A Derbyshire cattle farmer wants to make his cows uglier to try to stem a tide of social media influencers stampeding across his land to film viral content with his animals.
Alex Birch is planning to crossbreed his Highland cows to make them “less photogenic”, he told the BBC, as TikTokers’ interest in them means they “don’t get any peace”.
‘Unholy hybrid’
“I’ve seen the videos, I’ve seen it in person, I’ve seen someone filming a yoga video next to them,” said Birch. On one occasion he discovered “30 people with their cameras flashing” at cows cornered at the edge of a field. “People just can’t understand it when you tell them not to approach them and that the cows might turn on them.”
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He says he will breed out their attractive features by crossing the Highland cattle with the plainer whitebred shorthorn – “a good, hardy cow” – which doesn’t have horns. The process of breeding out the more photogenic features of the Highland cows would take around six years, he told The Telegraph.
Highland cows, which look like an “unholy hybrid of Boris Johnson and [a] delivery bicycle”, have also attracted many admirers in Kent, said The Guardian. When they were brought to the Hothfield Heathlands nature reserve, near Ashford, videos of the cows went viral on TikTok, prompting a “flood” of camera-wielding visitors.
Eventually, Kent Wildlife Trust, which manages the site, had to “remove the cows” because they were becoming “distressed” and might “react out of fear”, potentially injuring human interlopers.
‘Powerful animals’
The Highland Cattle Society has told people not to treat cows as “selfie props” and the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals told The National that Highland cows, although “often perceived as calm and approachable”, are “still large, powerful livestock animals”. So “like any animal, their behaviour can change if they feel stressed or threatened”.
Fatal cattle tramplings do happen in the UK countryside. Research by The Guardian found that, from March 2019 to March 2023, cattle were responsible for 22 deaths in England. And last month farmers were “warned about their duty of care” after a dog walker was trampled by cattle in Cornwall, said Farming UK. The farmer pleaded guilty to breaching section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was fined £5,260.
Incidents like this paint “a picture at odds” with the image of cows as “docile” animals who are “very much individuals with their own characters and complex emotions”, said The Guardian. But with the average UK dairy cow weighing 620kg (98st), “even a gentle knock” can seriously injure a human, said Wayne Owen, from the Health and Safety Executive. The best advice, said the paper, is “exercising extreme caution”.