Blue Grey

What do Blue Grey cattle look like?

A Blue Grey is a crossbred animal rather than a breed: the calf of a Galloway cow, black in coat, and a white Shorthorn bull. Its coat is blue roan, a speckled mix of dark and pale hairs over a blue-grey skin, and the animal is polled, so it grows no horns. The body is deep and sturdy, built for rough country. Compared with other crosses in similar condition, the cow lays down more body fat, and that reserve helps her keep giving milk when grass is short. It is the female that matters most in this hybrid; she is judged as a suckler cow, the mother that carries and feeds a calf.

Where does the Blue Grey come from?

Farmers in the south-west of Scotland and the north-west of England began putting Shorthorn bulls to black Galloway cows in the early 1800s. The calves were vigorous hybrids, and when the sire was white they came out blue roan, a colour that made them easy to pick out and much sought after. Demand for those calves led, later in the same century, to the deliberate selection of the Whitebred Shorthorn, kept for one purpose: supplying white bulls to go over Galloway cows. From then on the cross had a steady source of the white sires that give it its colour.

What the Blue Grey is known for

The Blue Grey is valued for coping where feed is thin. On upland pasture it can still give a decent flow of milk for its calf, helped by the fat it lays down when grazing is better. It comes through the cold months on the tough herbage of limestone country, and where it is put to conservation grazing it takes less off the sward than a sheep does. Those qualities, rather than any stated temperament, are what the cross is known for.

How the Blue Grey is bred and kept

A Blue Grey has to be made afresh in every generation by mating the two parent breeds, so it is a hybrid and not a breed that passes its type on unchanged. The mother is a black Galloway, the father a white Shorthorn, and from the later 1800s those sires have come from the Whitebred Shorthorn line, kept to hand on the white coat that turns the calf blue roan. Calves are reared by their mothers on the farm, then kept on as the suckler cows of an upland herd. Farmers choose white bulls deliberately, because only then does the calf come out the colour that is wanted.

What the Blue Grey is kept for

The first job of a Blue Grey is to be a suckler cow. She is kept to carry a calf, calve it and feed it from her own udder until weaning, instead of being milked for the dairy. Put on upland grazing that is often sparse, she still yields enough milk to bring the calf on. Her second use is conservation grazing: in the Yorkshire Dales these cattle have been turned out to manage the vegetation, and there they take less off the sward than sheep do. They can also be outwintered on limestone country where the herbage is tough.

The land and climate of the Blue Grey

These cattle belong to the hills. They are described as particularly well suited to upland grazing, and they do best on the thin, patchy pasture found there. Limestone country in the Yorkshire Dales has proved a good fit, since the cows can find enough in tough herbage and hold their condition through the cold months. Fat laid down in better seasons carries them over the lean ones, and their milk holds up when the grass does not.

Related breeds and crosses

Two parent breeds lie behind it. The black Galloway supplies the cow, and the Shorthorn supplies the bull. The white Shorthorn used in the cross is a line apart, the Whitebred Shorthorn, brought on in the later nineteenth century so that white sires would always be available. That line is the closest relative of the Blue Grey, since it was created to serve this cross, keeping the blue roan colour coming.

Questions people ask about Blue Grey

Good reading and sources

• Blue Grey cattle on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data