by John Elliot

OSCAR Colburn was one of the most inspirational farmers of his generation. His Crickley herd of Poll Herefords was right up there, he developed the Colbred breed of sheep and his autobiography 'Farmers Ordinary' is prophetic and after 30 years is still a good read.

The Colbred performed the same role as the Leicester as a crossing sire on our hill breeds to leave a prolific, milky cross bred lowland ewe.

We used them on our North Country Cheviots with great success. I bought two rams. They looked very different and my lamber, a true blue Cheviot man of great experience, told me that I had lost my pride and he wasn’t coming back to lamb them.

I lambed them myself. Nothing could have been easier. Out of 100 ewes tupped, 159 lambs were born and 157 were weaned. The wedders were acceptable and the ewes, when crossed with a Suffolk, exceptional.

For all that, the Colbred never really caught on. When Oscar Colburn spoke at The Kelso Discussion Society I asked him why. He didn’t know but had noticed that few new breeds had been accepted in the lifetime of their original breeder.

I suspected that, as with other new breeds of that era, the sheep world just wasn’t ready for something so different. Add to that flock masters' inherent dislike of a pink nose.

From Oscar Colburn’s time to now, few genuinely new breeds have appeared although Continentals such as the Texel and Charollais have crossed the channel and some of our own breeds, such as the Romney and Suffolk, have been reintroduced from New Zealand.

More recently, new hybrids, some carrying the prefix 'Easy' or 'Aber', a name previously associated with grass and clover, have appeared. Some of these breeds compete with the Leicester and others are terminal.

Various claims are being made for these breeds and it is interesting that some far-sighted sheep farmers are getting on well with them.

The criteria of excellence are simply less labour and higher sales income.

I wonder by how much they will have to outperform our main traditional breeds before they become popular. Maybe their challenge will stimulate those breeding the breeds we already have to greater heights.

Will their appearance be accepted by sheep farmers today or will they be rejected on points of minor economic importance such as facial colouration? This problem should not be underestimated!

Although of seeming low importance at the end of the day, colour has throughout my life been the determining factor in how much an animal makes in the ring.

A sheep’s nose must be black, not pink. A Blue Grey must be light blue, not dark blue. A Shorthorn will make more if it is roan than if it is red or white or, heaven forbid, broken coloured.

However good it is in every other way, a light coloured Mule will never win a prize. The Blue Faced Leicester breed is split down the middle entirely depending on whether its face is blue or has brown spots.

A Blackie with a bell brow would have topped Lanark in my youth, but wouldn’t make much today. I could go on!

I hope that the new breeds do become popular because my own bent is inclined towards production. A New Zealander was quoted as saying that you can soon get used to how a sheep looks if it is profitable.

I am not sure of that and suspect that if these newcomers don’t give up a little performance for a degree of eye appeal they might go the way of The Improver, The Cobb, The Milksheep, The Cambridge and The Colbred and remain minor breeds or worse.

In the cattle world too, breed colour is being challenged. In the Aberdeen-Angus breed, no longer are the cattle invariably black. In my youth red calves were hidden away and black cattle known or suspected of carrying the recessive gene for red coat colour were considerably discounted.

Now it doesn’t seem to make much difference and red cattle sell fine. Limousins have a black strain with pedigree breeders trying hard to breed cattle that are homozygous polled and homozygous black.

Because of our knowledge of the bovine genome and also the fact that both colour and horns are in each case controlled by a single gene the process should be quick and easy.

In North America, most breeds have a black variant. In some breeds the black ones considerably outnumber those of traditional colouration.

The driver there is that the first step in qualification for Certified Angus Beef status is a black hide. The next step, that the carcase must marble, disqualifies most, however some obviously must pass the test and get the premium.

In every case, the black animals would have been bred up originally from Angus range cattle, so there is at least some Angus blood although pretty diluted. Gone are the days when, if one referred to 'the blacks' it was assumed that this meant the Aberdeen-Angus.

It is refreshing that in this time of excessive political correctness we can still mention colour when it relates to farm animals.

The late sports writer Norman Mair once recalled a delicate moment. On entering a plane he looked up the aisle and saw a school friend who he hadn’t seen for many years. At school his friend had been nicknamed ‘Darkie’. “Hi Darkie”, Norman called.

The man in the next door seat lowered his newspaper, smiled and resumed his reading. It was the former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson!