Who said farming was for peasants? Miguel Angel Gil Marín, owner of the world famous Athletico Madrid football club, has just bought the mature portion of Highland Wagyu's (HW) Red Angus herd based at Blackford, Perthshire, in a bumper private deal.

The cattle, which were due to be cashed in a herd production sale at United Auctions' Bull Sales, at Stirling, next month, includes some of the best genetics in the UK if not the world. In all, the Spanish football club owner who previously produced animals for bull fighting, has acquired 16 Red Angus cows and calves from HW to include Netherton Red Essence H483, a rising 10-year-old that has produced just shy of £200,000 in progeny and embryo sales.

Red Essence, which was imported as an embryo from Miller Wilson Angus a decade ago, is bred from one of Canada’s most famous Red females that was crowned Show Female of the year as a two-year-old and again at 10 years of age.

Netherton Red Essence is proving a breeder too with a TLA Northern Samurai ET daughter having sold for $10,000 in Mexico in 2015 to KBJ Angus in Canada with another heifer calf from the same flush selling for $8000 as a calf last year.

The other top seller in the package was HW Red Emad T603, an eight-month-old grand-son of Netherton Red Essence H483 which sold with a five-figure price tag. He is one of the first sons in the UK sired by Red Six Mile Grand Slam 130Z – one of Canada’s top performance sires.

Along with Red Essence and four daughters other females in the sale included cows originating from Windy Gowl and Kincardine Castle Angus.

The sale leaves HW with some 15 young breeding Red Angus females and embryos which together with the introduction of new genetics from abroad will be used to build up the Red herd again. In all, HW and Netherton Aberdeen Angus, owned in partnership with the McLaren family, now run some 280 black and red Aberdeen Angus cattle that over the years has witnessed sales to no fewer than 27 countries, of which 30% originate from Facebook.