Farm of the Week: Stabiliser the cow of choice for Robert Rook

No matter how many agricultural shows you attend from now until September, there's one breed of cattle that will not be at any of them.
From left, Duncan Pullar, Charles Rook and Robert Rook of Weighton Wold farm with their Stabiliser herd. Picture by Gary Longbottom.From left, Duncan Pullar, Charles Rook and Robert Rook of Weighton Wold farm with their Stabiliser herd. Picture by Gary Longbottom.
From left, Duncan Pullar, Charles Rook and Robert Rook of Weighton Wold farm with their Stabiliser herd. Picture by Gary Longbottom.

Stabiliser embryos were first imported from the US in the mid-90s and the first UK-born calves were on the ground 20 years ago. From the 56 calves that set up the breed in this country in 1997 there are now over 10,000 performance recorded Stabiliser cows and the national breeding herd is the fastest growing of any in the country with an annual increase of around 10-12 per cent.

Robert Rook is chairman of the Stabiliser Cattle Company and has 200 Stabiliser breeding cows at Weighton Wold Farm half way up Market Weighton Hill where he farms approximately 2,000 acres, including Arras Hill with his brother John and Robert’s sons Charles and Edward. The farming enterprise includes arable crops of seed winter wheat, seed winter barley, spring barley for malting and distilling, oilseed rape, vining peas, maize, sugar beet and potatoes; the beef business; a free range egg laying unit and duck fattening.

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“When John and I started together in 1973 we had around 700 acres. We’ve increased our acreage and have two main land types of chalky Yorkshire Wolds and Vale of York sandy soil.

“My grandfather bought the farm to supply the family mill in York and both my father and grandfather fattened store cattle. When I came home from college and having also worked away for a couple of years we introduced a breeding herd. We had Aberdeen Angus X Friesian coming out of dairy herds. They were a good cheap source of beef calves then top crossed with the Charolais.”

All was well in Robert’s cattle breeding world until the Holstein began replacing the Friesian, mainly during the late 70s and into the 80s.

“The quality of the Aberdeen Angus X dairy cow came down as a suckler cow because of the Holstein impact. By the 90s not just me but many other cattle men and women were frustrated that the cow wasn’t doing what we wanted anymore, fertility and cow longevity was down.

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“I’d been fortunate to meet Richard Fuller of Givendale in the mid-70s who had been developing a Charolais herd and working with other farms in a cooperative manner and I had been buying Charolais bulls from him.

“Richard came across the Stabiliser breed while speaking at a conference. He’d met Lee Leishman from the US and got in touch with me, and others saying he thought this guy had something. A group of us went over on a study tour in 1995 and it was this that provided the impetus for all that’s happened since.

“The breed was developed by two professors at a meat research centre in Nebraska from four breeds - the Hereford, Red Angus, Simmental and Gelbvieh from Bavaria. The US beef breeding programme is very different to the UK and isn’t reliant on dairy crossbreeds. Their uniformity of beef quality is much more level than here in the UK with the focus very much on marbling, tenderness and flavour.

“We originally saw the breed as something for us as five commercial beef farmers in Yorkshire growing our own respective farm businesses but it soon became clear that others began to realise the benefits of the Stabiliser and wanted to be part of it. That’s why the Stabiliser Cattle Company was formed.

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“We now have 100 farms that are contracted as multipliers and the breed is kept as far and wide as the Orkneys to Cornwall. Our business model is very different from traditional breed societies. We run it more along the lines of a pig breeding company. It means we have more control over it.”

Robert’s aim is to produce an economically efficient suckler cow that produces calves used in further breeding and to produce quality beef. Work on EBVs (estimated breeding values) is a constant for the breed to calculate individual heritable traits and a recent project looked specifically at feed efficiency. Robert works closely with Stabiliser Cattle Company technical development manager Duncan Pullar.

“Five years ago we received a grant from Innovate UK to identify the best breeding animals in terms of feed efficiency. Since then we have monitored over 1,000 bulls and steers at Wold Farm, where we’ve utilised a unique system of Grow Safe feed boxes from Canada. The transponder in the beast’s ear informs the computer of the animal that is feeding from the box at any one time and the feed calculation is made from the amount that was in the box prior to eating and what was left in the box at the end of the meal. One beast may have many ‘meals’ each day. Each separate meal is recorded and at the end of the day we know what each animal has eaten, each beast is subsequently weighed every week and tells how fast they have grown. By recording this information we are then able to identify the best animals in terms of feed conversion.”

Duncan Pullar explains why this is so important.

“If you’re buying a car you’re concerned about fuel consumption and performance. It’s the same with animals. Robert and his fellow Stabiliser cattle farmers are looking for the most feed efficient animals because they are cheaper to run. Producing the same amount of product, in line with what supermarkets are looking for, for less cost means greater profitability.”

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With the current trend being towards smaller cows and cattle meeting the right specifications for beef Robert believes the work currently being conducted is pivotal in the breed’s continued rise in popularity.

“Ease of calving is one of the main significant traits. Feed and growth efficiency is another. The unique work we’ve undertaken has already shown that you can keep 123 mature cows to an average weight of 650 kilos where you could have kept 100 at 850 kilos. The maths of it means you produce greater efficiency and what the market wants by having a smaller cow with the same amount of feed producing an additional four tonnes of extra weight through more calves.”

So why won’t you see Stabilisers at Otley or anywhere else on the summer agricultural show circuit?

“The serious point is that we don’t feel it engenders the right mindset,” says Duncan. “It’s all about commercial results for our farmers.”

The Stabiliser Cattle Company is hosting an open day at Wold Farm, Givendale on May 24.