Although Occombe was once a dairy farm the new herd is entirely Ruby Red beef cattle. Ruby Reds were chosen because they are a traditional North Devon breed that produces good quality meat on the type of grazing available on the farm. The herd comprises about 60 cattle including a Bull named Headland hero.

The cattle come in from the pasture in the autumn and stay inside until spring. This is to protect them from the worst of the winter weather and feed them on hay and sileage but also to stop them from poaching or digging up the ground too much. They have permanent bedding in the rear compartments whilst the front area is regularly scraped out and the manure put on the manure heap before being spread on the land. At Occombe we adhere to organic standards which for animal welfare reasons include giving the cattle more space in the barns than at conventional farms. Of course this means we need more barn space for the same number of animals

It is about 18 months before a cow can go to market and each year we will need new cows to replenish the herd. We also use the Occombe herd to graze other sites managed by the Trust such as Berry Head. Organic farms tend to rear their beef cattle as suckler herds. This is where a cow suckles its calf until it is weaned at about nine months of age, then fattened as store cattle. The cattle are usually kept in family groups to follow their natural herding instincts and reduce stress.

Young female cattle are called heifers, some males are castrated and these are called steers or bullocks. Until recently since the BSE crisis beef cattle had to be slaughtered when they are aged between one and two and half. Animals like our Ruby Reds that graze freely tend to take longer to put on weight than those fed on concentrates or cereal based feeding. The average weight at slaughter is around 300kg but the dressed carcase in the butcher's weighs about half this. In 2001 beef accounted for 22% of the meat eaten in the UK and the average consumption per person per year was 16kg.

Modern cattle are specialised in to beef or dairy breeds but many surplus dairy calves are also raised for their beef. A dairy cow has to calve once a year to maintain milk production, each cow will produce on average 4 calves in its lifetime creating a surplus as only one is needed to replace the cow when her milk yield declines. The remaining three are therefore used for beef. The farmer plans ahead and crosses the selected cows with a bull from a beef herd so that the resulting calf will have 50% beef characteristics a 50% dairy, this will yield far more meat than a pure dairy animal.