with the autumn sale of Galloways.
''Like all sections of the farming industry, we are suffering and it is difficult for people to carry on. But one way of boosting things is by cross breeding for the market, possibly with the Angus to get the premium price for meat,'' he said.
Sproat retired last year and sold off his famous Borness herd which has sent cattle all over the world. He added that in the South-west there were about six or seven breeders relying solely on Belted Galloways, but there were now herds in many parts of the country, from Inverness to Devon and Cornwall. ''There are Belties across America and in
Australia and in fact, Robin Dunlop of Kirkcudbright is leaving to judge Belted Galloways in Australia,'' Sproat said.
Despite the plight of the farming industry the Belted Galloway classes at the various agricultural shows have been very strong this year from the Royal Highland to the Royal and the local shows across South Scotland.
In fact, the herds of Park of Tongland and Old Place of Mochrum have seldom been out of the championship honours.
''We have had a tremendous show season and it really cheers you up,'' Corrie said.
