THE Heilan coo (tr. Highland cow) is quintessentially Scottish: ginger, shaggy, horny, short-legged, tolerant of cold but uncomfortable in heat, good-natured but always up for a fight, and bellowing from time to time.

It’s Irn Bru on legs. And, while the following is a word we try to avoid in a column like this, it’s definitely … iconic. What’s more, once again, while the Heilan coo has been exported around the world, it’s definitely Scottish. Not Viking, English, Chinese or Martian. It’s our ain big hairy beastie, originating in the Highlands and Hebrides.

Of course, none of us, chap or cow, really started here, because of the ice ages an’ a’ that, and – while you might think it a load of aurochs – it appears the Heilan coo has Hamitic Longhorn origins, that referrng some sort of predecessor brought hither by Neolithic farmers in the second millennium BC. But that was before your time, madam.

More recently, there were two types of Heilan coo, as delineated in the first breed registry of 1885, being the West Highland or Kyloe (as in kyles, which they had to swim across) and Mainland, the latter larger through living on richer pastures. But, after crossbreeding, there’s no difference in the coo noo.

I say coo, deploying the generic term, but should point oot they’re not all female. That’s a lot of bull. Indeed, bulls are typically 3.5-4 ft high and weigh up to 1,800 lb, while females stand 3-3.5 ft and weigh up to 1,100 lb, half the weight of your Auntie Jean’s Nissan Micra.

Reared on their mammy’s rich butterfat milk, they reach sexual maturity at 18 months, and the gals first give birth themselves at 2-3 years old. It doesn’t even hurt as they have wide hips and can generally be left just to get on with it. They can keep calving well into their teens, and live up to 20 years, making a decent investment if you’re looking to build a herd, or “fold” as it’s known (after the open stone shelters wherein they were bunged at night).

They are not socialists or feminists, and have a clear social hierarchy, in which older cattle dominate younger ones and males are dominant to females. So it’s the opposite of western society today.

Today, indeed, there are an estimated 15,000 Highland cattle in the UK. Oddly enough, the same amount can supposedly be found in Finland, having been exported there at some point. Denmark also has some.

Highland cattle were first imported into Australia in the mid-19th century by Scottish migrants such as Aeneas Ronaldson MacDonell of Glengarry, who apparently had them driven by his clansmen from Port Albert, Victoria, to Greenmount, on the Tarra River, with a piper leading the way.

The bonnie red ruminants (other colours available) were also imported into Canada in the 1880s, and the number there and in the United States today has been put at 11,000, making that Finnish figure all the more remarkable.

I must admit that I was surprised to read that the beasties were reared mainly for their meat, rather than just having their photies took by tourists. Alas, they are docile creatures (though highly protective of their bairns) and, like most of the poor sods with natures like that, they get mangled for mastication. Still, how do you humanely kill something that big? Doesn’t seem right somehow. But you know what the Earthlings are like, particularly the rural ones.

The beef is often described as “unsurpassed”, being tender and indeed lean, thanks to the beasties having thick, hairy coats rather than layers of fat to insulate them. Low in cholesterol, and high in protein and minerals, the meat is popular in a niche way with health-conscious carnivores. As the creatures can graze and forage on plants in poor pasture, moorland and mountainous areas that other cattle avoid, they’re worth their weight in Nissan Micras when putting otherwise unproductive land to good use.

The Highland Cattle Society also points out that the animals play an important role in conservation projects, “grazing Sites of Special Scientific Interest, establishing hay meadows, opening up forest floors and regenerating heather moorland”.

Indeed, in terms of bio-diversity, it’s a dung deal: their voluminous, almost fragrant poops enable the recycling of nutrients leading to greater diversity plants and vegetation. Hooray! If only the beasties knew how useful they were, I’m sure they’d die happy, as doubtless would I if I’d no idea what was going on and got stunned on the heid out of the blue.

There’s more to life than being eaten, though, and the bonnie beasties are often big favourites at shows, where it’s not unknown for them to be groomed with oils, unguents and conditioners (Big Heid & Shoulders) to give their coats the fluffy appearance that is such a feature of the calves. This has led some people, townies no doubt, to refer to them as “fluffy cows”. Not to their faces, though.

Still, it’s the fluff that makes them such a hit with tourists. A bit north of where I live, cars pull up at lay-byes and folk pile oot with their cameras to take photies. As the beasties tend to foregather there, no one can accuse them of being camera-shy, unless they’re hoping to be fed Opal Fruits or a bit of peperami sausage instead of that rough guff in the fields that they’re supposed to make do on.

Their horns are also another big attraction, of course. They come in useful when foraging aboot in the snow – what a life, eh? – and also had a defensive purpose back in the day when wolves and other n’er-do-wells were on the prowl. They didn’t like it up ’em, you know. They. Did. Not. Like. It. Up. ’Em.

But we do like our Heilan coos, up there on the moors, ginger, hairy-arsed beasties pooping where they stand on their wee, short, stocky legs and staring glaikitly into space, as proudly, indisputably, quintessentially Scottish as we are ourselves.

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