Fife vet gets prestigious award for work with rare cattle breed

Dr John Fletcher, based in Auchtermuchty, may be better known to many as Britain’s first commercial deer farmer, but he is being recognised for supporting the preservation of the unique Chillingham cattle breed.

He will be awarded the 2019 Marsh Christian Trust Award for Conservation in Genetic Biodiversity by the Rare Breed Survival Trust.

Chillingham cattle are never handled and exist in only two herds in Britain: a reserve herd belonging to the Queen and the herd within Chillingham Park.

They have been enclosed in the medieval park at Chillingham in Northumberland for some 700 years and have become so interbred as to be effectively clones with no genetic variability.

This makes them of great scientific value and their conservation is a matter of international concern. Their total population numbers less than 200.

John Fletcher worked with the Chillingham Wild Cattle Association (CWCA) and AB Europe – a company specialising in artificial breeding and based in Edinburgh – to collect embryos from the cattle which could be kept frozen as a safeguard against any threats to the existing herds.

The work took three years and was successful in that a limited amount of genetic material has been preserved despite the very low fertility of the Chillingham bulls and, to a lesser extent, the cows.

The work was supported by the Guinness Trust and the CWCA.

The Chillingham cattle can be visited on daily guided tours with full details at Chillingham Wild Cattle